BREAKING PROPERTY NEWS – 11/11/2021
Daily bite-sized proptech and property news in partnership with Proptech-X.
- Property Deals Insight emerges from stealth mode
- Sprift strengthens its tech team
- HMLR forces conveyancing body to go digital by Winter 2022
Property Deals Insight emerges from stealth mode
Proptech Founder Nitin Aggarwal has finally come out of stealth mode to explain what his unique digital business Property Deals Insight delivers for its clients.
It is, Aggarwal says, an affordable subscription service that has multiple clients; independent property investors, property sourcers, estate agents, surveyors, proptechs and other professional property businesses, who require the most accurate property information.
In other words, a place of property truth that enables them to:
- Check out current hot areas for investment by price trends, yield, sale prices or average rents
- Get an accurate property valuation for more than 27 million properties in the UK and a comprehensive report detailing average per sqm price, rental valuation, yield, valuation confidence and more. This is generated by a bespoke AI powered Automated Valuation Model,
- List and find investment properties right across the UK
- Revolutionary Property Reports that can be branded to your business and act as your back office without breaking the bank.
- Search for potential property deals listed by over a dozen different investment strategies e.g. Buy-to-let, Auctions, Repossessions, Buy-Refurb-Refinance, Rent-to-Rent and many more
- Cashflow and yield reports with interactive fields to allow instant calculation of costs, yield, annual cash flow and more
- Flip analysis return on investment calculations to avoid expensive mistakes.
Nitin believes this adds real value for property investors as it brings transparency to investment, saving hours by delivering due diligence instantly. But more than that, it lets investors buy properties that are outside their local area with confidence.
The tools available through a PDI subscription short-cut the typical need to spend three months and £10K in finders fees. They provide far more detailed information than is normally available.
Their data is drawn from several trusted sources, including but not limited to HM Land Registry, Office for National Statistics, Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, Ofcom, Google Maps, Ordnance Survey, Ofsted and many commercial sites, such as Zoopla and Rightmove. These are processed through algorithms to deliver accurate, comprehensive, and unbiased information.
Aggarwal feels that this has been valuable during the recent pandemic. As a UK-based, digital business, Property Deals Insight continued to operate and develop the offerings. As investors have been less able to travel, the platform has enabled them to continue resourcing and buying properties with confidence that their investments are made based on robust information.
Using the PDI platform has also reduced the investor’s carbon footprint, by removing the need to travel, even locally.
Sprift strengthens its tech team
Matt Gilpin’s Sprift, who’s tagline is “Know any Property Instantly”, has just announced another key hire in Craig Stirk, who will be their Chief Data Officer (CDA). Stirk will be looking to work on the ability for users to harness their data sets even more than Sprift users already can.
Many talk of data as being the new oil, but Big Data is problematic as it depends on how it is obtained and more importantly how it is applied. With Craig Stirk’s background including a decade being a Transformation Lead and Head of Business Intelligence, it is clear that Sprift is about to go through another period of steep commercial growth.
CEO Matt Gilpin comments: “[Craig Stirk] is already making real strides into the world of property data – helping to support our clients and partners, but also our growth during these information-rich times. Data has the power to deliver real benefits to our industry and beyond.”
Stirk commented: “So much data is locked up in silos, this is especially the case in the property sector. We need to play our role in integrating the vast swathes of facts and figures and finding new answers to difficult property questions that will help the property industry, as well as related sectors. Decisions are more easily made where there is less risk through comprehensive data.”
HMLR forces conveyancing body to go digital by Winter 2022
In the first such move, HM Land Registry has sent a shot across the bow of the conservative, slow moving, analogue and paper-based conveyancing community, saying that from late 2022 they will not allow changes to titles of land and property being sent in by paper format.
HMLR’s official statement is that conveyancers who wish to alter existing titles will have to join the world of digital, a sign that at long last digital transformation is going to be on the agenda for many who have been swerving this advance.
The Registry announced: “[From] November 2022 we will no longer accept scanned or PDF copies of AP1s for changes to existing titles via the HM Land Registry portal.”
This will mean there will need to be a 90% uplift in how conveyancers do this, as presently only one in ten conveyancers are digitally registering amendments to titles.
CEO Simon Hayes comments: “A digital application process, based on data rather than traditional paper-based methods, is fundamental to transforming the way we register land and ultimately will play a vital role in improving the end-to-end conveyancing journey.”
Hayes also reported that the speed of service and the fall in errors had been noted since last April when the pilot scheme came in.
Lets us hope, if the legal sector can get on board, that lenders will soon follow suit to speed the whole conveyancing process up.