WEEKLY NEWS ROUNDUP – 15/04/2022
A roundup of the week’s top property and proptech news stories in partnership with Proptech-X
- Yardi Integrates with TDS API to Streamline Tenancy Deposits
- Taylor Rose MW acquires stake in prop-tech disrupter SlothMove
- Growing support for campaign to make renting with a pet easier
- Property market stabilises as supply pressures ease, according to Landmark’s Property trends report
Yardi Integrates with TDS API to Streamline Tenancy Deposits
The Tenancy Deposit Scheme (TDS) has announced that its API has now integrated with Yardi®, a leading cloud-based property management software provider.
The integration between the TDS API and Yardi allows agents, owners, and operators of residential real estate to register deposits at the click of a button, without the need to enter data manually.
This simple process saves time, removes the unnecessary duplication of work, and eliminates the risk of human error. The API transfers deposit data from Yardi’s technology platform to the deposit scheme for both TDS Custodial and TDS Insured.
Yardi provides an end-to-end platform to manage the marketing, letting and financial operations of residential properties, including PRS (Private Rental Sector), Build to Rent, single-family homes and Purpose-Built Student Accommodation.
Steve Harriott, CEO of TDS, comments:
“We are delighted to integrate our API with the Yardi platform. Yardi’s commitment to its customers, giving back to communities and investment in innovation aligns with our own objectives, as the only not-for-profit tenancy deposit scheme with an ambition to improve the private rental sector for everyone involved. This integration with Yardi and the TDS API offers customers an intuitive solution that makes their lives easier.”
Neal Gemassmer, vice president of international for Yardi, comments:
“Yardi prides itself on continued innovation in the real estate market to further enhance operations and drive efficiencies through seamless processes, which removes the need for disparate systems. Yardi is excited to offer this new functionality to our customers in England and Wales to help them manage their residential tenancy deposits more efficiently, making the whole process easier and faster than ever before.”
To find out more about TDS API, click here.
Taylor Rose MW acquires stake in prop-tech disrupter SlothMove
Taylor Rose MW, the fast-growing and innovative UK law firm, has acquired a stake in the property-tech company SlothMove, to accelerate its fast-growing change of address and home-setup service across the UK.
The average home move involves over 21 points of contact to update their addresses – including with insurers, employers and healthcare providers – with some wait times as long as an hour. SlothMove reduces this to just one single point of contact, saving each user an average 12 hours of time. SlothMove is the latest prop-tech disrupter, Rated Excellent on TrustPilot, and helping over 50,000 movers to date.
SlothMove will use the seven-figure investment from Taylor Rose MW to develop its technology, employ 50 additional members of staff and develop further commercial partnerships.
SlothMove CEO Jack Roberts said: “Our partnership with Taylor Rose MW marks our next stage of growth in fulfilling our mission to change the way the UK moves, making it as hassle-free as possible. Taylor Rose MW’s investment will supercharge our growth, creating new jobs across technology, operations and business development. All of this enables us to take the stress out of moving and reduce fraud risk for our rapidly expanding userbase.
Taylor Rose MW CEO Adrian Jaggard added: “Jack, Anna, Dan, and the SlothMove team are highly impressive and are solving a problem that many of our property clients face – using the latest property technology to quickly and easily update our clients’ personal details across a myriad of often disparate services to help save hours of hassle and make moving house a more stress-free and secure process.
“We are highly confident in SlothMove’s future and believe our investment will help propel SlothMove to its next stage of growth, whilst providing benefits to our market-leading conveyancing teams. We are excited to work with the SlothMove team going forward.”
Growing support for campaign to make renting with a pet easier
A couple of months ago, I had a meeting with Jen Berezai, the co-founder of AdvoCATS. I wanted to fully understand what she was looking to achieve. By the end of the meeting, so obvious was her genuine drive to make things happen that I said we would place one of my companies behind the project as it made a lot of sense.
Having been a tenant, a landlord since 1989 and an agent for over thirty years, I could see the argument from all sides regarding tenants and pets. The rights of the landlord, the tenant and the letting agent if they were in the mix, balanced against the ‘risks’ and reservations of all stakeholders, and the rewards.
So for those who do not know, AdvoCATS is a voluntary non-profit organisation, set up in 2018 to offer a free support and advice service to both landlords and tenants and assist pet owners who experience difficulty finding rental accommodation.
Their mission statement: Campaign Action Teach Support covers their grassroots work and, more recently, the Heads for Tails! campaign to make renting with pets easier and fairer for all parties
The east Midlands-based voluntary organisation AdvoCATS has now announced the addition of several organisations that are lending their support to the charity’s Heads for Tails! campaign for a simple change in the law to make renting with pets easier.
