- Auctions and viewings have moved online since the pandemic
- Brisbane-based Little Hinges won startup proptech of the year
- They have grown to more than 25 staff, and are opening up in new regions
No doubt Covid changed much in our world, including the sale and marketing of property.
It comes as – perhaps – little surprise that last weekend’s auctions in Melbourne were barely affected by a lockdown, as they could move online. Something not thought viable a year earlier is now commonplace.
And so it is with virtual tours, with one of the largest providers, Brisbane-based Little Hinges, who saw a significant uptick in demand for their product over the past year.
Last week they also picked up the best proptech in the startup category for sales and marketing in the first Australian Proptech Awards.
“We have a unique view of virtual tour technology that is proving popular with agents. Through our real estate brand, Virtual Tours Australia, we’ve grown to over 700 active agents that we’ve helped with thousands of properties around Australia.
In the past 6 months alone, we’ve had over 1 million buyers through our tours.”
Josh Callaghan, CEO, Little Hinges
Little Hinges grew to more than 25 staff during the pandemic with technicians based from Cairns to Adelaide, and WA and other jurisdictions coming online soon.
Their product goes beyond a standard virtual tour to provide lead capture and data analytics that provide insights and qualified buyers to the real estate industry and their partners.
“Buyers are demanding virtual tours and you can see it in the statistics with hundreds of buyers engaging with every listing, spending more than 3 minutes on average checking out the house.
“It’s the most engaged type of digital marketing content I’ve ever seen. When you compare this to a passive 30 seconds spent on a video, at best, 3 minutes actively engaging in a virtual tour is amazing,” Mr Callaghan said.
The Proptech Association of Australia put together an expert set of judges from both real estate and technology backgrounds to oversee the awards.
Comments from the judging panel for Little Hinges read: “great initiatives in the product that look to challenge many existing elements of ‘dominant logic’ within the real estate industry”, and “smart platform that brings some blue ocean thinking to a competitive part of the market”.
