It’s been three years in development but early next week challenger portal Moovshack is due to go live, The Negotiator can report.
It is the brainchild of Mike Silver, who founded East Midlands estate agency Middletons in 2011 but sold it in 2015. He’s also a man who does not tire of explaining how his app is not a ‘challenger portal’ at all.
Instead, he says, it’s a smartphone app that enables house hunters to both find their next home and then communicate and transact with both the vendor or landlord and agent all the way through to completion.
The full launch, which will come later this year, will be a test of his belief that both agents and consumers are happy to let one home moving platform handle all the communication and procedural work required to progress a sale or rental, including both offer negotiation.
But Silver has the Coronavirus crisis on his side. He believes Moovshack’s ability to offer an arms-length digital way to buy or rent a home means it will appeal to a public wary of physical contact.
Whole journey
“For too long Rightmove and Zoopla have only been involved at the start of the journey and have not been interested or invested in getting the transaction to completion – whereas we are,” he says.
“People don’t care about proptech, they only care about their home-moving journey being as short and easy as possible.”
His team is due to set its systems live early next week and then will begin contacting the 3,000 or so agents who have expressed an interest in using the service and persuading them to sign up.
But the biggest hill to climb for Moovshack is getting consumers to use it. To do this, he’s signed a deal with the UK’s largest newspaper publishing group, Reach, to advertise the app across its network of 247 national and regional newspapers.
He also says his pricing model for agents is an advantage – agents can list for free on the app but only pay when they communicate directly with the parties involved in a sale or rental.
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