estatecreate blog

If there’s one proptech company that we can see changing our industry in the next few years, it’s recent PiLabs investees Land Insight. We were lucky enough to get an hour of founder and CEO Johnny Britton’s time and chat about startup life, accusations that they’re taking away competitive advantage and how he plans to solve the housing crisis. Keep an eye on these guys. They might just change everything. 

For those that don’t know, can you give a quick overview of Land Insight, what it is and what it does?

Land Insight is a web app that helps property developers and agents find and assess off-market development land. It brings together the core data sets and maps that are needed to spot new opportunities and make viability assessments, as well as a providing a number of tools to speed up your workflow.

So what are the benefits for property developers?

Our angle on things is that we provide all the data and you can access that as much as you like. Because we don’t charge for data, we can do additional things with it, such as visualise it, cross-reference it and filter out parameters so you only see things that are interesting to you. This means you can locate sites that fit your requirements faster than ever.

So say you are a developer for example and you need to locate big development sites, you can filter straight through to find larger sites that are relevant to you.

Exactly. Your particular model might be add value to failed planning applications, so you could therefore specify that you’re looking for a site of 30,000 ft.² that has been used for office space and had failed planning applications on them. Our data can be used to streamline the process of easily locating these sites so you don’t have to go walking the streets or spend time making a lot of calls trying to put it together one way or another. Overall it’s a huge efficiency saving.

Where did the idea for Land Insight come from?

My co-founder had an interest in self-building. He tried to find a website to help him locate land and there were none of any use. Following this experience he started thinking about how he could help other people find land. My background is in town planning. I was putting in an application for 100 new homes and I was being charged out at quite a lot of money. I knew that someone down the chain was making very good money but had no idea where they were getting their land from. It seemed like a murky world and we knew there was no good data out there. After leaving town planning to become a software entrepreneur with some nice ventures under my belt, I happened to be at the right time at the right place to be introduced to my cofounder, Andrew.

We didn’t know exactly what software we were going to build at first but we just knew that there was a problem with the market. There’s a housing crisis, lots of houses need to be built and all the property developers are saying that they can’t find land. We felt this problem needed to be solved.

We used the Silicon Valley methodology of the lean start-up and it worked. We spoke to the industry to test the validity of products and ideas in the market, pitching ideas to developers and asking whether they’d buy them. We waited until their response was positive and they were really interested in buying what we had before we went off and built it.

So why do you think this problem hadn’t been solved by technology previously? 

I don’t think that it would’ve been possible to do it before now. For example the dataset we use to provide free ownership information has only recently been made available by Land Registry. And Ordnance Survey data can only now be used in more innovative ways. The U.K. is currently experiencing a severe housing crisis and so the political will is there more than ever to support startups. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, we’ve got fast, cheap access to big servers where we can process millions of different data points and serve them up through mobile phones and devices – that’s not been possible before. It was a case of right place, right time, really.

I’ve seen on your literature that 9 out of 10 people looking to self-build cant find the land. So Land Insight is obviously going to be of huge value to them. But what about people involved in selling commercial property – the surveyors and agents? What are the major benefits for them?

We save them huge amounts of time. For a start, if it’s a larger site, they save money using us as we bulk purchase Land Registry ownership details, so we can provide them for free to our users – helping them show the context of where a site is sitting. With the addition of planning applications, they can predict how the area will develop, And then we’ve got all the other data sets like the commercial valuations, height data, whether there’s a flood risk, if it’s a listed building etc. So there’s a real streamlining effect.

There’s another good statistic that I hear all the time – when trying to find a new site for yourself or a client, only 1 in 100 letters that get sent have any response. So you don’t want to be assessing 100 sites at 3 hours a site. That would take weeks. But if you can get rule out many sites and contact only high quality sites in 15 minutes, and use our workflow tools to easily start making contact with landowners. Surveyors can suddenly be much more proactive in finding sites.

People must have been biting your hand off when you released the first beta?

We’ve had over 600 signups but it came with a bit of hesitation as well. One thing I hear all the time is that people say we’re giving away their competitive edge. But the thing is, the data is becoming available and it’s not going away – digital data is here to stay and we have just seen the opportunity.

