Platform to launch in the UK & Australia as part of rapid international expansion Barclays and Offr to empower traditional real estate agents and buyers by digitising home sales, residential lettings, commercial sales and leases
Offr, the prop-tech platform digitising the buying, selling and leasing process for real estate agents and buyers, today announced it has raised £2.7M (€3M) in seed funding led by Barclays. Existing investors Delta Partners on behalf of Bank of Ireland, AIB, Enterprise Ireland, The European Investment Fund and Frontline Ventures also participated in the round.
Launched just ten months ago with a mission to enable people to buy, sell, lease or rent a property with one-click, Offr enables fast, digital property transactions, from offer to exchange, on any device, at any time, and from anywhere in the world. Offr digitises over 85% of the process of buying and selling property for agents and their customers. Up until now, property transactions have largely been restricted and confined domestically, with no easy, fast, and secure way of buying properties cross-border available. Offr is changing this by making international trading of property possible for buyers online, using traditional real estate agents.
The seed funding brings Offr’s total funds raised to date to over £3.6M (€4M). The funding will be used to accelerate international expansion, bringing trust, transparency and speed to buyers and property agents in the £417 billion UK and AU$280 billion Australian annual real estate markets initially. The company also plans to further develop its transaction infrastructure platform over the next 12 months. These product developments will expand Offr’s platform to manage the transactions of all types of properties, both traditional and auction, including the sale of homes, residential lettings, commercial sales and leases.
Over 10 million offers to buy property are submitted to agents every year in the UK & Ireland. People submit them by phone call, text, email, post or verbally, with no formal receipt or record. Up to 50 percent of all property sales currently underway will not close until 2021 and 25-33 percent of agreed sales will fall through before exchange, highlighting the lack of consistency, transparency or auditable register of offers in the frustrating, slow process. Offr reduces the average length of time to sell a property from listing to completion from 7 months to 3 months for traditional sale, or 2 months using online auction.
On March 24th during the COVID-19 lockdown, Offr enabled the world’s first fully remote, end-to-end, digital property transaction. The property was sold entirely online for 61% over the asking price.
Robert Hoban, Co-founder & CEO of Offr, who has two decades of experience buying and selling commercial and residential properties, said of transforming the archaic process behind the $5.7 trillion of real estate that changes hands every year:
COVID has changed
the landscape completely, it closed off real-estate; we’re bringing it online. I expected
we’d be where we are today in five years' time. We built Offr with a clear and simple
goal, to change the way property is bought and sold; to make it faster, more
transparent and more enjoyable for real estate agents, buyers and everyone else
involved in the process. The fact is, the stress, uncertainty and longevity of buying
and selling property are just products of an outdated, yet somehow accepted system.
We made it our goal to address these problems. We developed one platform for
everyone. An end-to-end, open solution which supports real estate agents, buyers,
sellers and solicitors and the pandemic has accelerated adoption by all. We are
delighted with the support from Barclays, as we look to grow our business globally.”
Earlier this year, Offr participated in the Barclays London Accelerator, powered by Techstars
and was selected as one of the few candidates for follow-on investment from this year’s
cohort of companies.
Speaking on the investment on behalf of Barclays, Ryan Hayward (Head of Strategic
Investments for Europe and Asia, said:
As an alumnus of the Barclays Accelerator
programme, we are very pleased to be supporting Offr through this exciting period of
growth. Offr has the potential to completely transform the property transaction
process globally. We look forward to working with the Offr team to help them scale
their business internationally and realise their considerable future ambitions.
Offr’s white-label platform allows buyers to securely submit offers and close deals on real
estate agents’ own websites. Offr’s technology enables real estate agents to track the
progress of a sale or lease on their mobile device or laptop, in real-time, with instant alerts
an offer is received, if there is an upcoming viewing or if legal documents have been
updated. Similarly, buyers can book a viewing online, upload proof of funds and ID, make an
offer, pay a deposit, connect to their solicitor, and sign contracts - all with a few taps of their
smartphone. Behind the scenes, Offr connects real estate agents to solicitors and banks to
digitise the entire end-to-end sale and leasing process with speed, transparency and trust.
In a similar fashion to how Offr digitises the end-to-end property transaction process, the
company’s recent fundraise and minority equity stake sale was conducted entirely online
from start-to-finish. All investor pitches were delivered through Zoom, all legal documents
were generated and issued online, all 30 investors signed using DocuSign, and all payments
were made online.
Offr’s three founders, Robert Hoban, CEO, Niall Dawson, CTO, Philip Farrell, CCO, have
over 75 years’ combined experience in the property and technology sectors, working with
companies such as Bidx1, Allsop, Savills, XSellco, UltimateRugby.com, REA Group, Real
Estate Alliance, among others. Like all of their estate agent customers, they are firm
advocates for the introduction of speed and transparency to the property market.
Offr enables fast, digital property transactions for traditional real estate agents and buyers,
from offer to exchange, on any device, at any time, and from anywhere in the world.
Launched in September 2019, Offr is digitising the 10 million+ offers that are submitted
manually and verbally to buy, rent and lease property in the UK, Australia and Ireland every
year. A smart, real-time technology that sits embedded on a commercial or residential
agent’s website, Offr allows people to submit secure, recorded offers to buy or rent property
from their mobile device, 24/7, from anywhere in the world. Photo ID and Proof-of-Funds
ensure that agents receive offers from genuine, qualified buyers.
For further information about Offr, please visit offr.io
Barclays is a British universal bank. We are diversified by business, by different types of
customer and client, and geography. Our businesses include consumer banking and
payments operations around the world, as well as a top-tier, full service, global corporate
and investment bank, all of which are supported by our service company which provides
technology, operations and functional services across the Group.
For further information about Barclays, please visit www.home.barclays
For additional information and imagery, please contact: Mark O’Toole, Account Director, +353 (87) 778 2513, mark@150bond.com