Member Article

Meet the entrepreneurial couple wanting to bring the rental market into the 21st Century

A PropTech venture launched by a tech entrepreneur couple after a bad experience hunting for a new home has launched this week with grand claims about bringing the UK’s rental market into the 21st Century.

The Urban Collective, founded by married couple Valerie Vigoroux and Mayank Mathur, has today (Wednesday) launched its ‘Sherpa’ service and app, which the pair say can help cut down the time it takes to find your perfect home by four times.

The venture came about last year after the pair grappled with the slow-moving and archaic structures of the rental industry.

While looking for a new home, Mayank and Valerie spent around 75 hours discussing options with around 14 agents and viewed over 40 properties before eventually unearthing their perfect home.

Frustrated by the experience, the couple partnered with fellow Co-Founder and estate agent Octavian Pop to develop and launch their ‘Sherpa’ service, which mixes ‘smart technology’ along with property listing data and a team of personal local experts in an attempt to take some of the pain out of the process.

Co-Founder Mayank explained how the company, and the Sherpa service in particular, has been built with an explicit focus on the tenant and their experience as opposed to the traditional landlord-focus.

He said: “The renting journey is significantly lagging behind customer service standards found in other industries and we know British renters are as fed up as we were.

“Nearly a third (29%) believe the industry is ‘out of date’ and 38% feel tenants’ needs are not prioritised. We believe The Urban Collective is the only PropTech service that has been built to be 100% focussed on tenant customer service from the ground up.

“Our business model doesn’t rely on fees from landlords unlike other businesses, so we can ensure the tenant is always the number one priority.”

Their service, which launches in London this week ahead of a wider UK roll-out, works by assigning users a dedicated local expert who has an in-depth knowledge of their chosen locality for a flat fee.

For the money, which currently stands at a flat rate £600 introductory rate, the expert will then do the majority of the heavy lifting: from scouring local listings to arranging viewings and in some cases even viewing the properties themselves.

Users are then provided with a shortlist based on their property and lifestyle needs, helping to save time and significantly reduce the amount of wasted hours spent on fruitless property searches.

Along with its Sherpa service, the startup has also launched its free UrbanCo app, a platform which hopes to help couples and groups share and search for properties through its lifestyle-focused listings, and chat and collaboration tools.

With the overheated housing market pricing more and more people out of the property ladder, Co-Founder Octavian Pop believes that time-poor young professionals and business owners are choosing to rent for longer, but simply do not have the time to spend hunting for new properties.

He said: “The current home search experience for tenants is broken. They spend too much time doing online research, connecting with a large number of estate agents and answering the same qualification questions again and again, etc.

“Our ‘Sherpa’ service model enables us to fully understand tenants’ requirements, connect with the market on their behalf and curate the properties that best match their lifestyle requirements, bringing the experience into the 21st century.”