Property118 Portal

Idea

Introduction

A property portal for buy-to-let landlords and their agents.

Have you ever come across a tenant who is happy to be served notice because their landlord wanted to sell? What if they don't have to leave?

Consider how much money buyers and sellers of tenanted property could save in terms of rental voids and agents fees as a result of buying and selling with reliable tenants in situ.

Buyers search the property portal by postcode or town and simultaneously set up email alerts so they are notified when a property matching their purchasing criteria is listed.
Basic advertisements are FREE for both landlords and agents to create.

Premium listings feature at the top of search results.

Sponsorship of a featured property Newsletter is available to agents and developers on an ex-gratia, meritocratic basis, i.e. sponsors who make the largest payment per enquiry receive preferential placement of advertisements.

Intended impact

When private landlords consider selling a Buy-to-Let property via conventional means they are immediately faced with a list of dilemmas:

1. Will our tenant(s) cooperate with viewings?
2. Will our tenant(s) move out and leave us with a rental void and negative cashflow?
3. If the property is unoccupied what will happen to insurance cover?

When a Buy-to-Let property is listed for sale on the portal we share tried and tested tips to make certain that the process of selling runs as smoothly and profitably as possible. We also share tips for due diligence with prospective buyers.

It takes just minutes for users to upload key data to create an advertisement for a property for sale. The advertisement is then auto-enhanced using algorithms that curate data from trusted providers to provide analysis on risks and returns using key demographics based on postcode.

Substantial accomplishments to date

The new portal became operational in April 2015. Why not try a search in your town or city?

Property118 is a Google News feed. Most people in the PR and Media sector are likely to recognise the level of commitment and professionalism required to achieve Google News Publisher status. This provides enhanced SEO benefits hence high levels of visitor traffic via search engines.

Two of the Directors (Mark Alexander & Michael Woodfine) co-founded a commercial finance brokerage in 1990 which ranked #38 in The Sunday Times Profit Track 100 by 2008.

Mark Alexander is also a non-exec Director in LettingSupermarket.com Limited which completed a £250k fund raise earlier this year within 7 days.

Monetisation strategy

There are four sources of income as follows:

1) Premium upgrades to advertisements at a cost of £11.80 per week per advert. The benefit of upgrading is that adverts rank above free listings in search results.

2) Reveals – In order to minimise the occurrence of nuisance calls to advertisers we charge £1.18 to display contact details of vendors, developers and agents to prospective buyers.

3) Auction House Referral commission – We cross promote the online conditional auction model (operated by Auction House UK franchisees) to vendors and receive income from Auction House UK for successful referrals.

4) Newsletter Sponsorship – The Newsletter will be sent to the database of enquirers who have previously expressed an interest in a property advertised on the portal.

Use of proceeds

One rule of thumb used within the TV advertising fraternity is that it costs circa £5 to reach 1,000 viewers watching live TV. This is why it is more expensive to advertise in the intervals in Coronation Street than at 4am on a more obscure channel. Nevertheless, the same rule of thumb applies to all channels, i.e. smaller channels receive less advertising revenue.

We plan to appoint a specialist agency to optimise returns, which will include monitoring the advertising patterns of established brands pitching at the same audience, e.g. Direct Line Landlords Insurance and British Gas Landlord packages.