Newly committed to the campaign are International Cat Care, the pioneering cat welfare charity established in 1958, and the Pet Food Manufacturers Association (PFMA), the leading trade body for the UK pet food industry. Both are long-established organisations with a vested interest in human and animal welfare.
The campaign, originally borne out of MP Andrew Rosindell’s 2020 private members bill (dubbed Jasmine’s Law), has already secured endorsement from over 30 organisations including the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA), National Office for Animal Health (NOAH), the Property Redress Scheme and Propertymark.
As well as 40+ MPs/Peers, when AdvoCATS and Andrew met with Eddie Hughes MP, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Rough Sleeping and Housing, last December.
With another meeting anticipated in late Spring, more industry heavyweights are joining the call to amend the Tenant Fees Act 2019, to allow a landlord to either request a financially capped pet deposit or stipulate pet damage insurance must be held by any tenant wanting to keep a pet or pets.
Dr Sarah Ellis (BSc Hons, PG Dip, PhD), Head of Cat Advocacy at International Cat Care remarked: “In a world where renting is commonplace and where there are so many pet cats relinquished and/or needing homes, making renting with pets easier is a critical contribution to sustaining positive wellbeing for people and pet cats.”
Commented Nicole Paley, Deputy Chief Executive of the PFMA: “We are delighted to add our support to the important work of AdvoCATS. Our pets have such a positive impact on our lives from reducing stress and anxiety to providing much valued companionship. It is vital we address how we can support owners renting with pets.”
AdvoCATS co-founder Jen Berezai welcomed the support, and said: “To have well-respected industry names back our campaign is fantastic. We are in discussion with a number of other organisations which have expressed interest in the campaign and, in fact, have just recruited Proptech-PR, CEO Andrew Stanton. As well as ProtectaPet, all of which strengthens our case for the government to adopt the Heads for Tails! Proposals, which will open up pet ownership for thousands – maybe even hundreds of thousands – of tenants.”
Property market stabilises as supply pressures ease, according to Landmark’s Property trends report
Landmark Information Group analyses residential property data from Q1 2022 in England and Wales.
Landmark Information Group’s latest market data shows the housing market is bouncing back to 2019 levels, following a year of disruption and transaction bottlenecks. The newly-released Q1 Property Trends Report paints a positive picture for home-movers as supply pressures ease, and workloads normalise for property professionals, potentially decreasing property transaction times for those hoping to move in 2022.
The report, which uses Landmark’s data to reflect on England and Wales market activity during January, February and March of 2022, shows that whilst supply remained a challenge at the start of the year, pressure is now starting to be released. With listing volumes returning to 2019 levels by the end of Q1, this shrinking gap between demand and supply is set to continue into Q2, relieving some of the inflationary pressure on house prices.
The return to normalcy for the market is reflected in the transaction pipeline, with Sold Subject to Contract (SSTC) volumes in February and March finally matching 2019 levels, as January seller activity converted to conveyancing instructions. This more stable market is allowing conveyancing lawyers to manage workloads more effectively, in contrast to the rapid fluctuations in volumes across 2021 which contributed to huge bottlenecks and stalling transactions for home-movers across the country.
Key findings:
Property Listings: After a slow start to the year, beset by surging Covid-19 cases, confidence appears to be returning to the market. The year began with supply levels challenges, but a steady uptick took supply 2% over 2019 rates by the end of the quarter. This promising trend signals more choice, releasing pent-up supply from hesitant home-movers and potentially reversing the cycle we have seen in 2020-21.
SSTC volumes: A return to pre-Covid levels, with minimal fluctuation in February and March, suggests that conveyancers are experiencing steady new business after the drama of 2021’s SDLT deadline. After a quiet start to the year as a result of the supply-squeezed market, by the end of Q1 SSTC levels were at the same rate as 2019.
SSTC compared to listings: Demand and supply are broadly returning to more stable 2019 levels, with the gap appearing to narrow, potentially due to increased market confidence.
Ratio of completions to instructions: The Completion to Instructions Ratio1 (CIR) traditionally starts low at the beginning of the year, as conveyancers pick up the slack after the inevitable lull over the festive period – in Q1 2022 we see refreshing stability after a busy December.
Landmark CEO, Simon Brown said: ‘As we analyse the data from the first quarter of 2022, it’s encouraging to see the beginnings of a calmer, and crucially, more consistent market. These less turbulent conditions will help to ease the pressures in the transaction process for home-movers in the next few months as increased predictability makes workloads easier to manage.
But despite the hopeful signs, the broader factors – from the burgeoning cost-of-living crisis to geopolitical instability – are yet to fully play out. This makes it ever-more crucial that the industry is able to evolve and adapt to external shocks, to minimize the impact on home-movers.’
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