PropTech software for land development: the tools you need to succeed

With new housing supply currently lower than the government’s target of 300,000 per year, plus the commitments attached to the 2050 net zero target, it is clear that the UK will need to accelerate the provision of new, greener homes. It is expected that land development PropTech software will play an increasingly important role in identifying the high volume of suitable land needed for this acceleration.

In August 2020 a whitepaper was issued by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government as part of a major overhaul of the planning system. A copy is available for download here. Among the many changes proposed, an assertion was made that technological innovation would play a central role in improving access to information and data. This in turn would facilitate better decision-making and increased productivity. Proptech SaaS providers like LandHawk have since coalesced around this ambition:

‘Local plans should be built on standardised, digitally consumable rules and data, enabling accessible interactive maps that show what can be built where. The data will be accessed by software used across the public sector and also by external PropTech entrepreneurs to improve transparency, decision-making and productivity in the sector.’

What are the benefits of using our PropTech software?

Put simply, software like LandHawk not only speeds up the process from the outset but it also brings a number of competitive advantages. By investing a relatively small amount of your budget into our service, our customers are able to identify, select or rule out potential development opportunities far more quickly, efficiently and accurately. Furthermore, through our Workspace area the project data can be interrogated, shared and actioned among all relevant stakeholders, thereby increasing transparency, limiting the possibility of duplicated effort and ensuring that everyone has access to the same versions of the information.

Ultimately, though, it is the standardisation and accessibility of data which is key to PropTech’s success. With a single combined dataset, brought together from numerous disparate sources, as well as a high level of detail delivered against every land parcel in England and Wales, our customers can now identify a potential opportunity in seconds based on their own land suitability criteria.

Our service is so versatile that you can either use our PropTech software yourself or you can instruct us to search for potential sites and automatically fill your pipeline of development opportunities. We also offer several data APIs that can be integrated into your own applications, each of which have been curated by our in-house team of geospatial experts.

If you have specific suitability criteria for the type of properties, buildings or infrastructure that you are looking to build, this is where the flexibility of our PropTech software really comes into its own. With our SiteFinder tool you can plug in your own criteria, search for specific sites over a large area and LandHawk will simply return all the relevant land parcels, scored from low to high in terms of development and environmental risk constraints. The selected parcels can then be saved into your dedicated workspace area for follow up. Take a look at the video at the end of this article to see how it works.

If you don’t have the in-house resource to search for yourself, we can provide this service for you and fill your pipeline with as many parcels as you need. We are much more than just a platform!

How does our Proptech software give you a competitive advantage?

Finding off-market land has, in the past, been a long and convoluted process. However, by using PropTech software such as LandHawk, it is now possible to streamline most of the heavy-lifting through data consolidation and automated scripts. This in turn allows your teams to spend a greater proportion of their time on negotiating and pushing through the land sale deals.

Through our platform you have access to unlimited title deed and ownership information as well as constraints data, planning detail, land use information, proximity to local amenities, price paid data, sales value and much more. 

In fact we have over 100 live datasets, many of which we have developed into data ‘mashups’ which automatically calculate competitive intelligence such as buildable area and price per square foot.

LandHawk also has the ability to export maps and detailed insight reports in either csv or PDF formats. These outputs can be customised with your company logo and delivered in digital or printed format for further consideration. 

To find out more about LandHawk why not book a demo?