If you always thought that property businesses were exempt from innovation, think again. Over the last few years, an incredible number of innovative property management start-ups have become vital players in the property market and the web has become an essential tool to make the property-selling process much easier.
With investors pumping more and more money into real estate tech businesses ($14 USD in 2014), how is the internet rapidly transforming into an instrumental tool in property management?
- Next-generation online property management services
Online property management services can now speed up and streamline the sales process no matter how niche the market or how complicated your personal situation – some of them even specialise in divorces!
These hyper-specialised businesses cater to all types of property and make use of all the advantages an online experience can offer. Everything can be done via email and many online-based property management services offer a multitude of subscription plans to choose from depending on your situation.
They encompass and sometimes even automate most aspects of property business management such as accounting and lease management. Whether you own a single property or a hundred, online property services can always be accessed from your laptop or smartphone.
- Cloud-based property management: Appfolio
Appfolio Property Manager is a software-as-a-service app which acts as a web-based property management system. Founded in 2007, it’s the brainchild of Jon Walker and Klaus Schauser, who respectively started as chief technology officer and computer science professor.
It’s been featured on numerous top property software lists. It’s expanding fast with the recent acquisition in 2015 of Rentlinks, which helps property owners to find the best residents by maximizing their marketing budget.
Appfolio claims it can cut the time spent on property management by 50% per week, so it can definitely make an impact if you manage a great number of properties.
- Pilabs, Europe’s first property tech accelerator
London-based Pilabs was launched in 2015, and was founded by entrepreneurs Faisal Butt and Umesh Kumar. The tech accelerator was created to support the growing number of property start-ups aiming at disrupting the property market. Thanks to a crowd-funding campaign on Seedrs, Pilabs already raised over £712,900.
The first companies selected for the accelerator programme included an AirBnB management company and a start-up to help investors scoop off-market development opportunities. Pilabs’ list is growing fast, showing how ambitious the property tech market is these days!
- Property Crowd-funding Websites: Democratising Buy-to-Let
Property crowd-funding brings investors together to buy properties for the buy-to-let market. Founded in 2012, The House Card was one of the first property crowdfunding websites. More recently, in 2014, Property Moose was launched in the UK on a similar model.
With a minimum investment of 10 GBP (it was lowered recently from 40 GBP in January 2016), this is proving to be a better, freer alternative to a pension for many people with smaller revenues, including the younger crowds that would typically be excluded from the property buying market.
