Kylie Davis: (00:02)

Welcome to the Proptech Podcast. It's Kylie Davis here, and I'm delighted to be your host as we explore the brave new world where technology and real estate collide. I passionately believe we need to create and grow a sense of community between the innovators and real estate agents and sharing our stories is a great way to do that. The aim of each episode is to introduce listeners to a proptech innovator who is pushing the boundaries of what's possible and to explore the issues and challenges raised by the tech and how they can create amazing property experiences.

Kylie Davis: (00:34)

My guest in this episode is Peter Gibbons CEO of Openn Negotiation. That's Openn with two Ns, a West Australian sales negotiation platform that creates competitive, private treaty sales. Now Openn's special sauce is that it uses the psychology of an auction in a digital environment while offering the control of the private treaty process. Like all good proptechs, the concept was devised over a bottle or three of red wine. But as we discuss in this episode with the COVID-19 lockdowns continuing and increasing in some states, there's now more need than ever before for agents to be transparent with buyers and to look at ways to create even better experiences for sellers. So here to tell us more about it, Peter Gibbons, welcome to the Proptech Podcast.

Peter Gibbons: (01:24)

Thanks so much Kylie. Much appreciated.

Kylie Davis: (01:26)

So Pete, we always start on the Proptech Podcast with your elevator pitch. So nice and tight, what is the elevator pitch for Openn?

Peter Gibbons: (01:34)

Look, it's very simple. Openn Negotiation is a process and a price negotiation platform. It allows qualified bidders on properties to purchase those properties with complete transparency from anywhere around the world.

Kylie Davis: (01:48)

Fantastic.

Peter Gibbons: (01:49)

Yeah, look, it's controlled entirely by the agent. The process combines the ease of private treaty with the transparency of option and cutting edge technology. And that's really to ensure the best possible outcome is achieved on the sale of the property.

Kylie Davis: (02:04)

Fantastic. So what's the problem that Openn solves? Why do we need platforms like Openn?

Peter Gibbons: (02:10)

Look, the problem we went out to solve is a problem that's been around for hundreds of years, really around private treaty. All we were seeking to do was when a private treaty runs, essentially it ends up in two positions from a buyer's perspective, either I put in an offer and it was accepted. Did I pay too much? Or probably even worse, when the agent says to the buyer, "Put in your best offer, because I've got other offers," whether they believe that or not, the response is either, "Congratulations, you won." "How much did I overpay?" Or, "Sorry sir, you missed out. It went for a million dollars." And it's, "Well, I would have paid that, but you wouldn't tell me what I needed to pay." So that's really the conundrum that we were trying to fix, that lack of transparency.

Kylie Davis: (02:56)

And look, that's a problem for buyers. It's also a problem for agents, isn't it? Because if you've got a property with a lot of people interested in it, it's actually quite hard to get back to everybody, if you're the agent sort of being the centre of all of the communication managing that coms can be quite tricksy.

Peter Gibbons: (03:15)

Look absolutely. And you've got that lack of transparency, which generates a lack of trust as well. And people feel if they do miss out on the property that they love, that it was the agent's fault. Because the agent wouldn't be clear to me and honest to me around pricing, and this is what we're solving.

Kylie Davis: (03:34)

With the issue around buyers and transparency though, there's often raised as the objection, "Yes, but as an agent, I represent the seller." How does the seller benefit from [crosstalk 00:03:47]?

Peter Gibbons: (03:48)

The seller benefits enormously because it's competitive price tension. So instead of people trying to guess at what the price is, they see that there's somebody else interested in the property and they're competing against them. So where it generally works exceptionally well is the reality is that under competition people will pay more, and the reason they will pay more is they have social proof that they're not overpaying.

Peter Gibbons: (04:15)

Quite often buyers will say, "Look, I paid a full price or probably even paid more than I thought I was going to pay. But the reality is I could see there was somebody $1,000 behind me so I was comfortable in paying that price because I was paying fair market price." So from the seller's perspective, time and time again, it works extremely well because they're getting that competitive pricing tension. And they're also getting it in a very defined period of time. Unlike a private treaty that could sit on the market for two, three, four or more months, under Openn Negotiation, it's run to a four week period so they'd get a response very quickly. No more extended home opens, those sorts of things.

