Landlords are being encouraged to trial a tech tool that gives them new insights to make property buying less risky.
Glasgow-based PropEco assesses the long-term value and viability of a property, through its Data Explorer tool, allowing smaller landlords to quickly assess a wide range of potential risks using just an address.
The company’s AI-powered platform analyses data from thousands of sources to provide assessments of factors such as evolving flood risk, air quality and green retrofit potential. This powers multiple products and services including an API, portfolio assessment service, browser-based risk-assessment tools and property reports.
Founder and CEO Chris Hardman tells LandlordZONE that using the traditional conveyancing process of finding a property, applying for a mortgage, and then getting a survey a couple of months later can throw up issues, meaning that landlords can waste time and effort if they walk away from the purchase.
“We’re providing that information up-front,” he explains. “The tool provides data on energy efficiency, flood risk, well-being in terms of overheating, access to green space and air quality - it’s a holistic approach.”
PropEco uses a large database to run simulations with about 250,000 properties to find the closest match, to indicate energy consumption and carbon footprint and, by checking against similar properties’ EPC, can flag up inconsistencies in EPC data.
“Ratings can be wrong, and landlords might only realise once they’ve bought the property that it wouldn’t actually reach a band C,” adds Hardman.
The firm has just secured seed funding of £275,000 that will be used to accelerate PropEco’s expansion internationally over the next 12 months.
Subscription costs £49 a month for 75 property searches. It now plans to introduce the option of running models on a property’s propensity to suffer from black mould growth. Landlords interested in trialling the new feature can contact the firm at info@propeco.io.
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