Paul McNeive: Estate agents turning to proptech to help streamline wasteful work practices

David Murphy, the man behind Elinx, is a former colleague at Savills, and I spoke with him to hear more about the growing impact of technology in commercial and residential transactions.

‘The market is split between real estate companies and proptech companies’

He is a chartered surveyor with 25 years’ experience in agency, development and property technology.

Based between South Africa and Ireland since 2005, he scaled two proptech companies into South Africa, firstly BidX1, and more recently Offr, in his role as principal of Offr in Africa.

These assignments include building strategic relationships in the local market.

A sign of their success is that many of the country’s leading real estate companies are now using Offr’s technology.

Offr also recently “went live” with a project for the largest home loan company in South Africa, which sees 6,500 agents in 1,200 offices using Offr software to handle approximately 80,000 properties.

Now based in Dublin, Elinx is expanding its services into the Irish market and acting as a partner for Offr in customising the technology for local companies. Savills and Cushman & Wakefield are among the early adopters.

In Ireland, Offr is mostly associated with online auction technology – but that perhaps represents only about 10pc of Offr’s capabilities.

“The market is split between real estate companies, and proptech companies, who are disrupting the status quo,” he told me.

“Elinx sits in the middle. We understand the processes and nuances of both sectors, which gives us a unique perspective to implement the technology.

“I start each project by evaluating the estate agents’ workflow, communications and transaction management processes.

“Four parties – the agent, the vendor, the buyer and the solicitors – must all have an efficient experience. Elinx identifies inefficiencies and streamlines the entire transaction process.

‘Streamlining not only cuts out inefficiencies, but it increases profitability’

“Agents often use multiple systems, including CRM systems, to manually update and track information, resulting in siloed data.

“In property sales, agents spend hours manually updating spreadsheets, drafting reports, letters and emails, manually calling people and chasing documentation.

“Offr technology replaces thousands of notifications, phone calls and emails by automating client onboarding, reporting, viewings, enquiry and offer management, buyer/tenant qualification, generation and digital signing of contracts and payments.

“I find estate agents typically spend over half of their time on administrative tasks, such as chasing documentation and following up on emails.

"The efficiencies that arise from streamlining 90pc of manual tasks means agents can spend their time on what they should be doing – winning instructions, managing clients, managing buyers, selling properties and earning fees.

“Streamlining not only cuts out inefficiencies, but it reduces costs, reduces the risk of mistakes and increases profitability.”

“Real Estate companies tend to operate along traditional lines,” he concludes. “There is an assumption that everything is fine and a fear of changing systems. But Elinx is about adding efficiencies, with no downtime.”