8 INDUSTRY NEWS
Yourkeys founder named Young Entrepreneur of The Year
The founder of Yourkeys, Riccardo Dawson, at just 28, won the Young Entrepreneur of The Year award at the 2019 Best New Business Awards. Dawson, originally an architect, switched
careers to become sales director for Shape, a mid-sized builder of new homes. It was there he witnessed, first-hand, the “painful and convoluted sales process for all parties” which led him to coin the phrase “The house buying process is not exactly broken, it just doesn’t work.” While architects are not typically known
for their entrepreneurial spirit, Dawson nevertheless set about “trying to revolu- tionise an outdated industry, and put the consumer back at the helm of buying the most important asset of their lives.” His self- confessed obsession of identifying things that were poorly made or did not function correctly, was the catalyst to him trying to solve that particular problem by creating the
WWW.HBDONLINE.CO.UK
Yourkeys platform, that “radically changes the way new-build houses are sold and bought,” said Dawson. All stakeholders use one central
operating hub, with the buyer being fully involved in the entire buying process. This means that all communication between the developer, estate agent, mortgage broker, buyers conveyancing solicitor, sellers’ solicitor and surveyor, is “completely transparent, with everyone updated at every step of the process through visibility of the sales progression.” This streamlined journey automates many of the repetitive tasks, thus reducing costs and making the process a lot less stressful. Furthermore, the main benefit to housebuilders is to reduce the time it takes to reach exchange of contracts to just 21 days, compared to the industry average of 63 days. “This results in a dramatic decrease in the number of sales that collapse and helps to reduce the £1bn of resulting wasted
costs to UK housebuilders,” said Dawson. His view is that the ‘Prop-Tech’ sector has
“mainly been tearing lumps out of the estate agency business,” largely in the form of the digitisation of classified advertising and the homebuying process through online agents i.e. Zoopla, Rightmove and Purplebricks. Realising this, Dawson saw there was a
tremendous opportunity to disrupt the new- build sector through “revolutionary digitalisation, the way Google, Amazon and Airbnb truly disrupted their industries.” While admitting his vision is “pretty ambitious,” he believes Yourkeys has a huge global opportunity to become the leader in this space, through “dominating new-build property transactions.” Since the firm’s launch in October 2018 it
has already secured 24 housebuilder clients including Kier, Shape, Howarth and Joseph Homes. It is also in ongoing discussions with a further 27 housebuilders including Galliards, Bellway, Redrow and Barratts. Thought to be the only company
offering a sales progression platform, specifically aimed at new-build house devel- opers, Yourkeys is confident of securing over 100 housebuilders by the end of the year. This impressive traction since launching just six months ago means Yourkeys is set to “finally kick the new-build property buying process into the 21st century.”
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52
