A company owned and run by the former CEO of Rummage4Property has launched with the intention to build “a complete picture of the property market; one which includes an online profile for all of the UK’s 28 million homes.”
Anthony Codling, a former housing market analyst and fierce critic of Purplebricks, who is now CEO of Twindig, said;
“We are launching at a time of unprecedented uncertainty because we believe that the value of our homes is measured by our experiences of the space in which we live, not by price alone.
“The economic and social pressures brought about by Covid-19 will ask people to think longer and differently about where and in what space they are going to live and work.
“Recognising this, Twindig offers everyone the chance to really know the home they want to buy and to whom they are selling before embarking on a process whose historic objective was price and not value.
“There’s so much potential in our properties and helping you realise this potential is what Twindig is all about.”
The Twindig release says:
The last 100 days have shown how important these homes really are to us. They are not just a store of value to be traded in a market. They have become schools, offices, dance halls and impromptu recording studios.
When we go back to “normal” will we see our homes for what they are really worth? If we are to value rather than simply price our homes, we need to take back control.
Working with you over the coming months, Twindig will support this control by providing practical tools, insights and advice to help you make the right decisions.
Homeowners, landlords and renters will be able to:
Claim their property on Twindig
Manage their high-level property information
Store all their property documents in one safe place
Set alerts for important property related jobs like boilers services and fire alarm tests.
Estate Agents will be able to
Connect to every property they have let or sold, or are currently letting or selling
Get to know potential customers who are thinking of buying or selling
Get insights and intelligence, helping their customers buy and sell with confidence.
Reduce administration and improve communication.
House builders will be able to:
Build their brand by highlighting the homes they have built and sold
Highlight the features and advantages of newly built homes.
Smooth the sales cycle and manage “moving day” by making documents available to customers in a secure vault.
The company says:
“We can create a data-rich community of homes which provides information, insight and intelligence for all of us and not just a select few and a place to start the journey towards your next home by entering a much richer, deeper and immersive experience than we have seen before.
EYE asked Codling to provide further information in respect of data protection issues and what charges would be made to agents.
We received the following response:
Data protection
As you can imagine this is an issue we take very seriously.
The basic property profile or twindig starts life containing information about the property that is in the public domain.
When a home is claimed by the owner they confirm that they own or rent the property and per our T&Cs we are able to ask them to verify their status in order to remain connected with the property.
Once claimed the owner of the profile is able to add as much or as little information about the home as they wish.
Our market research found that owners would be keen to add more information if they thought it would increase the saleability of their home.
Think of your twindig as similar to your Linkedin profile if you are looking for a job you probably have a fuller profile than if you are not.
I would also suggest displaying information about yourself online is more sensitive than displaying information about your property
Homeowners were also keen to have a place to securely store their home related documents on-line.
Only the signed in user has access to the documents stored and they can add or remove documents at any time.
At the moment there is no public view – i.e. if you claim your twindig and add information – only you will be able to see it.
Reminders calendar
The provision of a reminders calendar scored very well in our market research for instance setting reminders for insurance, utilities, gas safety certificates etc. These reminders are private to the user.
Agents connecting to properties
Every agent knows that boards breed boards sold and let boards are an important part of any estate agents CV.
If an agent has sold or let a home we believe they should be able to let people know.
How the system works is as follows:
Unclaimed home:
If an agent can verify to us that they sold a home that has yet to be claimed they can connect to it i.e. advertise the fact they sold the home and have a link from the twindig to their website and display their contact details on the property.
We would also hope that the agent would use the opportunity (if they had the necessary permissions in place) to contact the person they sold the home to in order to tell them about their property profile on twindig.
Claimed home:
If an agent can verify to us that they sold a home we would ask the owner to confirm the agent’s claim and if they did the agent can link to the twindig.
However the owner has full control of the non-public domain data displayed on their twindig.
If they are currently selling or letting them home they can of course have a link to their own advert on their website and if the owner agrees add information to the twindig.