Kylie Davis: (04:55)

Right. So you guys have originated out of Perth, aren't you? You're based in WA ... so a shout out to all our Perth listeners ... so how did you start? What got you into it?

Peter Gibbons: (05:08)

Look, fascinating. My background's investment banking, but I started developing technology about five or six years ago and I was selling my home. The agent that I used over a glass of red wine, we sat down and lamented the problems with this private treaty, private sale process and that lack of transparency. And so over that bottle of red, we said, "Well, why don't we try and solve that problem?"

Peter Gibbons: (05:33)

We had our first sale in sort of mid 2017. We've now got almost 4,000 properties run through the platform. So it's been a meteoric rise, but it's taken a lot of investment in technology and time and resources and agent feedback. And buyer feedback, seller feedback. Asking, rather than trying to invent something that we think the market needs, we've listened to the market and given them what they've told us that they need.

Kylie Davis: (06:05)

Fantastic. I always had in my head, obviously incorrectly, that Openn was a auction platform. Tell me how that might've come about.

Peter Gibbons: (06:14)

Thank you so much, Kylie. I think that's probably the key. We get thrown in as an auction platform. Now, the reason that's come about is absolutely fair, that because we create transparent price discovery, because we let people know what other people are bidding, it falls under auction law. So I guess we're a hybrid between private treaty, private sale and the auction process. And so technically we fall under auction law, but what we're doing is in most cases, really just following the traditional sales methods.

Peter Gibbons: (06:49)

People are signing fully legally binding contracts. The difference being the price has been taken out of that contract and the price is discovered through the platform. So think of this as a hybrid between the two. We're constantly being compared with traditional auction platforms, which are great. I love auction. So but they're generally live streaming and existing auction, whereas we're more competitive private treaty, if you think of us that way.

Kylie Davis: (07:17)

Right. And so inside Openn, there's always a four week period. Is that correct?

Peter Gibbons: (07:26)

Completely up to the agent. They choose the time but the beauty of Openn is if you think of an auction, if they get an offer early, it falls straight back into this non-transparent process of taking offers and does everybody know? Under our technology, if it's reaching a price that the seller says, "Look, let's go. I want to sell." You just bring it forward. The technology allows the agent to do that so you could run it as early as tomorrow. And everybody's notified that's indicated interest in signed contracts.

Kylie Davis: (08:02)

If I'm a buyer, are all of my offers transparent to everybody else? Or does the agent have control over that?

Peter Gibbons: (08:12)

Agent has complete control. So again, like a private treaty process, the agent will accept the offer, the price excluded. So don't worry about price, buyer. We will find that, but let's get your contract and your terms agreed with the owner. And that might be subject to finance or extended settlement, $50,000 deposit, whatever. So it creates a lot of flexibility and that's what we like about private treaty, that you allow the widest possible amount of people to compete. Auctions are traditionally 10% deposit, unconditional, which limits the amount of people who participate. So again, we're picking the best pieces of those two processes.

Kylie Davis: (08:57)

It's interesting that it came out of WA because I mean, my understanding, from my CoreLogic days, is that Perth people hate auctions, that they tend to stand back with their arms folded. So what's the adoption been like?

Peter Gibbons: (09:09)

Look, it's been fantastic. And look, if you take the CoreLogic numbers where weekly we're selling two or three times or more what auctions are currently selling in the West Australian market, you're absolutely spot on. Not only Western Australia, but most parts of the world hate the concept of standing in a backyard and saying, "Look at me, I've got this money," or whatever it is.

Peter Gibbons: (09:31)

So yeah, and it's a low market too, and has been for quite some time. So we probably picked the toughest market to trial and work out Openn Negotiation, but that's been of great benefit. Because the reality is if we can make it work here, we can make it work anywhere and it's working tremendously well.

Kylie Davis: (09:53)

What's your business model? Are you subscription-based or are you [inaudible 00:09:56] of the sale or how does that work?

Peter Gibbons: (09:58)

Interesting. Having the fact that my founding partners are agents, the number one law was keep the agent absolutely central to the process and do not touch their fees. So our model is a pure upload model, which generally sits under vendor paid advertising. So it's $500 plus GST to upload and run a property through the platform. Interestingly, because of the scale that we're now receiving and traction, we are looking at other models. We've been approached by very large partners around creating a subscription model so we're very open to that.

