OurProperty.com.au Brisbane based proptech start-up
- Written by Leanne Howard
AGENCY LEVEL FRAUD WILL BE ABOLISHED WITH GAME-CHANGING SYSTEM FOR DIRECT PAYMENT OF RENTS FROM THE TENANT TO THE LANDLORD
OurProperty.com.au, a Brisbane based proptech start-up will be releasing a payment platform in March which collects rent from tenants and transfers to approved creditors and the landlord, based on the instructions held within the system. This revolutionary approach to the traditional method of paying through the agency’s Rent Trust account will eliminate the chance of internal theft and ensure that everyone is paid in real time rather than waiting for a payment cycle.
OurProperty CEO, Alexander Moore says that rather than taking the traditional software approach of their competitors in being Trust Account management products, they have looked at the industry and worked out how to disrupt it – from an agency perspective.
“Rather than design a great Trust management product, we developed a product that does away with the need for a Rent Trust account, and just collects funds from tenants and pays it through to the landlord and creditors, in real time. A far superior solution for everyone,” Moore said.
The company says that once the system is adopted you’ll stop seeing the headlines about fraud and missing client funds in real estate offices across the country. At present there are about 10,000 licensed agents in Australia, and an agency with 1,000 properties under management has over $2m passing through their Rent Trust account every month.
General noncompliance with current legislation is another issue that Moore raised, “with the recent Anti Money Laundering legislation there are obligations to know who you are paying funds to, whilst all agencies do a 100-point ID check on tenants, very few do this for landlords. We’ve also seen from our research that many agencies hold Credit Card details within their management software and without PCI compliance this is highly illegal. A third-party payment platform like ours is fully compliant and eliminates all these problems at the agency level”.
Moore says that use of products like OurProperty are the way traditional high street real estate agencies are able to compete against the plethora of company-to-company software products that are flooding the market and looking to disrupt it by removing the agency sector.
“Make no mistake” Moore says, “this year there is over $20 billion USD being invested in Proptech and it’s nearly all going to consumer driven disruptors. We’re one of the few companies committed to disruption by the agency sector itself”.
2019 will be an interesting year in the real estate sector as technology looks to turn the existing market on its head.
www.ourproperty.com.au
