Rental Rewards, page-30

The competition is coming!!! AFR article this morning 23/6/2021
Interesting that Lui is seeing property management and partnerships with Agents as his point of difference.

Airtasker co-founder Lui bolsters listings app Soho

Larry Schlesinger

Jonathan Lui is taking on Domain andrealestate.com.au. PHOTO: DANIEL MUNOZ

Airtasker co-founder Jonathan Lui hasbolstered his property listings and services app Soho after acquiring rivalportal homesales.com.au as he looks to take on the established might ofASX-listed giants realestate.com.au and Domain.

Homesales, which was acquired fromtax depreciation specialist BMT, will add 300,000 listings and almost half amillion users to his three-year-old proptech platform.

Alongside the acquisition, Mr Lui alsocompleted a $1 million capital raising supported by family offices and wealthyinvestors.

With some overlap in listings, Mr Luisaid the combined portals would offer between 200,000 to 300,000 propertylistings at any one time to users.

‘‘Given there are about 280,000properties listed for sale [nationally], it means we have significant coverageof the market,’’ he said.

Mr Lui founded Soho after he steppeddown as Airtasker chief executive in late 2016 and moved to Singapore when hisfather-in-law fell ill.

He remains a shareholder inAirtasker, which listed on the ASX in March and whose market value has soaredto almost $500 million.

Real estate agents can listproperties for free on Soho and then upgrade to a paid subscription foranalytical data, lead generation and advertising.

Alongsidethe ‘‘freemium’’ listings model. Soho is also adding an end-to-end propertymanagement capability to its raft of services, which includes mortgage brokingthrough Westpac’s Uno Home Loans and industry partnerships with McGrath, PRDNationwide and The Agency.

‘‘Applicantswill be able to do their full rental application online and pay their rentthrough the app. At the back end, property managers will be able to manageeverything online,’’ Mr Lui said.

Mr Lui came up with the idea for Sohoafter going through the process of selling his own home in Sydney.

Like the dating app Tinder, usersswipe left or right on potential property matches. The more they rankproperties, the better their matches become.

Mr Lui said that although bigincumbent online listings players had their place, the ‘‘pay to list’’ modelhad not evolved much in recent decades.

‘‘The initial big bumper wave was themove from print to online, but that’s become stale and stagnant. Not much haschanged at all.

‘‘This is a $7 trillion asset classwhere only a few players cover it, but only from the listings point of view.’’

Mr Lui said the next wave was focusedon the ‘‘end-to-end’’ experience of buying and selling property.

‘‘This is [the space] where other[prop] tech companies and where we are playing,’’ he said.

‘‘We’re an early-stage business thatis starting to scale. The good thing is that we are part of a multi-billiondollar industry already, but with so much more room to grow.’’