Property Tech Company Raises A Further £8 million of Venture Capital

It has been reported that the founder of GoCardless (the direct debit service used by many landlords and letting agents) has raised a further £8 million to fund his latest property tech business. I have taken a quick look at the website and it appears to be a property based hybrid of WeBuyAnyCar and a traditional estate agency.

Passion Capital have led the latest funding round, with participation from Rocket Internet’s venture arm GFC, bringing total funding to-date to £11 million. Both VCs are existing backers of the company, whilst Passion invested in Nested co-founder Matt Robinson’s previous startup GoCardless.

I have to admit to being a bit skeptical. That’s what three decades of being a landlord does to you! LOL 

In the “About Us” section of the website the process is described as follows:-

Get an Online Valuation

Enter your address and get a valuation within seconds. Tailor your valuation to take account of all the important details we can’t know about your property without visiting.

Request an Offer

Spend a few minutes giving details of the property condition and ownership. One of our experts will review the valuation and send you our guaranteed sale price within 24 hours.

We inspect your property

Offers are subject to a property inspection by one of our experts. This can be scheduled at your convenience and we will let you know the result within 24 hours.

Review our offer

Feel free to compare our offer to valuations from other agents. With us you will receive at least the guarantee price and funds are available as soon as you need them. You will also get 70% of anything we sell for above the guarantee.

Fast track the sales process

We kick off checks and searches on day one instead of waiting to find a buyer. This means we can highlight and solve potential problems earlier. We also carefully vet all buyers up-front to eliminate time-wasters.

Cash when you need it

We give you the cash as soon as you need it – if the property is not sold yet we’ll advance it to you ourselves. We secure this against the property we’re selling, by replacing any existing mortgage and paying you the surplus.

Why I’m skeptical

How can the offer at stage two be “guaranteed” if it is subject to an inspection? To me, it seems like this part of the process could just be a slick way to get a foot in the door with a view to renegotiating a different deal.

Could this be the first of many well funded property tech companies planning to prey on cash starved individual landlords who will hit cashflow problems as a result of failing to plan for the restrictions on finance cost relief?

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