Ultimately, people will still have their contacts and their local knowledge, and we can’t write a data set for local knowledge. That’s why we want to work with firms and empower them to do their job better, rather than attempt to find a new way of doing what they do using technology.

It seems like integration with proptech, rather than full-scale disruption is going to be the path for the property industry. 

Yes, for the short term certainly. In the longer term, I think the web will get everywhere and new opportunities will arise built on the changing behaviour patterns the first wave of innovation creates. I don’t think that the industry can ignore the proptech movement. Forward thinking firms should take advantage of new technology and get in the mindset of early adoption – try lots of new things, discard when they don’t work or there is a new system to gain an advantage from, in the same way consumers do. I can’t predict what’s going to happen, but I do think it’s an interesting area. Having said that, clearly the whole planning system could be reconfigured and make huge efficiencies for the market.

Back to Land Insight in particular – what’s feedback been like so far? And what have been the big learnings? 

Well, when we first opened up beta there were a lot of companies that jumped on board. We started getting all this feedback coming in from all angles – people seeing the potential of the product and pointing us in the direction of all these different unrelated opportunities. This was a really interesting time because having all these options forced us to find ways to filter through them. We did this by working out what we are as a company and what we wanted to achieve, which was really important.
Following the lean start-up method of releasing updates early and getting all this feedback has been really helpful too, because now we know that property developers and agents are finding the best value from the product – they use the data the most and can save the most time and money. But it also helped us to learn that if we add a few features down the line we can also open to other sections of the market. Architects for example, will really benefit from one or two of our developments.

What are the data sets that are most valuable to people?

Planning applications and land ownership data – we provide free access to a non-private ownership and the way that we can do things with that data is completely new, we can innovate on top of that.

At different times variables like height data – how high surrounding property is – have proved really useful as well.

What other data sets are you planning to bring in? 

We’ve had people ask us for a few different sets and we do have plans to add more, but currently we’re more interested in how we can extract the best value from the data sets we’ve already spent huge resources in amassing and believe have massive value through data visualisation, cross referencing and ensuring everyone has the most readily available version of the parameters that most interests their model.

Will you expand into other countries? Europe or even The States? 

That’s a really interesting question. We’re very focused on the UK at the moment and a lot of our stuff is about quality of data. So if a country has good mapping or land registry potentially we could go there. But the way I see it, we’ve developed some interesting technology around geography and time and space and that’s more scalable than us doing the work of the getting the data. So potentially we could expand into other countries but for the moment we’re very focused on here.

One review on Land Insight I read said that ‘every person in the property industry will have to build their databases, products and dashboards on top of [your] tech’.  Is that true?

Hmmm… that’s a nice prediction. We do find that with the larger companies we work with they usually want an integration piece, as they have years of intelligence built up.

Sorry, tough question! The suffix to that one is where do you see Land Insight going in the next few years? 

We’re very mission driven. We started the company because we saw problems with finding land. We’ll know we’ve achieved our goals if we can see that we’ve made a real contribution to more people finding sites to build on. That’ll be one of our KPIs. But it’s not a social project – our view is that if we create value for the world we’ll create a valuable company and we intend to keep on attracting the investment we need to make a real impact. We’ve seen so many opportunities for other people to use our data – from retail to industrial sectors. But that’s kind of obvious stuff – there are a lot of interesting opportunities we can see too.

Are you able to elaborate on this…?

We want data not to be a commodity but a starting point. So it’s not like you go to some platforms where you use a map and then buy some data – we give you everything and then it’s about what it can do for you. We want to get ourselves away from saying this is the use of the product and get to a point where users can ask a range of questions and find what they need. That’s more how I see us developing.

What kind of questions?

Say, if you want to find a low density site capable of 1-20 homes in North Hackney then it’s easy to find a bunch of sites. Or if you want to find all planning applications for student accommodation in every major city in the UK in the last 5 years that are close to a supermarket. That would be another question. This is already close within but the finesse and accuracy is improving all the time.

And finally, what message would you like to send out to any interested people reading this? 

A lot of people think we’re still in BETA but we’re out there now and have happy customers. And that it so happens we’ve got a special offer on at the moment – haha!

What’s the best way to keep up with your news? 

