Lettingsupermarket.com

Idea

Introduction

Investments of £25,000 or more will qualify for property management free of charge, whilst these shares are held, for up to 10 properties.

Lettingsupermarket.com, established in August 2012, is an ARLA registered national online letting agency developed to provide the personal service of a high street agency whilst benefiting from the cost saving of an online agent saving clients up to 66% over the high street.

Partnered with one of the leading landlord property forums in the UK we have spent the last three years tailoring our service and systems to create a platform for robust expansion.

We provide a fully comprehensive letting and management service at a market leading rate of 4% + Vat.

Qualified inventory clerks provide local support to landlords and tenants in terms of viewings, check in/out, periodic inspections etc. Our agents are self-employed, which keeps overheads low enough for the business model to be profitable despite charging up to 66% less than the market norm.

Intended impact

Lettingsupermarket.com provide a comparable service to the high street on a national scale. Many of our landlord clients “tested” us with one or two properties in the early stages.

Clause 24 of the Finance Bill is set to hit letting agents hard over the coming years, with landlords looking to dispose of properties or to reduce costs. The campaigning via Property118 is driving many more landlords to Property118, hence their accelerated growth, and most of those landlords are looking to cut costs. As one of the most cost effective letting agencies in the UK, we are confident the cashflow effects of Clause 24 to be experienced by landlords will drive significant growth of our business and increase our market share.

There is a clear consumer trend with the increase in online agencies in recent years with our competitors Easyproperty being valued at £66 million and Rentify, Emoov and Estates Direct all being valued at £20 million.

With our systems working efficiently following three years of ironing out any issues and with our management portfolio doubling in size year on year we believe it feasible to take on and manage an additional 1000+ properties in the next 12 months.

Substantial accomplishments to date

We currently work with agents throughout the UK and cover approximately 70% of England which we are progressively growing to 100% coverage. We are also expanding into Wales and have plans to master franchise to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland in the future.

In the last 9 months we have taken on numerous new properties taking our management portfolio to 460 properties.

We raised over £230k last year as the first part of our crowdfunding campaign. This is our second and final crowdfunding campaign where we aim to raise in excess of £125,000 to increase our reserves and be used for investment into the increased trade awareness through marketing required to optimise the value of the business.

We now have 1705 user accounts using the website.

The business turnover for January and February 2016 has been £54k*.

*source: Unaudited management accounts.

Monetisation strategy

Lettingsupermarket.com’s USP is that we are an online letting agent agency with a countrywide infrastructure of associate agents who visit the property, take photographs, conduct viewings and also complete inventory, check in, interim inspections and finally, check out.

Our agents are all fully qualified Inventory Clerks and each one is assigned a particular property. That particular agent then looks after that property from the initial property visit right through to the end of the tenancy. This is very appealing to landlords who have, previously, been used to agents sending in any member of staff, many of whom have never seen the property before and may not even know where the light switches are located. They are our “feet on the ground” in a particular area and are there to let in contractors when the property is unoccupied, deliver any required notices and see that the needs of both landlord and tenant are met. This USP gives us the opportunity to work with landlords who are not self-managing.

A critical point is that we offer the lowest prices for full property management and let only in the UK, directly as a result of separating lettings management functions from non -office based functions and embracing technology wherever possible. We are almost paperless, are able to operate from inexpensive offices and carry minimal staff as our agents, are all self-employed. Our agents are aware of the advantages we have in the marketplace and we have no difficulty in securing new agents in areas where we have properties available.

As we have, to date, only advertised on one property forum site, our growth has been exceptional and our agents see the potential for their own business growth. We are also in the process of amending our Terms and Conditions with our agents to ensure that on property letting packages they will work exclusively with us

Use of proceeds

We have tried various marketing in the past and Property118.com continue to provide the vast majority of our new business referrals.

We will be looking to increase our marketing through a PR company to raise awareness of lettingsupermarket.com and increasing our google adwords campaign using banner re-marketing.

We will be attending trade shows over the coming 18 months which will allow us to increase the personal nature of our service by enabling landlords to meet some of the staff who they communicate with on a daily basis.

We will further be using the funds for cash flow to compensate for the seasonal fluctuations in the letting market.

We also will be updating the visual appearance of the website and adding automation to improve the service and efficiency of our management process.

The Company has an outstanding loan of £6,500 from startup Britain. The proceeds of investment will not be used to repay this loan.

Investments of £25,000 or more will qualify for property management free of charge, whilst these shares are held, for up to 10 properties.