Latest proptech launch? The app-only lettings agency

Agents will soon have a new competitor for students lets, but not on the high street or online. Instead, an entirely app-based lettings agency specifically for university students is about to launch its proptech platform, backed by £280,000 raised on funding platform Seedrs. At launch the company says it will offer 50,000 rooms to rent, helped by listings from US institutional property investor Hines, which has handed over its entire UK student portfolio to SPCE. The service, which includes a website, smartphone application and an office in London, is due to launch during the first week of November and was created by former Leicester student housing ambassador and merchant banker Leon Ifayemi with adverting executive Omar Fahmi. “My job as a student ambassador was to take students to properties to view day in and day out and that’s where I saw the issues that students and landlords faced,” he says. Leon says he then saw a need for a solution that would arbitrate the problems that arise between landlords and students, and also handle the rental process from search to moving out, “rather than just portions of it”, he says. Tenants will use SPCE almost entirely through its proptech app,…