Landlords are embracing technology solutions from South African proptech software developer and service provider, Quoin Online.
The company, led by co-founders Karen Miller and Wayne van der Vent, has developed technological platforms which help its clients to market and rent out property space, as it connects landlords to tenants who they’d battle to find normally, or to sell buildings.
Quoin’s clients have included industrial logistics landlord Fortress, the largest property company in Africa: Growthpoint Properties, Texton Property Fund, Spear Reit and private groups Blend, Mowana, Horizon Capital and Ingenuity Property Investments. The platform has also been used by various banks, including the likes of Nedbank, FNB and Standard Bank, to dispose of their non-core properties and branches.
Quoin’s software enhances the efficiency with which properties are sold and rented out and is an impressive addition to SA’s commercial property industry.
“We have created an online marketing and transactional tool that is efficient in bringing product to the market via systems integration, that expands the market reach through online resources and that creates transactional engines for new product offerings. Quoin is addressing the single biggest problem facing landlords; getting product to market, swiftly and efficiently,” says van der Vent.
It is landlords who will need to find product offering solutions in 2022 and onward, Miller explains, but these can only reach optimal efficiencies when the engines that drive the transactions become faster and cheaper than the traditional methods.
Quoin spent years perfecting its offering before taking it to market. As the world went through the Covid-19 pandemic and South Africa’s commercial property market found itself in a difficult position where tenant failures became prolific and others tried to reduce office space as their staff wanted to work from home, being a profitable landlord became incredibly difficult.
On top of this, landlords are battling through difficult and uncertain economic times compounded by political instability. But if they have access to the appropriate technology, their everyday operations can become seamless, Miller says.
Initially, clients embraced Quoin’s online platform’s brokerage functionality. Clients placed their properties on the site which would then grant them better access to brokers and buyers. Then as the need to trade properties more actively has increased, clients have progressed to white label solutions. This gives landlords a company branded sales and rental platform, allowing the landlord to manage rentals and sales directly; interfacing with tenants, buyers and brokers via its online presence. This gives tenants, buyers and brokers direct access to the landlord’s vacancy and sale stock with photographs, videos and property information available at the click of a button. Online offers are able to be placed, allowing for a seamless, online transactional process. This makes landlords’ rental and sales operations far more efficient than they were a few years ago.
Quoin markets the properties to the investor market and has systems which manage this process with respect to the broker market so that landlords have access to correct people for each deal.
Van der Vent says there needs to be a paradigm shift in commercial property where landlords come to understand that using software technology will be cheaper than traditional methods of managing property sales and rentals. Not only can it cost less in terms of money but also landlords can save hours of time.
The cost of a vacant space has increased in the past three years from six or seven months to in excess of 12 months of income. More efficiency can drive various costs down, improving net operating income.
“The Quoin product is highly attractive for a variety of reasons. A landlord could list on the Quoin site and sell a portfolio of properties which they had struggled to find the right buyer for in the past, wasting resources on weak marketing strategies. They could also ask us to create a bespoke product specifically for them,” says van der Vent.
Quoin Online’s clients, which include some of SA’s largest landlords, are able to INTEGRATE, MARKET AND TRANSACT.
Clients who sign with Quoin Online will negotiate fee structures which suit their specific needs and the outputs which the platform achieves for them. These landlords who sign with Quoin Online will find themselves in good company alongside other property owners who embrace the best technology in their industry.