Follow us on Twitter – @getlandinsight. On our website – LandInsight.io we’ve got a signup form that people can access to get our newsletter. We’ve got a blog as well which we put all our latest news on.

Virtual viewings, imaginary cities and interior mapping. Virtual Reality is here and it’s going to change the way we sell property. Irish Estate Agents Sherry Fitzgerald have already invested in VR headsets to offer their clients virtual walkthroughs, and it’s not unfeasible to imagine this becoming an integral part of the sales process in the next five years. For surveyors, the possibilities to showcase property to international clients, or to create visualisations of potential developments sites are tantalising.

We’ve put together a look at the frontrunners in the VR Wars. It’s a mind-boggling showcase of what’s already possible.

Project Tango

Google are mapping our interior world. With just a tablet.

Studio 216

This Seattle based company are using Occulus Rift to showcase unbuilt property. Potential buyers don’t just have the opportunity to see the building as it will look. They can offer feedback to make it even better.

Cityscape Digital

Visualising Cityscapes before they are built. The Battersea Power Station visualisation allowed surveyors to showcase the site to potential buyers long before completion.

For a quick view on how VR might have an effect on digital marketing, see this infographic by the ever-prolific James Dearsley. 

It’s no secret by now that Proptech is tipped to be the next big digital market. Last year, over $1.4 billion was invested in prop tech globally and investors’ enthusiasm is showing no sign of relenting. With the success of Pilabs, Europes’s first accelerator programme for property technology, and the 10 companies it has invested in to date, we can expect to see a lot more activity in this space in the near future.

To date, the majority of proptech developments have been focused on real estate, with start-ups like FixFlo, who help renters manage repairs, and Landbay, a peer to peer mortgage lender, securing major investment from Zoopla.

But commercial surveyors should expect to see more and more tech entering their sphere in the near future. Juliette Morgan from Cushman and Wakefield is under no doubt that change is afoot, saying in a recent panel discussion that “surveyors should look around see what parts of their industry can be automated, then expect them to be”.

This may sounds like a portentous prediction bearing in mind the disruption that digital technologies such as Uber and Air B&B have caused in the transport and tourism sectors respectively, but most analysts are predicting a gentler kind of invasion.

One reason is simply down to timing – because property has the advantage of foresight, surveyors and agents can see this digital wave coming and adjust. But more importantly, in a field where margins are often so small, the human element will remain as important as ever. The proptech start-ups that focus on integration, rather than full scale disruption, will be the ones most likely to succeed, especially in the commercial and development world.

Surveyors and agents therefore, should not be resistant to technology but look around to see which new digital tools will best serve them – which software will make their jobs easier and their workflow faster.
In our recent interview with Johnny Britton from Land Insight, he talks of how his software can reduce the time taken to compile information on a piece of land from 3 hours to just 15 minutes. This is how we see proptech going for the world of commercial surveyors – doing what John Maynard Keynes predicted all those years ago and making our work lives that little bit easier.

A belated Happy New Year.

We asked our panel of property investors which of our sites they rated most highly from 2012. estatecreate created over 500 sites last year, these are the ones that stood out:

1. Savills marketing a  hotel in Dublin:
www.savills.com/theriverlee

2. BNP Paribas marketing an Investment and Development opportunity
www.trentriverpark.com

3. HTM O’Reilly marketing an office Investment in Dublin:
www.3burlingtonroad.com

estatecreate has introduced the ability to encrypt PDFs when they are added to a site. This allows you to:

• Give automatic access to people you select;
• Revoke reader access at your discretion;
• Prevent readers passing unlocked documents to unauthorised individuals;
• Stop readers distributing hard copies by watermarking the document with your logo and the reader’s email address.

Encrypting PDFs gives you improved tracking

Encrypted PDFs allow you to track:

• Opens – number of times a document is opened;
• Duration – how long readers keep a document opened;
• Page Views – which pages readers view;
• Page Duration – how long readers spend on each page.

We often get enquiries from clients asking us if we have an investor database that they can target in conjunction with our property data rooms. We had a think about who would be an ideal partner and came up with Property Week.

Property Week is part of UBM Built Environment, so as well as subscriber data they have access to data on delegates from all the events they run such as RESI, SLEEP and many others. You can see a full list here.

