The recent Future of Proptech lunch held by the REINSW was attended by a host of startups innovating in the real estate space. With just $20m in funding locally, many are bootstrapping, have private investment or are plugged into fintech incubators.

Below is a quick summary of their ventures and how to find them:

MadeComfy

Started by Sabrina Bethunin and Quirin Schwaighofer, MadeComfy is a property management innovator focused on the short term rental market. MadeComfy manages investment properties including overseeing their furnishing, advertising, cleaning and maintenance and guest management. The innovator has more than $7m in funding and partners with real estate agencies to allow them to offer short term rental options to landlords. Check them out to offer additional short term letting options to your landlords, but don’t want the hassle of your PM team trying to do it themselves.

Snug

Serial entrepreneur Justin Butterworth created Snug after selling an earlier venture to Stayz for $29m in 2011. Snug makes renting easier by addressing a host of pain points within the rental space, including ways to connect high quality tenants with properties and property managers more seamlessly and rethinking bonds.

BoxBrownie

The pouring rain of Sydney left Peter Schravemade from BoxBrownie at the airport in Brisbane, but the startup is one of the darlings of the National Association of Realtors accelerator program in the US and definitely worth a look. BoxBrownie is a photo editing studio/platform that specialises in real estate photos. Need to sunny up a grey sky? Click. Need to add furniture to an empty property or strip out the clutter of the tenants. Click. Jobs are paid for individually and are ridiculously affordable. Every agent in Australia should be using them.

OurProperty

This all-in-one property management platform is creating a splash in property management circles. Originally starting as OurTradie, the platform allowed property maintenance jobs to be requested, quoted, approved, executed, checked and paid in one place. Now OurProperty is branching into other tools that save time and create enormous efficiencies for PMs including an alternative to trust accounting. Talk to Kate Pearson to find out more.

Realm

Realm is a clever mobile app that behaves as communication central – allowing agencies to have their own channel, the latest statistics and data on your selected suburbs. It also incorporates content from pretty much every supplier and has some neat features like polls and chat so every update is in one spot. Even better, it’s free. Started by Patrick Hill.

Cribz

Peter Esho gave me a quick run through Cribz last week and it is love at first sight. This is a powerful innovation for project marketers and developers and takes the pain out of capturing leads from your website or any marketing. It’s AI then nurtures and profiles the leads, and delivers a consistent stream of useful content marketing to them to keep them in the loop of your development. If you sell off the plan, do yourself a favour.

Rundl

One of the great bugbears of real estate is that the transaction flow is manual. Rundl changes that. Rundl pulls all the documents, deadlines and important information together into a secure digital space so your sellers, buyers, agents, brokers and lawyers can see exactly where everyone is up to, and receive alerts when things look like going off track. Why isn’t everyone using it? Phil Mitchell is the contact.

RealAR

RealAR lets you to see what you’re buying before it’s built. The clever augmented reality app can be downloaded to any mobile phone and once done, you can walk around a new building plan or design. The potential for off the plan sales is obvious. Cofounded by Dan Swan.

Managed

Managed is a property management tool that removes the need for ‘app stacking’ and multiple subscriptions. It's a proptech that delivers an end to end solution for PMs to manage maintenance, pay bills, inspect properties, manage leases and run admin. It also claims to eliminate the need to run a trust account. Reach out to Nick Bouris.

Realtair

The secret sauce that is reportedly behind The Agency, Realtair calls itself an ‘ecosystem’. It allows real estate agencies to have everything they need to run, manage and monitor the business within one centralised dashboard. The system supports sales admin, business tracking and property management. Peter Matthews is managing director.

Hashching

Possibly more fintech than proptech. But we’re going to let Hashching through on the basis that in the post-Royal Commission market, finance is hard and sales fall over when it’s not sorted. Hashching is Australia's first online marketplace for home loans. It allows consumers to access great home loan deals without having to shop around. It’s completely free to use and directly connects consumers to verified mortgage brokers who can further negotiate a better rate from lenders. In these times of deals falling over due to finance, agents need to have the link to these guys. Reach out to Mandeep Sodhi

Kohab

Kohab is trying to change the way we find property. It asks buyers to focus on their property goals and creating dream boards about their ideal homes and sharing them with friends. It’s property made social and feels more like Instagram than realestate.com. It’s currently free to trial so worth checking out. David Dawson is CEO.

Sohoapp

Soho is a new property listing platform proptech where it’s free to list property. Its other difference is that it is a native app that connects real estate agents – or anyone wanting to sell or rent a property – into a network of 17,000 renters and buyers. Check out Trent Muffett’s Carpool Interviews.

Centre for Liveability

Not many innovators can boast the research upon which their business is based is ticked off by the CSIRO. But CSIRO were so impressed they bought the company. Liveability is a framework that enables the real estate industry to simply and effectively identify an additional 17 property features that make a home ‘liveable’. It integrates the value of those features into the sales and marketing of the property. Started by Cecile Weldon, getting your agents trained in this system is a must if you’re looking for ways to increase the skills of your team and differentiate yourself in your local market.

HomePrezzo

Getting a shout-out from Chris Rolls was a highlight of the Proptech lunch for Nathan Krisanski who was at the lunch in spirit. HomePrezzo is a clever marketing platform that pulls through CoreLogic’s property data into engaging short videos. It allows agents to share stats about their suburb and properties for rent or sale. The startup is also now producing reports and working with larger groups on centralised deliveries. A free trial is available.

Keen to find out more? Check out the Innovators disrupting property management.