After an extended gestation period, challenger portal OpenBrix says it will go live in September and is now open to receiving expressions of interest from agents.
The team behind the venture includes:
CEO, Adam Pigott. 30 years in property. Founded CHK Mountford Letting Agents in 1989. Sold to Countrywide PLC in 2014. Investor in MakeUrMove; CreditLadder and others.
Chief Innovation & Ops Officer, Shahad Choudhury. 15 years in digital project delivery at JP Morgan and the World Bank. Advisor to HM Government on Blockchain and AI. UCL GovTech Workshop Member.
Chief Commercial Officer, Andrew Taylor. 15 years direct sales and lettings experience. Specialist in building high growth sales teams.
Chief Marketing Officer, James Gaubert. Formerly Head of Digital Marketing at Ogilvy & Mather. Unilever, Porsche, Cartier, IKEA, GM and Calvin Klein. Author. TedX speaker.
Director, John Hards. Former Managing Director of Lettings Director at Countrywide PLC. ARLA Propertymark Director. Lifetime Achievement Award (Negotiator Awards)
The company’s pitch to agents says it is the UK’s first Multi-Listing Service (MLS) – powered by OpenBrix Blockchain.
It will offer one-time uploading of managed portfolios ‘to offer big tenant benefits’; give access to tenant information including payment history and maintenance history; and increase earning potential through the monetisation of property portfolios through partnership commission – paying the agent 100% of the commission earned on utilities and additional services referred.
The portal will use branded property listings with a ‘stack full of end consumer benefits’ and will take a ‘democratised approach to agent pricing forever’.
It says “Our Blockchain built platform means that all significant such decisions are taken by the agency community – not by perpetually hungry shareholders”.
The cost to agents will be £75 per month plus £1 per property upload. Adding the MLS membership will cost £55 a month.
“We think this is fair and transparent,” says Adam Pigott.
“Our pricing is sensible and affordable and provides justifiable value and, importantly, agent pricing won’t be hiked as we grow because the agent community controls that – not shareholders.”
New property portal gets set to launch promising to be agent led and beat ‘the dictatorship’
New property portal set to go live within next month says it will ‘go up against the big boys’
Not long ago they offered a flat fee of £100 per branch per month and MLS was not part of the arrangement. I guess it’s called evolution.
Estate agents can’t unite to bring Rightmove in to line so how they’re going to collaborate on listings is anybody’s guess.
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Good luck to them, anyone attempting to move us towards an easier and better way of doing things should be applauded. Although the proof will be in the eating of the pudding. Let’s hope that this portal doesn’t go the way of the others, try and get traction by value and quality please, not by offering the larger chains equity chunks and board seats in return for their distribution networks!!
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Dead Duck IMO
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Are they telling me I need them or do I need them? It seems that every week a new platform appears, is the bizz to join (according to the firm), far too many who it seems haven’t done their homework. Great ideas only work if I need them!
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Well what do you want? A faster horse?
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