PHPD reports on a new service for housebuilders, intended to make it easier for developers to sell new homes.
Acquiring land, gaining planning, financing a development and then constructing new homes – whilst adhering to all the regulations and standards required – can be a tricky task. All this occurs before a sale takes place, which itself can be a drawn out and complicated process.
One company looking to make the sales process for new-build homes more straightforward is Yourkeys. The site is an online portal that links together all the steps in the sales process – the company has identified 65+ steps – from selecting a home, hiring your solicitor, right through to legal completion.
The new service has been designed to offer enhanced levels of communication and oversight throughout the sales process. It seeks to bring together all the key stakeholders including: developer, marketing suite staff, agents, conveyancers and house buyers onto a single platform.
The company behind the new site, Yourkeys, believes this will result in cost savings, speed up the process and reduce the number of sales fall-throughs. Research from the market indicates that 39% of all new home sales fail to complete.
Peter Preedy, Director at JLL, and a member of the Yourkeys team, stated: “In today’s residential sales market, sales progression is of the utmost importance as almost 39% of all sales fall through. Yourkeys is an efficient way to accelerate the exchange process, through automated alerts that ensures all sequential tasks remain on track.”
Real-time tracking
The portal includes ‘real-time’ visibility and an analytics package so housebuilders can learn more about their client base. Amongst the statistics that can be viewed are: buyer demographics, sales rates and referrals, average buyer age and most popular unit types. It is hoped that the system will also enhance the buyer experience, which could result in better customer feedback and a stronger rating.
To help maintain a company’s branding and profile, the portal can be integrated into a housebuilders own website. It can also be used to offer and manage the upgrade process. Matt Thompson, Director, Make Homes, said: “One of the principal benefits of the Yourkeys platform, is that we’re able to offer buyers much greater personalisation in choosing a range of upgrades, as they have fully digitised the process. Consequently we’re offering 75% greater choice.”
The driving force behind the new offering, which has been in development for the last two years, is Riccardo Iannucci-Dawson. He noted: “Buying a new home should be one of the most enjoyable moments of your life, the fact is, it’s just not. It is over-complicated, full of jargon and there are too many stakeholders not working together. Yourkeys provides a central communication hub with all tasks, notifications and deadlines clearly identified, to keep everyone on the same page. We developed the idea partly because in 2018 you can track every step of a £20 Amazon parcel or a £5 Uber ride, however buying the most expensive object you’ll ever own is completely analogue with little to no transparency. We’re here to change that.”
