In a bid to save the younger generation from the crushing complexities that accompany buying a house in London, PropTech startup Bricklane.com has made its way to the housing market with a heroic swoop.
Bricklane’s motto is simple: help out “Generation Rent” by allowing them a stake in the property market. This way, saving money for a new home, especially for first-time buyers, becomes much easier. The online property startuplooks closer to achieving its objective than ever, with seed money coming in from Zoopla and LocalGlobe, as well as support from a group ofmunnamed angel investors from related sectors such as financial services, real estate, and technology.
Simon Heawood, one of the co-founders of Bricklane in a statement to Tech City News, said
Our aim is to help those saving for a first home to get on the ladder years earlier than they would by saving with cash. Alongside, we will provide a great service to residents of properties owned by our community of savers.
It’s a sweet deal for prospective home buyers, since the whole point of Bricklane is to make the market more inclusive, and get rid of barriers like financial position and market know-how. As long as Bricklane is on the scene, ANYONE can buy a house. That is the vision they seek to develop and enhance, according to Tom Cavill, another co-founder.
The platform functions in its own unique fashion: it combines a uniquely developed investment platform with a traditional financial structure known as the Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). Funding will be used in a two-fold way, with the first wave going into properties across Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester. The second wave will be channeled into London, with funds being invested into properties across the capital city due to launch in the near-future.
Investors are quite optimistic about the foundations of Bricklane as well. Robin Klein, founding partner of LocalGlobe, commented
Bricklane.com’s product is an elegant, tech-enabled answer to the problems of the housing crisis, and could help a whole generation of people who feel shut out of the market gain an entry.
Alex Chesterman, CEO and founder of Zoopla, gave his own reasons for putting his faith in Bricklane:
Bricklane.com has come up with a user-friendly product that is especially useful for first-time buyers saving towards a deposit and sees the property market from the renters’ perspective, for the first time.We wanted to invest and partner with Bricklane.com due to the strength of the product, innovative thinking from the team and clear fit with our users.
Overall, it seems to have been a good week for fostering relationships between the youth and how they approach the housing markets. Yet another PropTech startup “Nested” also received almost $1.2 million in equity funding. This up-and-coming organization is at the other end of the housing spectrum, with an interest in dissolving market barriers for people who want to sell houses.