Peter Gibbons: (10:39)

To us it's about because we're capturing such a unique depth of market data, for us it's about scale now. We've proved the process. We proved people love it. Now we need to scale out in a fashion that's sustainable. So we're now investigating subscription models and other models. The reality is we've got buyers and sellers at a time where they really need a whole bunch of services, the whole industry that sits around a real estate transaction. So banks, insurance, companies, utilities, all these groups are approaching us now as well.

Kylie Davis: (11:16)

Is that the data? I was curious about that mention of the data that you said you had, what does that look like that you're seeing?

Peter Gibbons: (11:26)

Look super exciting, for the first time in real time, we're capturing depth of market data that really has never been seen before. It's not just us saying that, it's the large data groups telling us that. So on an anonymized basis, which is obviously very, very important, and encrypted basis, we're capturing every bid, every bidder, how many times they bid, the bidding increments. At what point did bidders drop out the process? Who went on? What was the standard deviation?

Peter Gibbons: (11:56)

So all this fascinating information that can really start creating lead indicators in the market. So it's not a backward looking data, it's a real time data. As we scale and that becomes statistically significant, that's the exciting piece for us. That's what we really want to jump into.

Kylie Davis: (12:16)

How could agents use that data? I can see that that would be amazing data for insurance companies or movers or banking even, or finance. Is there a way agents can use it?

Peter Gibbons: (12:28)

Oh look, absolutely. Under the Openn Negotiation platform, when a property uploads onto the platform, the agent receives all that detail and the unique detail specifically to that property. we've got a really interesting thing around observers as well. People who are interested in that transaction, but not necessarily buyers, who are potentially future buyers or future sellers, they can come on and observe the property and the agents encourage them to do that so they'll send it out to their database.

Peter Gibbons: (12:58)

So they might have 30, 40 people watching who are now a great listing tool for them. So they can then go and approach those people and say, "Look, you've just watched it. I press a button. Here's a digital bidding timeline that I can send to you. You can see there was four bidders who missed out, who were in your price range, in your area. Would you like to come and talk to us about your property?" So that information in real time is providing great value to the agents as well.

Kylie Davis: (13:24)

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Kylie Davis: (13:55)

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Kylie Davis: (14:36)

So look, this is becoming a pretty competitive space though, isn't it? Like we had Dave Stewart from [Market Buy 00:14:43] on the show and Kate Chalk from Reso, and also in the auction space Pete Matthews from Realtair because he's got auction now. And I know that there's Gavel out there. There's a whole pile of businesses that are playing in this space. How is Openn similar or different to them? What do you see as your differentiation?

Peter Gibbons: (15:05)

Look, in their own ways, they're all different. As I say, we can easily differentiate ourselves from the likes of the Gavels and the Auction Now, so sorts of groups who are live streaming an existing auction so it's very much an auction process. The Resos and the Market Buys will themselves say they're a offer management system. So that transparency around pricing is not there. The buyers don't get to see what the actual prices are.

Peter Gibbons: (15:36)

So again, we sort of sit in the middle of those two processes and we're unique in that way, in that we've sort of got the best part of the offer management process, but we've got that live transparency. The pre-contracting and managing those contracts through the platform is of enormous benefit, but also is that price transparency. So we're kind of unique in that way and that's our unique value proposition.

Kylie Davis: (16:02)

Just so I'm clear, with Openn the price is always visible to people who are making bids or offers.

Peter Gibbons: (16:10)

Absolutely. When they've signed a legally binding contract and their contract and their price is accepted, they are on the platform. Other people who are interested in that property can see that as well.

Kylie Davis: (16:23)

And these are only at the end or is that during the process? So if I'm interested in the property, do I have to sign up ... I'm interested in the property and I have to sign a contract to say I'm going to be making offers. And then my offers are visible?

Peter Gibbons: (16:37)

No, so you're able to see it, and this is the interesting part of, I guess, the buyer's psyche that starts evolving out of a process like this. That when a bidder puts in a bid, the agent generally says to them, "Look, you can put in a low bid. Put in where you're comfortable. Don't worry about that for the moment, but because others could see that and will see value at that price, that's going to encourage more buyers onto the platform. You might want to put in a higher offer to frighten them off."

