Where Fintech meets real estate

Despite my relentlessly advancing years, it has been a good month on the whole. I have been to California, Cornwall and the Lake District. It was a bit of a shame when, up a big hill in the lakes, my son spoiled my mood somewhat as I was struggling up a steep rockfall by asking whether I had arranged Power of Attorney yet — of which more later — but it has been good to be away from the office, wonderful though it is to be back in the growing London commuter crowds.

It was unequivocally great to be at the NAR (National Association of Realtors) iOi (innovation, opportunity, investment) pitch battle in Los Angeles in September. 12 companies fought it out to impress a panel of judges and the crowd, and some of them certainly did.

Given the ultimate sponsor, it was no surprise that there was a heavy residential bias and predictably (but for reasons which are not yet clear to me) a lot of -ifys like Inspectify and -lys like Residently. As we used to say, answers on a postcard please.

This is the cutting edge of Fintech innovation meeting the real estate market. I have to say, however, that the more esoteric or narrow of these (including an app for real estate brokers to work out how much commission they are due and what tax they should set aside, and another which delivers coaching for brokers) won’t be seeing any dollars from me.

It’s also a place where construction or architecture tech bumps into Fintech. We saw a floor planning optimisation app and a site search app for developers, and a residential renovation app which helps homeowners to make money by doing up their homes in an efficient data-determined way (the pitch battle winner). We heard about a startup which helps buyers to commission house inspections (or surveys as I would call them) and to standardise these services.

But back to the Fintechs, and the likely (or already) winners. Given the increasing challenges of accumulating enough equity capital to buy a home (prior to a 2023 crash?) we heard about yet another resi leasing app for landlords but (more interesting perhaps) a resi renting app for tenants and (most interesting of all, and the crowd’s favourite) ) an app which helps tenants to accumulate savings by (amongst other schemes) paying a commission for early rent payment and good maintenance.

Then the potential unicorns, a couple of which seemed to be halfway there already. There have been so many property fractionalisation/tokenisation platforms appearing that I have fractionalisation fatigue, but one appeared here with a $100m valuation at its latest raise and a neat approach using groups of college pals and others as the ‘curated communities’ that will club together to buy residential assets and other property types later, no doubt. We saw a successful fractionalised holiday home platform (if you have a spare $1m you can buy a one-eighth share of an $8m dollar home in London, but don’t expect to rent it out).

And then a truly brilliant idea for oldies — a data storage app that lists all of your assets and what you want done with them when you become past it. That one’s for me.

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