We have come a long way since 2013. It is exciting to report that we have had over 1 million page views in the last year! Wow! However, the truth is this could be a lot more if we were able to advertise more housing stock on our affordable homes platform.
Over 1 million page views meaning we are well placed to help housing associations to reduce their voids
There is currently no centralised portal for housing associations to list their homes. Yes, there are property websites that do offer the facility, like us, to advertise homes nationwide. However, there will be locations where you will not be able to find any property listings.
With over 1 million page views over the last year we are well placed to support more housing association properties if they to choose to list their available homes with us. It is important to reflect how Rightmove and Zoopla came about, basically they started out (and still are) as the go to place for Estate Agents to list their properties.
We also know that housing associations will choose to advertise some of their available homes on these well established platforms too due to the reach they have. However, we believe there is an opportunity for housing associations to find tenants and buyers via our own property listing platform.
Nominations agreements with Choice Based Lettings (CBL) Schemes
Why are there no truly national platforms to support housing association properties? A lot will be to do with the fact that due to nomination agreements most if not all of their properties will be advertised via the Choice Based Lettings Schemes.
These platforms are run by different organisations across different regions. Whilst this is great from a local connections perspective, it can mean a lot more work in terms of adding properties to many different CBL schemes especially if you have properties in different locations across the UK.
The future of housing association property listings
There is definitely scope for us to advertise more housing association properties across the UK on our platform. The problem we face is a lack of supply. We get so many searches for available homes in many parts of the UK. At the same time there are successful local CBL schemes in place where they too have a limited supply of homes available for rent.
What would they prefer? Local websites or a national platform enabling to filter by their given search criteria? We will just have to wait and see how the market develops. Ultimately it is about serving the end users, in this case would be tenants and buyers.
