Ten Questions With Daniel Bignold, Founder & CEO of Propps

Like most markets right now, the Australian real estate market is super competitive. There are big bidding battles with all kinds of stipulations attached to each bid and all sorts of different methods and platforms that brokerages use to deal with them.

We recently came across the Melbourne-based PropTech firm Propps.com while reading about an integration they were working on with a property portal in Australia. The idea seemed interesting and not just something that was relevant or useful only for agents.

So we reached out to founder and CEO Daniel Bignold to tell us all about Propps and its mission...

What is the problem that Propps solves?

For the agent, the challenge is that offers are being provided to them in various forms and via various channels - SMS, email, verbal, some in writing some not, some binding some not etc. So juggling these offers and trying to organise them and compare apples to apples is quite difficult - especially in higher demand markets.

From a buyer’s and vendor’s perspective the process of buying and selling a property can often be quite disjointed and inconsistent. So when a buyer is dealing with various agents in their search it can be quite daunting when the process differs significantly from agent to agent and from office to office. 

What is Propps’ USP?

Propps is an agent-centric offer management platform that provides a consistent buyer experience on the agent’s website that guides buyers through the offer process and then also provides a consistent offer management experience for the agent with tools to allow them to consolidate all offers in one place and manage the negotiation through to signing and exchanging of contracts.

What is Propps’ biggest challenge?

We are focused on being a mainstream solution across Australia and then globally so our biggest challenge is ensuring the strong foundations are built to facilitate large scale growth.

How many employees does Propps have?

We have grown significantly over the last 6 months and are now up to 27 employees with more on the way!

How has Covid-19 changed the landscape for Propps?

It definitely has changed things! Lockdowns and COVID restrictions have meant that the market has looked to digital tools to help them manage their campaigns and as Propps closely aligns to their existing workflows and is super easy to get started, it is allowing agents to turbocharge their business with minimal change.

Plus, on the buyer's side, the increased use of QR codes due to COVID has made the entry point for Propps (via a QR Code at the open homes) much more accepted and used by the buyers.

What is one thing our readers might not know but would probably find interesting about property transactions in Australia?

The interesting thing, that agents are also finding through using Propps is for the first time, is that they are able to track all offers and all buyers actions in one place through Propps.

This is giving them incredible insights into buyer behaviour and market demand. It’s allowing agents to clearly understand key metrics such as Offers Per Listing (OPL) which is showing in some cases incredibly high numbers (sometimes into the ’50s) per campaign!

Is Propps only for agents, or can real estate portals integrate your tech as well?

Propps was built specifically for agents through extensive market research and consultation with agents, buyers and vendors and therefore the focus was to have our solution embedded into the agent's website.

However, due to the ease of implementation, Propps can be integrated into other websites and this has recently been achieved with our partnership with the industry-owned realestateVIEW.com.au portal.

What is Propps currently working on?

Propps is continually iterating and improving the platform. We are constantly gathering feedback from our agents and building out more and more features that help make their job easier.

So Propps is so much more than just the front-end buyer experience that sits on the agent’s website. We have been building out significant features for the agent experience such as buyer activity tracking, agent announcements such as ‘best and final’ offers, vendor leads, competitive buying campaign features and more.

What is the most common request from clients?

The most common request from our agents is to help them by ensuring our solution is part of a seamless end-to-end solution for them. This is why a core part of our business is focused on partnering.

We are working with best of breed industry solution partners to constantly continue integrating solutions into Propps and having Propps be integrated into other solutions just to make it even easier for agents to access their core business tools all in one place.

How do you see the market evolving and what will you be doing to be ahead of the curve?

Whilst others are focused on disrupting the market, we are focused on helping agents to make the market more efficient. So what we are seeing in the market from a PropTech perspective is that there is a significant shift to consolidation.

Where a few groups are acquiring and partnering with top solution providers all moving towards the ultimate level of a seamless experience for all parties - agents, buyers and vendors. And we are a key piece in this puzzle, hence why we are so focused on working with our partners to help make this dream a reality for our agents.