Peter Gibbons: (17:06)

So when people see value, they look at that and they say, "Okay, at that price, I'm really comfortable. I'll contact the agent," which happens automatically through the platform when they put in a pending bid. Get their contract signed, they're into the process. It can't sell without them having the opportunity to better the price.

Kylie Davis: (17:25)

Right. Sorry to go into that. I'm just kind of really curious about it because it's all the psychology of an auction, isn't it? But without it actually being an auction, all the mind tricks.

Peter Gibbons: (17:38)

It's the psychology of the auction without having to sit in the backyard. You can sit here with your partner and have an honest conversation about what you're going to do next in the comfort with your lounge room anywhere in the world, as opposed to the anxiety of standing in a backyard.

Kylie Davis: (17:54)

I know that we know that a lot of proptech technology has been invented with the benefit of red wine. I'm slightly worried about the number of properties that are now going to get sold with the benefit of red wine. Maybe it's why this [inaudible 00:18:06] guys are a part of our team. But what if the seller wants to accept an offer that maybe isn't the highest price, but has better terms?

Peter Gibbons: (18:22)

Yeah, look, and that's a really good question and a question that gets asked all the time. And this is where the agent is just so intrinsic to this process because they become very, very good at negotiating terms. When a bidder wants to put in an offer, they say things like, "Look, the other bidders are unconditional or they're not subject to 80% finance. Can I recommend 70% finance? So can I recommend a shorter settlement period?" All those sorts of things.

Peter Gibbons: (18:55)

Once a seller agrees to those terms, they should be absolutely ambivalent to who wins because they're comfortable with those terms. And it's a really important question because people say, "Well, why can't I just accept the cash offer?" Because the reality is ... and I was watching one just last Monday, I think, where there were 75 bids over the reserve price. It was quite incredible. The end buyer was actually a cash buyer, funnily enough. But they never would have gone that high had they not been under competitive tension. It's not fair to then turn around and accept a lower bid just because you want those cash terms. The seller is comfortable with the terms, then it's a shootout on price.

Kylie Davis: (19:43)

Fantastic. I just have visions of couples selling homes through platforms like Openn and watching 75 bids over reserve happening. I'm just wondering how drunk you'd be by the end of that price, if it's going on for a week or two.

Peter Gibbons: (20:03)

It's back to that social proof. They're actually comfortable bidding at a level that others are comfortable bidding at. Even if they are subject to finance, it's almost an instant valuation. Because the first thing a valuer looks at is the bidding timeline, which is automatically generated by the platform and market value is willing buyer, willing seller. So under competition, there's people bidding at that.

Peter Gibbons: (20:26)

And on the very, very rare occasion, like normal private treaty where they haven't been able to secure finance, you've got all the details of every single bidder and where they're at prior to that. So it provides the agent with an enormous amount of information that helps them sell the property.

Kylie Davis: (20:45)

And I guess a lot of security around the deal not falling over or things like that as well.

Peter Gibbons: (20:51)

Oh look, and that's absolutely critical that they've got the comfort that once they've secured a buyer, they will complete. Also, and it's another important around the technology, we saw during the COVID period a lot of platforms fail and particularly at crucial times in a sale process. We've literally invested millions of dollars in the technology and built out such a secure technology through, we can scale to 100% of the market and we have no downtime whatsoever. So I think in the COVID period downtime was less than a second.

Kylie Davis: (21:26)

Wow, okay. So look, I know that you're in WA and so COVID's not a thing for you right now, but it's still very much a case on the East Coast. We're still quite exposed to it. So what has the adoption been during COVID?

Peter Gibbons: (21:47)

Oh look, tremendous. You never want to benefit through such a strange situation, but the reality is we've been inundated with approaches of people who probably in the past have said, "Look, I like the process, but I don't need to do anything different." They're now saying, "Okay, there's a different way of doing things." And we're actually having record months of upload, record months of agents trained. So I guess it's just been a bit of a wake up call to widen the view as to what's available in the way of selling property.

Peter Gibbons: (22:20)

Because what we're finding is not only is it great for buyers to be able to sit at home and actively negotiate on the property through the platform, because of the pre-contracting which other platforms don't do, it means you've got a very highly qualified purchaser prior to even showing them through the property. So rather than having a home open with hundreds of people, you can say to the five people who have been engaged enough to sign a contract and put in a pending bid, they might be the people that you actually show through the property. So it streamlines that whole process.

