LandInsight, a startup tackling the ‘where to build’ part of the UK’s housing crisis, has raised £350k from angels with VC and property backgrounds.
The company aggregates data presented on a map and sells a suite of tools to help property developers identify land for housing.
Sources include the Land Registry, Planning departments and Ordnance Survey to provide nice overview of all the data that’s needed to allow people to proactively find plots of land.
Jonny Britton, co-founder of LandInsight, said: “Our product makes all the hard stuff easy. Individuals and companies don’t need to know how to extract data and visualise it. We’ve done all that.
“This is just the beginning. We want to bring industry up to speed, and drive the price down of the data, so that it’s not just large developers who can access the data.”
Backers include the people behind Episode1 Ventures, Simon Murdoch and Damien Lane, as well as experienced property professionals Paul Higgs and Uplift Property, which itself is backed by entrepreneur Justin Walters. Seed VC funds Seedcamp and Pi Labs also participated in the investment round.
Uplift Property’s Shaun Sabet was introduced to the LandInsight team by entrepreneur Justin Walters (founded, built up and exited Investis). Sabet’s background was in buying land and he said they invested because, “what they’re doing is what I used to do on Ordnance Survey systems. I used to do it all manually. What they’re doing brings the whole process all together”.
Sabet added: “The guys themselves were very investable. The product brings eveything together to work out whether the plot is viable or not, without going to different sources. It allows us to make a call very quickly on whether to move forward or not. Really really useful.”
With the capital now invested, Britton focus is, “all about the execution now. We’ve received huge interest from the industry but we need to knuckle down on where we can add the most value in preparation for our launch at the end of September”.
He added: “The first release will be the most simple way to find and assess land for its housing potential. What is currently a 3 hour job becomes 15 minutes on LandInsight, saving loads of time and removing the huge opportunity cost for anyone who wants to find their own sites and conduct top level analysis, no matter the size of the site.”
“The result will be a big change in the way that property is developed, by more people for a growing and more diverse population. Individuals who wanted to do this but didn’t know how can now get started.”
This funding comes on the back of breakout 6 months for ‘PropTech’ start-ups in the UK, with crowdfunding sites (both for loans and equity), online estate agents and new property apps all launching and receiving investment.