Property rental is saying goodbye to the middleman
Presenting the P2Property project, Thomas Fink, project coordinator and director of Qoob(opens in new window), says, “the aim of the project was to introduce a service whereby medium-to long-term property renting could be booked as easily as booking a hotel room.” As a result, one key P2Property goal was to develop an enterprise-level mobile app that would enable both landlords and tenants to interact in an intuitive and seamless way without the need for intermediaries such as agents. Another two were to market the app in Europe and the United Kingdom and develop a process through which tenants and landlords could receive payments in a trusting and secure manner.
Introducing Qoob
The project developed Qoob, a technology platform that enables users to rent property directly through their phones – making real estate agents a thing of the past. “It will make property transactions cheaper, faster and globally consistent,” notes Fink. It removes the middleman in favour of a peer-to-peer participatory model and is currently available for download from the App Store and Google Play. One of the key features of this app is that it lets users list and search for properties, giving them immediate results. This is because there are no estate agents involved in the process. Additionally, “from the onset homeowners and tenants can communicate directly,” emphasises Fink. The result of this autonomy is that they can now rent a home in days instead of waiting for months. The app also allows owners and tenants to set the terms that best suit their needs. What’s more, users can pay and collect rent within the app through their bank or mobile banking as it has the ability to track payments. This means greater transparency and trust for users.
Overcoming challenges for a brighter future
“The cost and effort required to launch Qoob into a crowded marketplace was a greater challenge than what we had expected,” reports Fink, who adds, “we simply underestimated the capital required to make an impact against other property applications and to attract the attention of our target users in their busy daily lives.” Regardless of this, the project worked twice as hard to achieve the results they expected as well as to manage their budgets carefully. This in turn meant they had to scale down on some of their expected plans in Europe that ended up beyond their financial reach. Project partners are currently raising the finance needed to complete some of the European marketing tasks they had to scale back on, as well as for supporting day-to-day management costs. Fink further notes: “As the project and business are stable, it is our goal to continue to attract new users.” P2Property is also looking at how the app can be white-labelled for specific corporate use as well as focusing on particular target populations like expat students. On a final note, the coordinator adds: “If you have a well-planned business model, a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck you can achieve your goals, especially if you find and participate in some of the European Union funding schemes.”
