A WhatsApp-style ‘dating service’ designed to marry up landlords and tenants has launched seeking to simplify London’s ‘chaotic’ private rented sector and rival established portals such as Rightmove and Zoopla.

The firm behind the online service, Krispyhouse, says its service significantly reduces the ‘tsunami’ of texts, emails and phone calls required when arranging viewings, answering questions, taking deposits and arranging a move-in date and time.

Landlords and tenants communicate directly on the platform’s app via either text, video or phone call but without the need to reveal each other’s personal mobile phone numbers.

The app is now live with mainly 20-40 year old tenants who expect to communicate digitally and make up three quarters of the tenant market in London.

Krispyhouse says the app helps landlords and agents filter and prioritise tenants in what has proved recently to be a super-hot market with Rightmove recently revealing 25 enquiries per property to letting agencies, three times higher than 2019.

Instantanteous

The app’s founder, Anthony Kyriacou (main image), who is a letting agent, says the user experience of current property platforms “leaves much to be desired” and does not satisfy the fundamental requirement of today’s fast-paced market, i.e. ‘instantaneous communication’.  

The app lets both agents and landlords advertise their homes directly to tenants and is free to use, although agents who then decide to list in volume will be charged £100 a month.

A period of testing for the app has now finished and some 200 letting agents are already using it, along with several thousand tenants.

The company is also due to begin raising funds to back its business via CrowdCube but is not the only one hoping to take on the big portals.