BREAKING NEWS – top 5 stories 16/07/2021
Daily bite-sized proptech and real estate news in partnership with Proptech-X. Today, Stanton looks at Revolut, U-See Homes, Connells and more.
- Rishi Sunak congratulates Revolut on $33 billion valuation
- You’re hired: Connells Group look for 135 new apprentices
- U-See Homes is on a mission to save Agents thousands of pounds
- Birmingham City Council harnesses proptech Urban Intelligence to help with housing
- PRS rents rise by 1.2% nationally according to ONS
Rishi Sunak congratulates Revolut on $33 billion valuation
Fintech funding continues to proceed at a pace. Revolut confirmed its latest round of funding, a Series E injection of $800 million, bringing its valuation to $33 billion. The announcement prompted the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, to issue a congratulatory tweet.
He said: “Good news that @RevolutApp has raised $800m and plans to expand even further – creating more jobs here in the UK. We want to see even more great British fintech success stories, which is why I’ve published my vision for the future of the sector.”
Given that the financial services “super app” only launched in 2015, it is interesting to see how quickly consumer adoption can make services of this nature hugely profitable.
You’re hired: Connells Group look for 135 new apprentices
The biggest estate agency group in the land is on the lookout for a large intake of apprentices, readying them for real estate roles. Those taken on will go into lettings, sales and other related roles, becoming part of Connells, or its sister brand Sequence.
Connells Group recently acquired Countrywide and now has a 1,300 branch network. Clearly, they’re looking to continue growing the company.
U-See Homes is on a mission to save Agents thousands of pounds
U-See Homes, a virtual tour platform that offers estate agents the “most effective way to bring to life sales collateral” has said that if its service is adopted, it will reduce the amount of time sales staff waste on viewings that do not result in a sale or a let.
The Head of Marketing at U-See Homes, Simon Dempsey, said: “Estate agents spend a considerable amount of time and money conducting initial physical viewings that could easily be replaced by a guided virtual tour. In fact, utilising virtual guided tours could help them showcase three or four homes in the time it would take to conduct one physical viewing.”
Last year, 12% of property lets came from virtual viewings. U-See Homes have seen something and capitalised, and it’s making for an extremely valuable service for buyers and vendors alike.
Birmingham City Council harnesses proptech Urban Intelligence to help with housing
The forward-thinking Birmingham City Council had a problem. They wanted to put together a future development plan for the city.
To speed up the process, they chose to use Urban Intelligence, which exists to “transform the way that the world values land and property.”
Urban Intelligence said that, while the industry as we know it has long been dependent on paper-based processes, its team is bringing about new ones using technology and data science, in order to ”re-think development opportunities.”
Ultimately, what this means is that they can now quickly assess where opportunities lie with regard to development opportunities.
PRS rents rise by 1.2% nationally according to ONS
According to the Office for National Statistics, rents in the private rented sector rose, on average, by 1.2% in June, with the Midlands seeing an even larger rise of 2.4%. Given that there are tens of thousands of tenants who have not been able to pay their rental agreements during the pandemic, it seems an interesting dynamic – rent costs going up as the number of renters able to pay declines.
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