Top 5 Stories of the Week
In case you missed them, here are the most interesting proptech and real estate news in partnership with Proptech-X from the week.
- Rightmove says it has the tools to speed up tenant referencing by 20%
- Zoopla: One in five homes increased in value by over £35,000 in last year
- HomeHere focuses on better lead generation for agents
- Aviva suggests widescale buyer’s remorse after moving in to dream homes
- Resolution Foundation says pandemic made the rich even richer
Rightmove says it has the tools to speed up tenant referencing by 20%
As the portals spin forward with lots of new proptech features Christian Balshen, head of lettings at Rightmove, announced that “letting agents are busier than ever, and so we’re investing in speeding up the process to help make a move-in as easy as possible.
“Our unique referencing platform already allows agents to start referencing through their CRM and our re-designed referencing platform aims to improve the process even further.”
Balshen is referring to the fact that Rightmove is now rolling out its “rent in five” strategy, building upon its Landlord & Tenant Service.
Zoopla: One in five homes increased in value by over £35,000 in last year
The latest figures from Zoopla, the UK’s second-largest property portal, show that 21% of properties have outstripped the average salary in the UK.
Andy Marshall, CCO at Zoopla, said: “There has been strong demand from home buyers since the market reopened after the first lockdown in May last year, compounded by the search for space and the stamp duty holiday.”
HomeHere focuses on better lead generation for agents
Proptech company HomeHere has developed a top-quality digital screening service for estate and letting agents, a type of digital applicant box that co-exists with agents CRMs, analysing applicants in a way that empowers agents and the end-user.
By automating processes normally conducted by the agent, viewers can be booked into the agent’s diary after being digitally verified, so a lot of the legwork is removed at a cracking pace.
Lou Quinn, the co-founder of HomeHere, says that serious buyers or renters will engage with a software response first before a human if they are motivated, also they can do this at any point 24/7.
Quinn said: “If you are giving the buyer or renter the opportunity to take the next step themselves, if they are not willing to do that, perhaps the question is how interested they really are in that property.”
HomeHere’s tech removes the stress from rammed email boxes. All agents have to do is log into a website and they’ll get a comprehensive view of everything that is going on.
Aviva suggests widescale buyer’s remorse after moving in to dream homes
In a study of 2,200 homebuyers carried out by Aviva, nearly 70% felt pressured to buy their property quickly. That figure rose to 94% for those who purchased during the pandemic.
Other key points found were that buyers typically took 46 minutes to view a property before pulling the trigger, and over 30% of buyers during the pandemic did so due to the SDLT holiday.
Resolution Foundation says pandemic made the rich even richer
The Resolution Foundation, an independent think-tank focused on improving living standards for those on low to middle incomes, has been doing some deep thinking about the pandemic and who it helped…and who got squeezed.
Its most recent analysis suggests that High Net Worth (HNW) individuals, especially those in the capital, enjoyed a rise in their standard of living. This could be, in part, due to their higher probability of being in bullish tech-adjacent industries, or because they owned property, which has risen by over 10% in the last year.
In contrast, the less well-off in society appear to be getting even less well-off in real terms. Of course, many work in industries like the entertainment sector, which have been severely impacted by the pandemic.
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