Kylie Davis: (22:56)

Is it a way to, you know, selling properties off market seems to be a really big trend at the moment. Is there a way you can align it with that?

Peter Gibbons: (23:08)

Look agents have been doing that. They've been just going to their database and saying, "Rather than run this as an entire campaign, we'll put it out to the people." They could run an unconditional cash open negotiation if they wanted to. So they're all working at different ways of how to use. And we always say we're simply an enabling tool, how they use that enabling tool to best benefit their business and the uniqueness of their business.

Kylie Davis: (23:36)

Does Openn connect in with CRMs or does it play nice with other platforms or what's your philosophy around that?

Peter Gibbons: (23:40)

Oh look, absolutely. As I say, at the end of the day, we're an enabling tool. We're a technology and we've created a process in that technology. So we've got an API gateway and that receives property data from the CRM solutions out there. Our API is designed along the same format the CRMs already use for the major portals. Those gateways provide real time feedback to the portals. So the whole process is seamless for the agent. So we're getting a lot of CRMs now approaching us to integrate with us, using our API gateway.

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Kylie Davis: (25:04)

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Kylie Davis: (25:23)

What's your growth been like? Like how big are you guys now?

Peter Gibbons: (25:28)

It's interesting we sort of had our KPIs in the beginning, we're now over a billion sales. We're seven figure turnover. We've got about 34,000 plus users now on the platform. We've had about 25,000 plus bids on the platform. We've just gone into New Zealand, and again, that was COVID driven. That wasn't the intention. The intention was to focus on Australia, but we'd been inundated by Kiwi agents wanting to use the platform. So we're now selling properties in New Zealand.

Peter Gibbons: (26:04)

We've had approaches literally from all around the world so we're currently dealing with South Africa and the United States. Our major focus now is Australia and getting that traction to, I guess, get statistically significant in relation to that data.

Kylie Davis: (26:20)

Look, at the recent proptech panel, where we talked about life after COVID, Chris Rolls from PieLAB ... and shout out to Chris ... talked about some issues that he saw around the technology investment in sort of negotiations on auction platforms. And his argument summarised was that auctions are a uniquely Australian thing and that they're only focused on a small proportion of the market. And that because of that, the prize for investors is really small. So what's your response to that?I mean, I guess Openn's sort of auction psychology but not auction basis. How would that translate to scale into other markets?

Peter Gibbons: (27:06)

Yeah, look, absolutely. And shout out to Chris too, I don't know him but I feel like his commentary, he really does understand.

Kylie Davis: (27:13)

He's a smart man.

Peter Gibbons: (27:15)

Smart guy and I appreciate that kind of feedback. Look, I couldn't agree with him more. It's really interesting. And as you say, we started in WA, which is not an auction state, and that's why we've tried to create competitive private treaty. By way of example, I mentioned they're getting approaches from all around the world, no one around the world uses auction. So I completely agree with that logic. The US is a really good example where we're dealing with one of the largest real estate organisations in the world. They're really keen and they're keen to run a pilot with us for the States. I think we're running one in LA, in Seattle, in Connecticut and Florida.

Peter Gibbons: (27:59)

Now, initially their response was exactly that kind of response of, "Look, auctions don't work. A, auctions don't work here and B, auctions are associated with mortgagee sale." And we said, "Yep, totally get that. We are running your traditional sales method with an enabling tool that creates transparency around the pricing."

Peter Gibbons: (28:20)

Now, when you create that change in mindset, all of a sudden those barriers drop away. In fact, the world group we're dealing with, with their Californian offices, they said, "Look, we don't need to hear about this. We've tried auction platforms and they don't work." And then we explained and the penny drops. "Oh, so you're not an auction platform. You're the traditional way of selling real estate with an enabling tool that helps us around that issue." Everyone sees it an issue around transparency in pricing. So I agree, auction is a very limited market, but traditional private treaty, private sale's a very big market, and that's the market we play in.

Kylie Davis: (29:03)

Fantastic. So look, what do you think? We always ask our guests on the Proptech Podcast, Pete, what they think the next five years holds for real estate. So what does your crystal ball say? What are you seeing?

