British estate agents learnt in 2016 that they were one of the most reviled groups in Britain, when an Ipsos Mori poll found only 24% of the public trusting them to tell the truth. The only profession carrying lower levels of public trust was, of course, politicians. While much of the public’s ire is targeted toward residential estate agents, commercial agents have also earned themselves a bad name in recent years, with UK startups complaining of high fees, poor service and woeful communication when trying to rent office space.
From this dissatisfaction has risen a new generation of British PropTech startups, which seek to cut out the traditional middle man of commercial estate agents, in much the same way as FinTech challengers like GoCardless and Atom Bank attempt to benefit from customer frustration with large high street banks by cutting them out of the picture entirely. The seemingly unstoppable rise of UK commercial PropTech was brought home last week, when London-based property platform Hubble landed a £1.2m investment from Firestartr, Maxfield Capital, and Concrete.
So what’s driving the rising tide of commercial PropTech, and does it represent a fundamental challenge to older, more traditional commercial agents?...