Habito aims to transform the UK’s £1.3T mortgage market with its proprietary sourcing technology, innovative mortgage products and groundbreaking home buying services. The proptech company aims for fast, transparent and impartial service by taking care of the whole process for his customers. Using cutting edge technology and industry-leading mortgage experts, homebuyers can, for the first time, be sure they are getting the best deal for them.
Unsplash © Eduard Militaru
Proptech: 16 startups changing real estate in the UK
As a consequence of the pandemic, UK house prices have dropped by 7.5%. Looking to boost the market and update the current archaic systems, proptech startups are developing user-friendly concepts and platforms to provide landlords and tenants with transparency and financial clarity. Maddyness selected some of these proptech disruptors.
Launched in 2017 by co-founder and CEO Lee Vanessa Butz, District Technologies is a mobile-first workplace experience platform that digitises the user experience for commercial real estate by connecting people with what they love around them. District has built a proprietary mobile-first technology platform for clients managing different types of buildings that is focused on community, wellbeing, shared spaces and services.
Property Innovation Labs (Pi Labs) is Europe’s first venture capital platform investing exclusively in early-stage ventures in the property tech vertical. Pi Labs was founded in 2014 to become the centre of the property innovation ecosystem in Europe. The company aims to identify, mentor, invest in and accelerate high-calibre startup ventures that have the passion and ability to create scalable businesses that will disrupt the property industry. Its in-house property expertise assists entrepreneurs in the rapid scaling of tomorrow’s tech-enabled property startups.
Launched in 2014, Goodlord is a cloud-based platform trusted by hundreds of agencies across the UK. From contracts and references through to payments, Goodlord streamlines the rental process with one simple interface and no need for onerous paperwork or multiple stakeholders. This creates a seamless process for what was once a stressful and bureaucratic experience for tenants.
Orbital Witness revolutionises the old-fashioned property and real estate systems by creating a universal risk rating for property and land similar to a credit check to provide a high-level view of property risk to all parties. Combining machine learning and reinforcement learning techniques, Orbital Witness has developed a sophisticated understanding of real estate and property risk that it is now applying across commercial real estate properties in the UK.
Propoly enables letting agents to automate and digitise tasks when a tenant makes an offer on a property. Thanks to an integrated platform, agents can streamline their processes thus reducing admin, maximising revenue through the sale of third-party products and staying compliant with inbuilt prompts throughout the process.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Samantha Short and Phil Jones quit their jobs to start Moneyed, an app that empowers people to take control of their financial future. Users can build a personalised financial plan to help meet important life goals (buying a house, planning a wedding, starting a family, round-the-world trips, retiring) and easily track progress, by aggregating and displaying all finances in one place (current accounts, savings, pensions, investments, property, mortgages).
Founded by Lydia Jones in 2019 in Manchester, Housemates is a mobile platform that automates the process of onboarding students into accommodation. The platform, which is aimed at both private landlords and PBSA chains, requires no upfront cost and is free to sign up to for property owners.
We’re now open to private landlords for exclusive early access. ?
Want to help us make student accommodation better? Request access here! ? ➡️ https://t.co/QYSWjiEGiS pic.twitter.com/R8iwvJh2Sa
— Housemates (@joinhousemates) August 14, 2020
Adam Joseph, Founder and CEO of The Happy Tenant Company created the business because he felt there was a real gap in the market for a property management firm that serviced both part-time and professional landlords. Being a property agent is different to being a property manager and finding a tenant requires different skills to managing one. Being a property investor is also different from being a manager, and this company enables landlords to outsource this aspect of their business.
Launched in 2018, independent multi-agent property seller Movewise manages the entire sales process for vendors, leveraging unique data and insight to identify the best local estate agents for a property. This proprietary multi-agency solution is today one of the most effective ways for professional vendors to sell properties.
Born in the Founders Factory Studio, Hammock plugs into landlord’s bank accounts, via open banking, and automatically monitors rent collection, tracks payments and expenses and delivers live analytical reporting on the wellbeing of each rental house or flat. By providing instant tracking of balance sheets for each property Hammock is able to save landlords significant time, while the real-time insights reduce uncertainty and inefficiencies for landlords.
It's a happy Monday for Team Hammock, thanks to @TechCrunch and @sohear. We've got amazing investors on our side @fuelventures @AscensionGrp @foundersfactory and our current account is going live in September. We've got much to be grateful for and so much more to look forward to https://t.co/oNxokiYmWT
— Hammock (@UseHammock) August 17, 2020
Launched in 2019 to enable people to buy, sell, lease or rent a property with one-click, Offr digitises over 85% of the process of buying and selling property for agents and their customers. Property transactions have largely been restricted and confined domestically, with no easy, fast, and secure way of buying properties cross-border available. Offr is changing this by making international trading of property possible for buyers online, using traditional real estate agents.
Launched in September 2019, SilverSharers helps London’s homeowners aged 50+ to find compatible lodgers of any age and recently raised early-stage funding from Bethnal Green Ventures which has enabled the company to rebuild its platform. SilverSharers’ founder, Suzanne Noble, believes that home-sharing, when you’re older, can serve as a blueprint for how many of us will be living, whether through financial circumstances or for companionship and it’s essential to make it as easy as possible to find someone you like and with whom you would like to live.
WeCOMPLETE is a truly end-to-end solution, with the whole of the property legal completion process managed digitally with unique software. This includes new business generation, quoting, client onboarding, anti-money laundering checks, proof of funds, lender integration, property searches, queries, certificates, forms, document filing, e-signature, payment collection, invoicing and all communications between all parties.
Founded in 2016, C3Sixty scans, captures and photographs any property, building or space in 360 degrees allowing people to market, promote, record, document and present content from a unique, fully interactive 3D perspective Virtual Tour. The company works with estate agents, developers, restaurants, hotels, schools, museums, insurance companies and retailers to provide fully immersive content. Using VR in the latest 360-degree capture technology, users can immerse themselves in a property or building giving them an unrivalled interactive virtual experience.
Scanning some stunning new build #property by @HomesByEsh and available with @RobinsonsNE has been a pleasure! Keep your eyes out for the finished #virtualtours! pic.twitter.com/snNvnb1Ztj
— C3sixty (@C3sixtyltd) July 30, 2019
Due to launch next month, AgentRelay will allow residential and commercial real estate agents to offer agent-accompanied virtual property viewings. Its platform integrates with the leading 3D virtual tour technology Matterport to offer virtual viewings on any device.
Take a look at their work below…