Accommodation founder Aaron Short tells The Negotiator that his platform is in expansion mode including into the build-to-rent sector.
Hybrid lettings agency Accommodation.co.uk says it plans to expand ten-fold over the next three years, it has told The Negotiator.
The platform currently has ten agents each of which is similar to Purplebricks’ former ‘territory owners’ model each with local teams, but the company wants to get to 100 agents within the next 18 months and says it has a ‘significant pipeline’ of candidates lined up.
“This business only works when we make these agents money and therefore the best agents in the industry are attracted enough to join us,” says CEO Aaron Short.
“We’ve still got a long way to go but we’ve got landlords of all sizes singing up, so we’re really excited.”
The lettings agency, which operates in most of the UK’s big cities including London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds, also has a plan to expand into the build-to-rent sector, highlighting the sector’s extraordinary growth in the UK’s major cities and the opportunity it offers property management and lettings firms.
While some operators such as Grainger and Greystar prefer to run their blocks in-house, many including Sigma Capital outsource their tenant finding and property management to specialist PRS firms.
As a mark of its new move into this sector, Accommodation.co.uk last week appointed former Atlas Residential senior Georgie Harper-Wilde as Head of Build to Rent.
Short says this new part of his hybrid agency’s activities are still ‘under wraps’ but says the company has been doing deals with several of the major corporate players around the UK who are currently buying into the fast-expanding BTR sector.
“Along with our offering for smaller landlords with say one to five properties, we now have a product which appeals to players across all sizes of the private rented sector,” he says.
