10 Prop Tech companies to watch in 2020

December 12, 2019 / Isla MacFarlane
10 Prop Tech companies to watch in 2020

The UK’s nascent prop tech sector has the potential to rebuild how we live. Within a short amount of time, we could be buying homes with a single click or helping to shape a new community with a tap on an app.

The UK Prop Tech sector is potentially worth £6 billion, and already receives 10% of global PropTech investment. Out of the 700-plus prop tech companies in the UK, we’ve picked out the 10 that are most likely to re-program property in 2020.

Coadjute

It is more impressive to quote what Coadjute does than what it is. Quite simply, it uses technology styled on blockchain to plat different sectors of the housebuilding industry together, condensing lengthy processes into an instant result. It recently bagged headlines for making it possible to complete the entire homebuying process via an app. It has also teamed with housing associations to improve safety, quality and accountability by harmonising the build process of housing projects.

So, what is it? A platform for decentralised workflow and data sharing within the property industry. A bit of a mouthful, but it will probably sound a lot more familiar by this time next year.

Qflow

With the UK government on a mission to snuff out emissions from the built environment, you’ll probably be hearing a lot more about Qflow next year. Qflow uses on-site data to help the construction industry be greener and more efficient, driving down costs and minimising the environmental impact of building new homes.

Given that its co-founder, Brittany Harris, was handpicked by Housing Minister Esther McVey for a new expert advisory council dedicated to the digital transformation of the property sector, Qflow is likely to hold some sway over how prop tech develops in the near future.

HomeViews

Where doors are closed, it seems prop tech entrepreneurs are opening windows. HomeViews, dubbed the TripAdvisor for property, officially launched earlier this year to give potential residents an idea of what it is really like to live in a building. The platform invites tenants and owners to write honest reviews of residential developments, creating a new and powerful research and marketing tool in the residential property sector.

HomeViews began its nationwide rollout in September and now boasts over 9000 reviews for 900 developments across the UK. It seems when you give residents a voice, the results speak for themselves.

Love to Rent

Anne-Marie Brown spotted an issue in the market when clients expressed their frustration at the lack of a search facility for the BTR industry. In October, she launched lovetorent.co.uk, which exclusively lists BTR properties. Lovetorent will also bank data to identify the specific features that BTR customers value most, so better schemes can be built in future.

Brikcoin

In June, a startup showed the world how blockchain can be a force for good by increasing home ownership, one brick at a time. BRIKCOIN is an asset-backed token purposed to solve the UK’s housing crisis. Powered by blockchain technology, BRIKCOIN aims to build, acquire or redevelop property to create 100% affordable housing – and you don’t need deep pockets to be a part of it, as BRIKCOIN tokens cost a fraction of traditional property investment.

While crypto currencies have amassed something of an unsavory reputation, the concept of BRIKCOIN shows that by prizing power out of the hands of regulators, blockchain can be used for a greater good.

Give-My-View

When Savannah de Savary, Founder and CEO of Built-ID, was asked how technology can help solve the conundrum of community engagement, she was inspired to create Give-My-View, a tool which makes it easy for locals to express their views on planning decisions. Alongside interactive timelines and digestible facts about the development, people can vote on key questions and decisions for the schemes. Their input translates into easily collatable data which will shape the resulting planning proposal.

As feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with heavyweights including Grosvenor, First Base, Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea Council, City of London Corporation, Redrow and Barking Riverside Limited among the first to sign up, Savannah is only just beginning to harness the power of her invention.

Yourkeys

Yourkeys shook the property headlines in 2017 when it launched a platform that lets buyers purchase their new homes online, from start to finish, from anywhere in the world. They have already transformed the antiquated process that has been in place for decades by providing control, oversight and transparency at all 64 stages of the buying journey. Now, they’ve launched ‘Reservation Engine’ for 2020, which completes all of the due-diligence, forms and checks needed for a house purchase in minutes, meaning buyers will be unpacking in their new home before you can say ‘moving day’.

Yourkeys are showing the world that buying a property will one day be as easy as one-click ordering on Amazon.

Aprao

Earlier this year, a London-based start-up bent on transforming how housebuilders appraise development opportunities secured investment of £500,000 from heavy-weight property, technology and business experts. Aprao is the first cloud-based tool for running property development appraisals and feasibility reports from anywhere, on any device. A detailed development appraisal and feasibility report currently takes one to two hours to put together. With Aprao, it takes five to 10 minutes.

Running the numbers on a property development project is currently far more painstaking and onerous than it needs to be. In 2020, Aprao could bring the world of property development appraisals into the modern era at long last.

Proportunity

London-based fintech company Proportunity recently raised a £2m seed investment to grow its analytics and lending platform, which uses AI to crunch data and offer home equity loans to first-time buyers. The startup claims to be the only “Help to Buy” challenger to date that has actually helped consumers own homes. With the Help to Buy scheme facing demolition in 2023, Proportunity is likely to generate more headlines in the coming months.

Houzen

Houzen launched two years ago to instantly match tenants with landlords, using an algorithm to find premium tenants fast. Its founder, Saurabh Saxena, wanted to build something similar to a stock exchange, where supply and demand are uploaded and deals close quickly. An institutional landlord can use the platform to rent properties in real time – in the same way that flights are sold, so no revenue is lost to empty spaces.

Having amassed powerful data on what premium tenants are prepared to pay for, Houzen Data Labs is now ready to be launched, so all the data that’s bottled in searches can be used by BTR developers to create better spaces.

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