Independent agents offered live-streaming PropTech platform

The Federation of Independent Agents has announced its latest partnership - this time with a live-streaming viewing service called Gavl.

The platform enables estate agents to host live viewings and interactive chats with potential buyers at the same time. 

The Gavl link can be hosted on the agents’ website and then promoted across social media channels. A recorded link is also made available post-viewing for those that couldn’t make the original broadcast. 

An FIA-member agency, Oakwood Homes, has already piloted the platform and says its physical-viewings-to-sales ratio has reduced as a result from almost 19:1 to around 9:1; and the agency’s physical-viewings-to-lettings ratio is down from about 10:1 to 6:1.

“In one week we held 19 live stream viewing events which attracted 55 viewers, 17 interactive chats and two valuation requests” says Oakwood’s managing director, Andrew Dickson.

The Federation of Independent Agents, now just over a year old, is a membership organisation which aims to give its members the scale of financial leverage with suppliers enjoyed previously just by large-scale corporates; it has set up a number of partnerships, including one with the fledgling portal Homesearch.

FIA founder Graham Lock says of the new partnership with Gavl: “Estate agency is changing faster than ever before. The change is being driven by a post- COVID world and a subsequent variation in the behaviour of consumers and agents alike. 

“Livestream viewings have been available for some time in various guises but now there’s a real focus on using them as an extremely efficient and modern way of showing property to many people in one go.”

And he adds: “PropTech has been around for some time now, with various services coming and going but I have a feeing that Gavl is one that’s here to stay so I’ve agreed to an exclusive partnership whereby our members can enjoy the platform at discounted and exclusive rates.”