A giant leap for the digital property market
“That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind” – Neil Armstrong
For the past six months or so, we have been sharing our thoughts on what it would take to build a truly digital property market in the UK. Today, we announce a giant leap towards this future, with Lloyds Banking Group, Nationwide, NatWest, and Rightmove all backing Coadjute’s vision for an open digital property market. In this article, I talk about what that this significant development means for Coadjute, and for the future of the property market.
Coadjute Executive Leadership Team
An overnight success, 6 years in the making
At the heart of the Coadjute mission is a simple belief that the challenges of the property market cannot be solved by a single party working on their own. We chose our name ‘Coadjute’ because it means what we stand for: to collaborate, to cooperate, to work together.
Coadjute originally grew out of HM Land Registry’s Digital Street initiative in 2018 and since our inception, we’ve always had a fundamentally different approach to the many PropTechs in the market. Rather than solve for a slice of the market, our mission has always been to be a catalyst for a market-wide transformation, to be an enabler for everyone.
Coadjute was designed from the start to provide the vital digital foundation that has been missing in the property industry. We’ve built an open data network for the whole market enabling everyone, regardless of what system they use or what data format they have, to conduct smooth, efficient, and secure property transactions with each other.
Today’s announcement of a £10m funding round paves the way to take collaboration forward, not just by a step, but a giant leap. With Lloyds Banking Group, Nationwide, NatWest, and Rightmove all backing Coadjute's vision we have something we haven’t had before, the largest players in the market partnering with a shared, open, digital infrastructure.
Keeping buyers and sellers at the heart of everything we do
This announcement heralds the start of a revolution in the experience home buyers and sellers get in the property market.
They are the ones that have suffered the most from the delays, frustrations and costs of a home moving process that takes too long, and too often falls through altogether. Whilst the professionals who work so hard to make a move happen for them have had to stand by, powerless to make it any better by a wider environment that works against them.
The property industry now has the opportunity to transform how it operates for customers. Working together, we now have in our hands the ability to create a transparent, seamless, and efficient experience for customers, befitting of the most important purchase most people ever make.
It’s not a pipe dream any more: as an industry we now have the tools, and we have the will and momentum from some of the largest players.
On our own, it isn’t enough
It takes a village to raise a child. It also takes an industry and its supporters to come together to re-shape the property market.
I’m proud that at Coadjute, we’ve always been informed and guided by the insights and challenges set out in strategic policies and plans such as the HM Land Registry Strategy, the Smart Data Council, and the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill. These look to the commercial world to open up data and collaborate for the benefit of consumers.
The UK government too, with cross-party support, has long been committed to creating a better property market for consumers by improving the home buying and selling process. Their goals include providing key information to buyers digitally from trusted sources, reducing fall-through rates, speeding up transactions, and minimising the cost and stress of delays and failures.
It isn’t enough though to have government support alone. In my many years working in innovation, I’ve learnt that you need passionate and involved sponsors and a groundswell of support to make true change, which I am proud to say we now have.
With the scale of stakeholders now working together, plus the many estate agent, conveyancing and mortgage broking businesses who are already embracing the Coadjute mission too, we are now collectively able to deliver on the much talked about vision of a truly digital property market.
The technology to make that a reality is now live and working beautifully in the market, and this new investment will allow us to roll it out nationally and extend the functionality further.
As cheesy as it may sound, the future of the UK property market is here
Whilst every industry in the world has been through some kind of digital revolution at some point, you’d be forgiven for thinking that somehow the UK property market never would. There has been such slow progress for so long, it’s hard to imagine it is now happening.
I experienced a similar fatigue some years ago when I was leading innovation in the payments industry. Surely the inconvenience and risk of cash would never be solved? Previous attempts had failed. Perhaps, even in a digital world, it was just too hard to replace cash, somehow impossible? It wasn’t, and today over 87% of people use contactless cards.
Digital transformation is possible in the property market, despite its unique complexities. It isn’t easy, or it would have happened before. It has waited for the right approach, the right environment, and the right momentum.
Today, I believe we have all three, and the property market is at the start of a steady shift to a new, more digital way of working that will benefit everyone. Over the next few years, we will as an industry now create the digital property market that has been so much talked about. One where innovation and competition can flourish, property professionals can work more quickly and easily, and consumers get a far better home moving experience.
Today is just the first step, but we are on our way to a giant leap for the UK property market.
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