Listen to this articleOneDome addresses the entire property transaction process, empowering consumers and professionals alike. OneDome digitally connects property professionals and consumers, so that key information can be passed along the process efficiently and the journey can be seamless. Communications and documents can be passed across the chain, speeding the process up and increasing transparency. To find out more about their platform we interviewed Rachel Dipper, VP of Marketing & Partnerships at OneDome:
Q: You’ve recently announced $4 Million in Series A Round; could you tell us something more?
A: We have an ambitious and far-reaching program of work that requires the digitization of a number of different areas of businesses: estate agency, legal services and financial services as well as building technology to help home movers search for and discover properties in a radically different and innovative way. To meet this challenge, the company has grown rapidly, to a team of nearly 40 people in just over a year.
Q: What is OneDome’s story, how did you start?
A: The company was founded by Babek Ismayil, after personally experiencing how traumatic and unnecessarily stressful it was to connect the dots in his property dealings. It was impossible to effectively find a property, secure it, engage a conveyancer and get financing – all on one platform.
We all know how stressful dealing with property buying/ selling/ renting can be. In fact according to some sources, it is the 3rd most stressful experience in anyone’s life after death of a relative and a divorce. The process is long with lots of friction points, many hours spent on the phone, lost emails, chasing of counterparts, printing, signing, scanning and most of that taking time from work.
According to research conducted by OneDome, it takes between 15 to 60 minutes to book one viewing via phone or email and if you try to line up few viewings for one afternoon or on Saturday, this can suddenly become a very stressful and challenging task. And all of this means calling during work hours or during a lunch break with unhappy managers looking at you while you are on the phone.
The experience isn’t any different when we sell our property and receive a number of calls at random times from agents trying to arrange viewing times. And similar issues when we want to invite them for valuation, again going through a number of manual steps that could have been avoided.
65% of people are looking for properties in the evenings, but have no ability to book or do anything with properties they are interested in outside of working hours. Their interaction in evenings is limited to sending an email which according to recent surveys are responded in 70% of cases and with average response time of 5days!
Not a great experience when you want to see that perfect property you found.
Some disrupters identified the problem and brought the solution in form of online agencies open for bookings 24/7. Purplebricks the market leader in online estate agency market confirmed that 70% of their business happens outside of working hours.
The issue is this is only available to customers of Purplebricks (2-3% of the market) which leaves consumer with inconsistent experience. You can book viewing digitally via Purplebricks, but not with others- not great!
OneDome technology powered estate agency companies provide a radically different experience. A consumer can book a viewing online 24/7 filling the information once and then arrange a number of viewings within few minutes at any time. And as a vendor, you can update and modify your availabilities at any time.
At the heart of OneDome, there is a recommendation tool taking customer through the process of buying/ selling or renting. It helps the customer to understand the process, know what to expect and what to do. Integrated communication tool allows to track all the communication with all parties involved in a single and secure place.
All of that is completely free for consumer and the basic product is also free for estate agents.
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Q: Tell us something more about Locality Reality?
A: Locality Reality is OneDome’s first product and is aimed at house buyers and renters in London as well as curious inhabitants who want to learn about [and compare] areas on a postcode level. The local area-mapping tool brings data and science to the home research process, allowing users to objectively compare unlimited postcodes in London based on area-specific information
Using a mix of data sources, Locality Reality calculates an individual score for seven key criteria. For each individual score, we crunch the most up-to-date data from trusted and publicly available sources, such as the Metropolitan Police, TfL and the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Users are able to type in any postcode to the search bar and Locality Reality’s smart algorithm calculates an individual out-of-ten score for seven key criteria that are important when looking to move into new location: Safety, Transport, Quiet, Green, Grocery, Lifestyle and Education.
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Q: What makes you stand out from your competition in the market?
A: Whilst there are a number of products that offer to digitise the process of booking viewings or conveyancing, we link the entire process for the buyer – from researching where to live to booking a viewing, and organising conveyancing and finance.
One of our great ambitions is the aim to bring a cash exchange time down to 48 hours and mortgage financed exchanges down to 6 weeks when all parties use OneDome.
Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: At the moment, we are still signing estate agents up to the platform, but we have some exciting work happening on Locality Reality, which we ultimately change the way people search for property in the UK. Watch this space!
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