INTERVIEW
PROPERTY PORTAL
“We’re trying to level the playing field again” CEO of one-stop property portal on “democratising” data
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ack in 2007, just about anyone who had any serious cash at least thought about buying a house. Not so Ben Davis who, as an investment analyst, was convinced something was amiss. “I came under a lot of pressure from everybody to buy a house in 2007,” he said. “But to me, prices were absolutely nuts and it would have been stupid to buy at that point in time.” Instead, he made a shrewd move and bought a block of flats in Berlin, “because they weren’t experiencing the same price bubble we had here.” The rest, as they say, is history. The financial crisis that subsequently unfolded left people reeling. Many became so-called mortgage prisoners, as the amount they had borrowed was greater than the value of their property, and it wasn’t long before the phrase “negative equity” entered the vernacular. When Davis finally decided to buy his first house in the UK it was in 2011, when prices had pretty much reached bottom. It was that foresight that led him to launch a property portal in 2018. “I felt that the big property portals weren’t serving either side of the market very well,” he said. He noted how estate agents “were literally going out of business” because they were paying high monthly subscription charges and only getting buyer and tenant leads in return. As for consumers, he felt they were effectively being ignored because of outdated, email-based tech. “We thought we could do better
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than this,” he said, reasoning that by simply providing a free service for estate agents he could trounce the opposition from the starting blocks. As the CEO of PropertyHeads Group, he now controls three websites – the eponymous portal, which is a consumer-focused socialnetwork site fashioned along the lines of Facebook and LinkedIn that targets people who are mostly looking to find a new home or build a property portfolio. Then there’s the valuations site MousePrice – acquired 18 months ago – and MousePrice Pro, which is the data business end of MousePrice, mostly used by estate agents, surveyors, and mortgage brokers as a research tool, which Davis claims “is the most powerful UK property search available,” citing the 40 filters that can identify up to 300 attributes on any UK property. Much of that is down to an automated valuation model that the group acquired with MousePrice, which has since been re-engineered and also allows remote valuations. The result is that some 8,000 estate agents have now registered properties with the group. “Now it’s about getting all the registered users we have across the three websites on PropertyHeads using it as it should be. We’ve got about 2.5 million, mostly UK homeowning registered users that we’re increasingly getting engagement from,” he noted. Talk of the current housing market with mortgage professionals invariably leads to wider conversations about the underlying
Ben Davis
problems affecting the sector, such as the lack of stock, and fears – at least for first-time buyers – that house prices have spiralled out of control. Davis revealed that more properties were now coming on the market – perhaps a sign of a downturn? “We’re not seeing prices decline yet, although we are seeing a levelling off,” he said, suggesting that there may be “some small nominal” declines, but nothing even closely resembling what happened in 2007. Regarding the government’s efforts to help first-time buyers and kickstart the home-building revolution many feel is needed, he was largely dismissive. www.mortgageintroducer.com
