French startup looks to streamline residential buildings management

French startup looks to use proptech along with traditional means to optimize residential building management.

Meet Bellman, a new French startup that wants to improve residential building management using technology and a fair amount of human interactions. The startup has been co-founded by Antonio Pinto, who previously co-founded TV Time.

“I know this space quite well because I’m the son of a caretaker, so I grew up in the caretaker’s apartment until I was 17,” Pinto explained.

In France, the vast majority of property management of residential buildings is handled by private companies. As co-owners of the hallways, elevator and common space of your building, you get together every few years to decide if you want to work with a third-party company to handle all the pesky tasks that come with property management.

And Bellman wants to replace those companies, as they often have outdated processes, which leads to poor customer satisfaction. Foncia, Citya, Nexity and Immo de France dominate the market. But due to high churn rates, they regularly buy smaller residential property management companies.

“I started having problems myself with my property management company. I sent an email just to say that the elevator wasn’t working and they replied asking me ‘hello, what’s your address?’ ” Pinto said. According to him, a CRM with the name of the co-owners, their email addresses and their building address seemed like a basic feature.

Bellman focuses on two values — responsiveness and transparency. And it starts with a tech platform. The startup has developed a service to help property managers do their job properly. In addition to centralizing information, Bellman hopes to automate some of the most repetitive tasks.

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