Over the last decade we’ve seen a lot of local and global changes that have impacted the property industry. We’ve seen five prime ministers (and countless housing ministers), Brexit, and a global pandemic that brought the market to a standstill - just to name a few.
With these changes, new challenges have been presented to property professionals - and when challenges arrive, the proptech industry responds with innovative solutions to help property professionals not only overcome, but rise above the uncertainty change can bring.
At LandTech, we’re proud to be among those who have risen to the occasion to bring innovation to the forefront to solve the property industry’s biggest challenges. In this two part blog series, we'll not only reflect on our own journey as a leading proptech innovator, but also to look forward to the future vision of LandTech.
In the first of the blog series, we’ll take a look back at the evolution of LandTech’s offerings and how they came together to become the LandTech ecosystem.
The LandTech ecosystem
Looking back over the last 10 years, LandTech has evolved quite a lot. Originally, LandTech’s goal was to simply help developers with sourcing off-market opportunities, but we soon realised that wasn’t really solving all of their problems.
From sourcing and assessing sites, to navigating the complexities of planning applications and policy constraints, all the way to funding - we saw there was so much more to offer the property market to help developers overcome not only their daily challenges, but also to help them address new, market-wide changes as well.
In order to address all of the complex hurdles developers face, we’ve built an ecosystem of solutions that now bring efficiencies across the whole pre-construction phase of developments - including LandInsight, LandFund and LandTech Community. First, we’ll take a look at LandInsight and how it has evolved to become the solution it is today.
Sourcing and assessing development opportunities
LandTech’s flagship product, LandInsight, started off by offering three data sets: ownership, planning apps and basic comps.
A decade on and the product now consolidates a myriad of essential property data streams into a single platform to help developers find viable opportunities in a challenging market and manage the complexities of the land acquisition process.
From property and ownership data sets to planning applications, policies and environmental constraints, to power infrastructure and comparables, LandInsight has helped developers to find and assess the best opportunities for their business.
Take our client Taylor Wimpey for example - LandInsight is now an essential part of their day-to-day workflow, helping them identify local sites, monitor plans, make contact with landowners, and ultimately source sites faster. You can learn more about their success in the video below.
Appraising and securing funding for developments
After optimising the site sourcing and assessment piece of the development process, we recognised there was a gap in connecting the dots between site sourcing and understanding financial viability of a development opportunity. So, we launched LandFund in late 2021.
Initially, LandFund began as an appraisal tool that integrates with LandInsight, but now has evolved into a powerful funding tool for developers with the support of our tech-baked brokerage offering.
LandFund now allows users to not only appraise sites leveraging LandInsight data, conduct sensitivity analysis, and generate lender-ready reports, but also secure funding for development projects at competitive rates.
Mike Pickles, from Waterloo Group, has this to say about LandFund: “A client of mine required funding for a residential conversion project and from the get-go the LandFund team demonstrated exceptional performance. Within a span of a few weeks, they successfully secured funding for my client. They invest time in comprehending precise requirements and subsequently take action, maintaining consistent communication to ensure timely fund disbursement.”
Connecting with the industry in a meaningful way
When assessing the full lifecycle of the development process, we also learned that our users were struggling to connect with their peers in a meaningful and mutually beneficial way. Also in 2021, we launched our own proprietary community platform, the LandTech Community.
Our Community’s initial goal was to build an open forum for our users to engage with one another to access advice on development-related issues, while meeting new contacts and keeping up with relevant industry trends.
Almost three years since its launch, Community boasts over 2,000 active members and is a platform that not only fosters networking and learning opportunities like CPD accreditations, but also allows users to share and collaborate on their active opportunities within a closed network of trusted professionals and secure a new project without leaving the Community platform.
Matthew Ahearn, Managing Director at Canbury Homes has seen intrinsic value in using Community, stating, “Overall, the LandTech Community is an excellent platform for anyone interested in staying up-to-date on the latest trends, tools, and practices in real estate technology. It provides a supportive environment where members can learn, connect, and grow their businesses and careers.”
Going above and beyond tech
While we’re proud of the ecosystem of solutions we’ve built in the last decade, we also understand the importance of going above and beyond our tech solutions to connect with the industry to drive positive change in a number of ways - and that comes down to bridging the gap between property professionals, the government and the wider public community.
Collaborating with the property community to drive change
Building on the successes of our Community to connect developers to each other, we’ve also made strides to better connect the community to the government - providing a vehicle to educate people about legislative and policy changes; and solicit feedback to government consultations.
2023 saw a continuation of the government’s scattergun approach to consultations - a less than ideal situation for property professionals. In response, we were able to assist our community by holding a series of roundtable discussions about the proposals; educating people about the likely impact on their businesses.
We then collated feedback from our customers to act as a mouthpiece for the under-represented SME development sector and provide feedback to the Government. Though we've not received a published response to our feedback just yet, we aim to continue to efforts in bridging the gap between the market and the government in any way we can.
Connecting with the wider community to build better communities
In 2024 we’ve taken engagement with communities to a whole new level through our acquisition of Built-ID and their community consultation product, Give My View.
The integration of Built-ID's community engagement solution enhances the LandTech ecosystem, providing users with an even more comprehensive platform to discover opportunities efficiently.
Our commitment to empowering developers, and connecting them to the communities that they are serving and creating demonstrates our continued dedication to harnessing the best available technology to create the places of the future.
Read the full announcement on the Built-ID acquisition here
A look toward the future
We’ve always been forward thinkers at LandTech. From anticipating market changes in order to build solutions for new challenges to connecting with the wider property community to provide insights, learning opportunities and drive positive change in the market.
And now that we’ve covered LandTech’s early beginnings and the evolution of our offerings, we want to take a closer look at what the future holds for LandTech in our last instalment of our blog series celebrating our 10-year anniversary - coming soon!