The founder of Airtasker, Jonathan Lui, has developed a new app called Soho that is aimed at opening up new opportunities in real estate.
When Jonathan Lui, founder of Airtasker, moved to Singapore last year, it took him three days to sell his house in Sydney's popular suburb of Paddington.
When more than 30 potential buyers walked away after missing out on their dream home, Lui saw an opportunity. He wondered what would happen if buyers could consider all properties, not just the properties that happened to be on the market at that particular point in time.
"The buyers have the money and they know what they want, but they cannot buy what they cannot see," Lui explained to SCHWARTZWILLIAMS.
Opening a closed real estate market
Whether you're an investor looking to buy, a young person trying to get a foot on the real estate ladder, or a parent renting a home for their family, property is central to all our lives.
Yet, the real estate market is rigid, and in many ways, limiting.
When investing in a property, we are often making the largest financial decision of our lives, and yet we are limited to considering only properties that happen to be on the market at that moment. Regardless of what we are looking for, we currently can only commit to a property from that limited pool.
Lui's new app, Soho, aims to open up that pool to include all properties.
Click here to find out more about the Soho real estate app.
Lui's research shows that 51 per cent of Australians would put their home up for sale if it was free to do so.
Soho is free to list, and there are no fees or commissions. Similar to LinkedIn's format, buyers, sellers and agents can all create their own profiles, and are free to approach each other directly.
Unlocking the potential of rent rolls
Agencies can also create profiles for properties in their rent roll on Soho, a feature that is not available on the mainstream real estate portals.
Rent-rolls are often an agency's largest asset, but they are sometimes passively managed, and hidden from the public eye. But these properties are often exactly what investors and new tenants are looking for.
Through Soho, agents can showcase their rent rolls and experience in their local area, opening up opportunities to promote the agency, build up sales and tenant leads, or even to buy and sell entire rent rolls, said Lui.
Evolving the market, not disrupting
“I wouldn’t describe ourselves as disruptors," Lui said of the new app.
"It's about opening up a whole new market, evolving it, and taking it to the next step."
Click here to find out more about Soho.
This is a sponsored article.