 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Letting agent, Real Estate, Technology |
| Founded | 2012 |
| Founder | Darius Bradbury Adam Hyslop |
| Headquarters | , England |
| Website | www |
OpenRent is an online letting agent and property service provider, founded in 2012. It is a UK-based startup company focused on technological solutions to property rentals. [1] It claims to be the largest letting agent in the UK based on number of properties, boasting over 5 million users as of 2022. [2]
OpenRent was founded in 2012 by two University of Oxford graduates, Darius Bradbury and Adam Hyslop, after experiencing the difficulties as both private landlord and tenant in the UK property market. [3]
In 2015, OpenRent had the largest number of advertised properties for UK agents, ending the year with more than 2,500 monthly listings. [4] By 2021, OpenRent had let over 500,000 properties. [5]
Investors include Rocket Internet who invested £4.4m in 2017, [6] and Northern & Shell who invested media for an equity stake in June 2014. [7] [8]
An estate agent is a person or business that arranges the selling, renting, or managing of properties and other buildings. An agent that specialises in renting is often called a letting or management agent. Estate agents are mainly engaged in the marketing of property available for sale and contract reassignments, and a solicitor or licensed conveyancer is used to prepare the legal documents. In Scotland, however, many solicitors also act as estate agents, a practice that is rare in England and Wales.
Buy-to-let is a British phrase referring to the purchase of a property specifically to let out, that is to rent it out. A buy-to-let mortgage is a mortgage loan specifically designed for this purpose. Buy-to-let properties are usually residential but the term also encompasses student property investments and hotel room investments.
The private rented sector (PRS) is a classification of United Kingdom housing tenure as described by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, a UK government department that monitors the national housing supply.
Rightmove plc is a British company which runs rightmove.co.uk, the UK's largest online real estate property portal. Rightmove is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
Connells Limited, trading as Connells Group, is a British estate agency and property services company headquartered in Leighton Buzzard, and a subsidiary of Skipton Building Society.
A letting agent is a facilitator through which an agreement is made between a landlord and tenant to rent a residential property. This is commonly used in countries using British English, including countries of the Commonwealth. In the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, the agreement between landlord and tenant is normally formalised by the signing of a tenancy agreement. A letting agency normally charges a commission for their services, usually a percentage of the monthly rent.
Nestoria is a vertical search engine for real estate. In terms of users, Nestoria is the 5th largest property web site in the UK and the 9th in Spain.
Globrix was a UK real estate search engine that was launched in January 2008. It was launched as a joint venture with News International, publishers of The Sunday Times, The Sun, The Times, The News of the World and Thelondonpaper.
Northern & Shell is a British publishing group, founded in December 1974 and owned since then by Richard Desmond. Formerly a publisher of pornographic magazines including Penthouse and Asian Babes, it published the Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday, and the magazines OK!, New! and Star until these were sold to Trinity Mirror in February 2018. Northern & Shell also owned three entertainment television channels: Channel 5, 5* and 5USA until 2015. It owned Portland TV, which operates pornographic TV channels including Television X and Red Hot TV; the company sold Portland in April 2016.
Turo Inc. is an American peer-to-peer carsharing company based in San Francisco, United States. The company allows private car owners to rent out their vehicles via an online and mobile interface in four countries and new corporate owners to rent out their cars in France in addition to the four previous countries.
Wimdu, powered by HomeToGo, is an online marketplace for booking lodging, accessible by website and mobile app for iOS and Android. The company does not own any lodging; it is merely a broker and receives commissions from every booking. It is set up as a "clone" of similar websites. Wimdu searches and redirects users to the website that has the relationship with the lodging provider such as Expedia, Booking.com, HomeAway, Vrbo, Hotels.com, TripAdvisor, FlipKey, and Airbnb.
Robin Klein is a British entrepreneur and investor. He was until 2015 a venture partner at Index Ventures and co-founder of The Accelerator Group, an advisor and investor in early-stage companies. In April 2015, he and his son, Saul founded LocalGlobe, a seed stage venture capital firm.
RadPad was a photo-based mobile application for home and apartment renters. RadPad's assets were acquired by the owners of LandlordStation on December 31, 2016. As of October 2016, renters could no longer pay rent through the app. Pay With RadPad, however, was relaunched under new ownership in March 2017. In March 2014, RadPad was the largest rental service in Los Angeles, and the second-largest rental market in the country. RadPad also offered additional real estate products such as renters insurance, credit reporting, and lease signing. Operations ceased in 2021.
Lamudi is an online real estate marketplace with operations in 34 countries.
Foodpanda is a Singaporean online food and grocery delivery platform owned by Berlin-based Delivery Hero. Foodpanda operates as the lead brand for Delivery Hero in Asia, with its headquarters in Singapore. It is currently the largest food and grocery delivery platform in Asia, outside of China, operating in 11 markets across Asia.
Rocket Internet SE is a German Internet company headquartered in Berlin. The company builds startups and owns shareholdings in various models of internet retail businesses. The company model is known as a startup studio or a venture builder.
Purplebricks is a British online estate agent which operates in the UK. Founded in 2012 by Michael Bruce, Kenny Bruce and David Shepherd, it is backed by investors that include venture capital firm DN Capital as well as Neil Woodford, Paul Pindar, and Errol Damelin.
OnTheMarket.com is a United Kingdom property portal similar to Rightmove and Zoopla. In October 2023, it was announced that the firm would be acquired by CoStar Group for £99 million. On December 12, the Washington, D.C.-based property data company reported having completed the purchase of OnTheMarket plc.
Property technology is used to refer to the application of information technology and platform economics to the real estate industry. Property technology overlaps with financial technology, including uses like online payment and booking systems. Grammatically, the portmanteau "proptech" is formed from two common nouns: "property" and "technology." As such, capitalizing it is grammatically incorrect.
LandlordZONE is a UK-based organisation running the UK's largest online landlord property website.