As well as access to their database, estatecreate customers can get preferential rates on advertising in Property Week. Please get in touch for more details.

It was with much trepidation that I set off for Celtic Manor last Thursday. estatecreate was one of four companies invited to pitch at RESI’s Next Big Thing.

The format was part Dragons’ Den, part conference. We were given a 4 minute slot to pitch to the audience of 1,000 delegates, followed by a grilling by the Dragons. I am not sure whether my nerves were down to the audience of 1,000 or the Dragon line up of:

• Bruce Ritchie, chief executive officer and founder, Residential Land
• Nick Candy, chief executive officer, Candy & Candy
• John Hitchcox, chair, Yoo
• Harry Handelsman, chief executive officer, Manhattan Loft Corporation

As with all these type of things, the nerves were worse than the reality and it was a lot of fun. The audience voted by text and the Dragons made the final decision – estatecreate is now officially RESI’s Next Big Thing.

Most of our clients use email as one of their main channels for marketing our website and data rooms. Here are five key things to get right when launching a campaign:

1. When to send
The number of people opening an email varies enormously depending on the time of day and day of the week.

estatecreate tip: In our experience, Tuesday mornings are your best bet.

2. Manage data
Your email campaign is only going to be as good as your email list. Constantly collect data, clean your list and update email addresses.

estatecreate tip: We can automatically update your database with new contacts that register with your data room.

3. Get in the Inbox
Spam filters can seriously damage your email campaign. Make sure you are using an email marketing tool. Good ones stay on whitelists and off blacklists.

estatecreate tip: We can help set you up with Mailchimp. It is very easy to use, integrates with estatecreate and is free for less than 1,500 addresses.

4. On the move
We find that around 30% of people are on the move when they pick up their email. Make sure they can read what you are sending them on their phone otherwise by the time they get back to the office they may have forgotten about you.

estatecreate tip: Use our mobile friendly sites

5. Measure

Last but not least, you want to know who is interested so that you can follow up.

estatecreate tip: We can give you a single view of who is opening your emails, when they are logging into your data room and what documents they are downloading.

I hope you found that useful. Please leave feedback in the comments.

QR codes, or Quick Response Codes are defined as a “two dimensional matrix barcode consisting of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background.” You will undoubtedly have come across them either in display advertising or shop windows.

They were originally developed by a subsidiary of Toyota to allow for the tracking of vehicles during the assembly process as the codes can be read at very high speed. Their use is  free of any licence and there are numerous site on the web that provide QR code generators for free, and free QR readers are available to download for most smartphones (see below for links).

They have become increasingly popular in marketing circles as the scanning of a code by a QR enabled smartphone can quickly direct the user to a website, a video, or can even initiate an email or telephone call. The “quick response” saves all the hassle of having to punch in a lengthy URL into your browser, or an address into your email client and allows a print advertiser to get more bangs for their bucks if they can entice the reader into their website or video stream.

They have become widely adopted in the US for the residential market and it is very common to see a sign with a QR code stuck on a lawn outside a property for sale. In the UK the internet chatter amongst residential Estate Agents suggests that they are being enthusiastically embraced and the UK’s leading residential portal Rightmove are now offering QR codes to all their members.

One problem is that as each QR code is unique, a unique sign board has to be created for external marketing. This can be overcome by creating stickers to attach to your existing boards however this being the UK, and with our weather system, there have been complaints that such stickers don’t often stay on the boards for long. Strutt & Parker claim to have nailed this particular problem using sign boards that also have a NFC (near field communication) chip embedded in them.

Looking to overcome this issue is Tag Street, an innovative company who provide a small sign or ”smartboard” that can be tacked on to an Agent’s pole and they only charge on a pay-per-view basis.

It therefore seems that the UK will be following the US in adopting QR codes for residential property but it remains to be seen whether there will be the same enthusiasm for commercial. However given that smartphone adoption is likely to exceed 50% of all mobile phone users in the UK by the end of 2012, and that QR codes are free and an open standard, there is a marketing opportunity here for those who think creatively.

Sources for QR Code generators: Qurify| QR Stuff| OnlineQRlab

QR readers for smartphones: Android| Blackberry| i-phone