Charges to agents
Should an agent choose to advertise on twindig.com, it is free to for the remainder of 2020.
Our price promise is that we will link fees to the level Land Registry House Price Index at the start of 2021.
Our prices will move annually in line with the index, so if house prices fall so will our fees i.e. if the Land Registry House Price index falls 15% in 2021, our fees for 2022 will be 15% lower than they were in 2021.
To keep our fees low, much like the way broadband providers pass on the cost of the BT line rental we will pass on the costs that an agent’s CRM provider charges us to supply the agents data to us.
So in conclusion
Our offering is probably more similar to LinkedIn for houses than it is to a property portal
Codling was Executive Director at JP Morgan Cazenove from 2005 to 2010; a partner at Oriel Securities from 2010 to 2012; managing director of Jefferies from 2012 to 2018; CEO of Rummage4Property from December 2018 to November 2019.
High profile CEO recruited from City to head up Rummage4Property reveals departure
Comments (14)
Who knew?
Our Industry …..we need?? all this data/tech to do our jobs ….and the public need?? all this info
or….. are we simply seen as a “dripping roast” to be feasted on?
Welcome Scotland back to the UK Property Market! …..we exploded back into life yesterday. 14 hour day, and everywhere I looked, the most useful thing we had? …..who knew? Human Beings! Experienced Bona Fida Estate Agents.
Amazing! We came from Caves all those thousands of years ago and we are still indispensable when it comes to selling homes properly.
Celebrate “The NEW Technology” – Human Beings!
Back to pandemonium:-)
That’s a bit scary tech? …..a double post hours apart?
Must be the BoogeyTechMan …..I never re-posted it tonight?
The basic property profile or twindig starts life containing information about the property that is in the public domain.
That nails twindig into a coffin as far as agents are concerned. As to the rest of the goings on …. where does one start with all the pitfalls and data protection & security.
Interesting to see how this pans out as I laid claim to a property which I have no connection to! Does this mean that the genunie owner can now not lay claim to the property that I have ‘claimed’? Just wonder what controls are in place to protect a genuine owner? Does this then create the conditions for potential property and/or mortgage fraud, laying claim to someone else’s home? I read on social media today that some people have been claiming Buckinghan Palace as their home. Not sure I like the idea of someone contacting me asking me to sell my home to them…have they been stalking me!
Love how at the foot of this ‘promotion’ there’s a great big Sprift advertising banner.
Who knew?
Our Industry …..we need?? all this data/tech to do our jobs ….and the public need?? all this info
or….. are we simply seen as a “dripping roast” to be feasted upon?
Welcome Scotland back to the UK Property Market! …..we exploded back into life yesterday. 14 hour day, and everywhere I looked, the most useful thing we had? …..who knew? Human Beings! Experienced Bona Fide Estate Agents. Amazing!
We came from Caves all those thousands of years ago and we are still indispensable when it comes to selling homes properly.
Celebrate “The NEW Technology” – Human Beings!
Back to pandemonium:-)
Welcome back, GPL!!
May the Scottish market be good to you!
Hoots Mon 🙂
Sprift and Homesearch already have this down. Two digs codling needs to go away and invent something else that already exists.
There seems to be a lot of focus at the moment from proptech companies on collating data on uk properties generally ….building ‘pictures’ of the properties that already exist in ways that we havent seen before as the Govt release more datasets into the public domain.
Does this overlap with what Homesearch are currently doing?
I know theyre developing the portal side but I havent really looked at the wider picture.
Homesearch could add a ‘digital vault’ feature to their offering and stop this business in its tracks.
FAC
So just to round up , I pay the costs to supply you rich information on what I have sold and you incorporate that into a dataset where you capture anniversary dates for say Landlords on boiler checks and then compete against me by flogging these leads to tradesmen in my local area… on top of that Im also able to contact the landlord to point them toward your business on your behalf….its a no brainer . How many agents did you interview when you carried out your market research ?
An interesting initiative I think. Good luck to Anthony and the team. I will watch with interest.