Peter Gibbons: (29:16)

I guess it's the industry and I'm incredibly excited because agents are looking for new ways to do things. The old model, I wouldn't say it was broken, but there was certainly room for improvement. Now agents are actively looking to technology to assist them in their improvement. I think the reality is the good agents are going to become great agents. They may not necessarily, and it'll be interesting to see. I think the agents that sell one or two properties will drop away, but those who are committed to the industry will do exceptionally well. Because there's probably going to be a smaller pool, selling more real estate.

Peter Gibbons: (29:56)

There is always a central role for agents and so they will never be removed, but it's been the ones who are up to date with technology and utilising all the technology in the best format for them to deliver great results. So I'm really buoyed by that. I'm excited. There's some great technology. You mentioned ActivePipe earlier, they're doing really well. There's virtual tours, there's all this sort of exciting stuff that's now starting to come together like a jigsaw puzzle and create this really powerful value proposition. We're only going to see more of that and that's what we [inaudible 00:30:32].

Kylie Davis: (30:34)

Very cool. There's some great innovation coming out of Perth, like [Voltari 00:30:36] are Perth based, you guys are Perth based. Who else is over there that we might not have heard of?

Peter Gibbons: (30:42)

Look, they'll be coming. We were just funnily enough, chatting to the Volt guys the other day, we've got a tremendous product. We're linking up with probably more on a national and an international level with technology groups, where we're all about our best way to get traction and to get scale is through partnering and that just makes sense. We are speaking to a lot of the young technologies. We're also speaking to a lot of the large groups, both national and international, where our technology marries well with their technology. So we're always on the lookout of how can we integrate with other platforms that provide the agents with more tools to sell property?

Kylie Davis: (31:26)

Fantastic. What's on your roadmap? What does the next couple of years look like for Openn?

Peter Gibbons: (31:31)

Look, really interesting. It's all about scale now, as I say that the process has been proven. Agents, buyers, and sellers are all telling us that they love it. It's about training more agents. It's about continual improvement in the technology so that it can auto train the agents so it's really just simply there for them to use as a tool.

Peter Gibbons: (31:54)

It's all about scale now so looking at other monetization models that will allow it to get to a wider market. Dealing with the data providers in how can we create useful ways of giving that data back to the markets? As I say, we're receiving a lot of international recognition and international interests. So in parallel with the focus on Australia, proving up Australia, scaling out Australia and then identifying and capitalising on those international opportunities.

Kylie Davis: (32:25)

Fantastic. Well look, best of luck with that Pete. Thank you so much for being on the Proptech Podcast with us. It's been great hearing about Openn.

Peter Gibbons: (32:33)

Thanks so much for the time. Appreciate it.

Kylie Davis: (32:35)

That was Pete Gibbons from Openn Negotiation and I'd heard a lot about Openn before I had the chance to virtually meet and speak to Peter. A lot of that was actually misinformation that the platform was an auction platform, but I think their mix of private treaty or private negotiation with the transparency of all parties being able to see the latest offer, and the fact that they call each offer a bid is actually where that had sprung from.

Kylie Davis: (33:01)

It's especially interesting that the concept has come out of Western Australia because the WA market has always been resolutely auction phobic, with some of the smallest auction numbers in the country. But as Pete said, if they can make it work there, they can make it work anywhere. And it is becoming widely known across the Eastern states and also into New Zealand. But the fact that we're seeing so much activity in this negotiation platform space, we have Market Buy and Reso all taking off, demonstrates the need for better workflows and greater transparency, that making this part of the transaction clearer, offers.

Kylie Davis: (33:38)

Now, if you've enjoyed this episode of the Proptech Podcast, we would love you to tell your friends or drop me a line either via email at kylieatrealcontent.guru, via LinkedIn or on my Facebook page. You can follow this podcast on Spotify, Google Podcasts, and now Apple iTunes and all major podcast platforms. We're on seven altogether. I'd like to thank my audio support, Charlie Hollins, the fabulous [Jill Escudero 00:34:03] and our sponsors Smidge Wines because everyone deserves a smidge, Direct Connect, making moving easy and HomePrezzo turning your data into amazing marketing content.

Kylie Davis: (34:16)

If you are a proptech and would like to meet like-minded proptechs, find out more about Australian proptech by joining the Proptech Association Australia. Google us, you'll find this easily. I've linked to all of our supporters in the show notes. Thanks everyone so much until next week. Keep on propteching.