Proptech Weekly #56 — What does an innovative agency look like?
FEBRUARY 08, 2017 | Rayhan Rafiq-Omar
Base property — located in London’s trendy Shoreditch — punches above its weight by using quality of service, training and technology. We spoke with MD Krjstan Byfield who set up the business with An Deckers in 2004.
Friends, Feudal Landlords, Commoners
We often hear of companies like Purplebricks and Openrent lowering fees for people to sell and let their homes — using technology to make marketing property scale, these companies offer a different option to property owning consumers.
But many ‘in the industry’ contend that property is being under-sold when there isn’t an agent with a local presence to leverage their ‘book of buyers’ to competitively get the best price.
While the jury is out on whether online/hybrid agents are saving or losing people money when selling their homes — their is no conclusive data on asking price achieved vs other similar properties — there is one thing that has constantly bugged me:
If traditional agents have such a strong proposition, where are the TV adverts and championing of better service?
If all agents do is market, show and issue contracts why wouldn’t a Landlord pay the cheapest to achieve this solution- or at least focus on value for this?
One agent answered my call. Step up Kristjan Byfeld of Base Property Specialists in London.
To counter my contention that ‘full service’ agents bemoan the growing popularity of the online agents whilst taking no steps to truly differentiate themselves, Base aims to deliver a genuine full-service model.
“We have been actively innovating since around 2011 to try and understand the friction points that come within the lettings arena and what we can do as agents to address these issues and deliver a truly ‘full service’ offering,” says Byfield.
In 2012 they rolled out a ‘property life skills for Tenants’ training programme — Byfield contends that you cannot expect tenants to treat a property well if they haven’t been shown how.
It sounds simple that if you invest in people you get a return in the form of lower costs and better behaviour. But to the best of my knowledge they are still the only agent offering these in the whole of the UK.
This ‘property life skills for Tenants’ service is called MainTenants and more information can be found here: http://www.baseps.co.uk/services/maintenants/
They supplement this training with online guides for when appliances go wrong: http://www.baseps.co.uk/landlords/base-ic-appliances-emergency-appliances-for-managed-properties/
Byfield says, “I am an advocate of seeing our industry evolve delivering a worthy service and genuinely raising the perception of our industry. As such, when launching both of these services, we actively tried to encourage other agents to adopt them — we even offered to supply MainTenants ‘certificates’ branded & coloured for agents for around £75 (one off). I would still be keen to see agents do so (with both offerings) the only caveat now is that our info page would detail that we are the ‘lead innovator’ in these services but we would also detail any and all agents taking this up and offering.”
Videos of both these services can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaJFYyweBMCYQ3SPs0gK8cQ
The innovation does end there: Byfield has also been working with Property Software Group/Zoopla on the myTenantFile product and will soon be releasing a deposit compliance service called The Depositary.
In an age where there is a clear vaccuum of leadership, it’s refreshing to see people stick their neck out to improve the world around them. Well done Base Property Specialists.
