The move comes as the platform gears up for more secondary market activity in the aftermath of the UK’s decision to leave the EU. Investors can now place orders for shares on the Property Partner resale market, making the process of trading shares simpler and more efficient. The new functionality is set to launch in early September, and is currently on trial with a small group of dedicated users.
Property Partner investors are currently able to list shares on the secondary market at any time, at a price of their choosing. These shares then have to be actively purchased by an investor for whom the price is right. But the new bidding engine will allow for the two sides of the market to be matched automatically. Investors will be able to see what share prices are listed, what prices bidders are willing to pay, and what others have recently paid. Users can also see a 30 day trading history, as well as any outstanding orders that have yet to match. And of course these users will have access to official valuation metrics for each property, which come from RICS Chartered Surveyors.
At the start of July, just a few weeks after Brexit, we started to see some discounts opening up on Property Partner’s secondary market. Property Partner CEO Daniel Gandesha said at the time that the company had an opportunity to place more emphasis on the secondary market over the coming months. He revealed to us then that a bidding engine was in the works.
11 days removed from Brexit, a mere 0.33% of Property Partner shares were trading at a discount to their original listing price. 99.32 per cent of these offers were snapped up within a few days, and the platform expects trading to function even more smoothly with the added benefit of the bidding engine.
Gandesha offered his thoughts: “We built Property Partner to make it easy for anyone to invest in property. A bidding function holds true to that vision by improving price discovery and liquidity - allowing users to enter and exit the market at the click of a button, with confidence. We also believe at Property Partner that we can make the property market fairer for everyone - and that means giving a voice to both buyers and sellers.”
A number of Property Partner’s more active investors had in fact pre-empted the new bidding engine by scripting bidding functions of their own design. One such investor, Pavel Reich, says that the there are often great deals to be found on the platform’s resale market, and believes that the soon-to-launch bidding engine will make investment “even simpler”.
Property Partner has seen over £34m invested through the platform since launching in January 2015. The company closed a £12.9m Series B round in March of this year – which was led by Octopus Ventures. Octopus joined existing investors Index Ventures and Dawn Capital in backing the platform.
