Buying or selling your home can be time-consuming and frustrating. Tyre kickers, fake bids and the slow grind of the conveyancing process, among other things, can all combine to make the experience highly stressful. Now a new consumer technology is banking on making such frustrations a thing of the past.
Offr, developed by the former Allsop Ireland and BidX1 director Robert Hoban, in partnership with the veteran auctioneer Philip Farrell and the IT specialist Niall Dawson, aims to cut average time it takes to sell a property from five months in Dublin, and seven months regionally, to just three months nationwide.
The software will connect estate agents to banks and solicitors to ensure that all the documentation required for a property’s sale, including title deeds, are ready before it goes on the market.
Sitting on estate agents' websites, Offr will store bidders' identities and proofs of funds in advance of the acceptance of any offers, in an effort to improve the transparency of the sales process.
Prospective buyers can use their smartphone to book a viewing, make an offer, pay a deposit, connect to a solicitor and sign contracts. Bidders will also be instantly notified of any new offers on the properties they are pursuing. Sellers can also track the progress of a sale on their mobile device or laptop, with alerts about new offers, upcoming viewings and updates on legal documentation.
Offr doesn’t, however, purport to deliver that holy grail of property transactions: getting a home from sale agreed to sold in jig time.
