Revolutionizing Real Estate Development: LandTech’s Mission

Addressing the global housing challenge

We’re data people so we started to dig deeper, and what we found was eye-opening: consistent problems appearing in different markets all around the world.

Complex and unpredictable legislative frameworks, vocal opposition to developments from locals, inaccessibility of critical data, development financing hurdles, unbeatable competition for developable sites and lengthy project timelines, among others.

Essentially, it’s way too hard to do real estate development. Is it really all that surprising that there aren’t enough homes?

With that, we knew. The business we had been building for a decade was bigger than we realized. We assumed there would be at least some software solutions designed to tackle these problems, but you know what they say about assuming.

We found a few good things: GIS type mapping platforms, and a couple of options for real estate CRMs, but there was no other company that shared our ambition to build the tech infrastructure that would enable the creation of better places.

It was a big realization, and it was a really awesome one. We had already been solving these problems in the UK, and we had ready-made (or easily adaptable) software that would make an instant improvement to the lives of real estate developers and builders.

Entering the US market

We hit the research hard, looking for the market we could help the most, and although some Commonwealth countries were arguably the logical next step with their similar Land Registry system and planning legislation, the US market was crying out for a solution like ours.

Numbers wise, the US needed an additional 3.3 million homes to meet the deficit in supply, and that’s a lot of homes.

Thus, the decision was made. We raised a round of investment from some amazing Washington D.C and San Francisco based investors, and we joined the fight.

Our new LandTech HQ is in St. Petersburg, Florida, and while there is a shortage of affordable homes there, that wasn’t the sole reason we decided to to set up base there. If we’re being completely honest, we figured that if we’re going to work hard, we might as well get to do it from the Sunshine City!

LandTech's commitment to innovation and community

As co-founder, much of my DNA is still seen in the business, whether I like it or not.

I was raised in the North East of England. A place where people are friendly, banter is at the heart of everything, and family and friends always come first.

Since day one, and every day since then, I see these same values at LandTech. We’re a tech company, yes, but we put our people and our customers first. Without them we are nothing. So, we listen, we empathize, and we delight. It’s how we’ve always been and there’s no changing it. That’s the power of our culture, and I have no control over it.

We’re innovators who actually innovate. Our customers have a problem and we think of a creative way to solve it, and then we do it. We’re perfectly comfortable being on the front foot with new technology, and sometimes, we admit, it doesn’t work. Fortunately, most of the time it does work, and when it does, it changes the game. And that’s a trade off we’re ok with.

If there’s one thing we don’t do, it’s pass the buck. We face our responsibilities head on.

We’re here to make it easier for you to find land, so we built our product to bring together the complicated, difficult to access datasets that you need to assess development potential. We include the non-obvious, like Future Land Use, Demographics and Amenities and soon, we’ll have Site Plans and Rezoning Applications.

These datasets are hard to source, and require people way smarter than me to figure out how to do it (thankfully, LandTech has those people), but this type of data? Wow. It’s powerful. With it you can locate areas, trends, and lots for development like never before.

We’ve combined this data with an integrated CRM (we call it the Sites Pipeline) that enables you and your team to collaborate on a project while staying organized, and as I write this, we’ll soon release an end-to-end solution to finding contact landowner contact details and reaching out to them directly.

We've launched Give My View, a digital engagement platform designed to give a voice to the silent majority in your statutory consultations.

In the UK, we’ve built a development finance based tool that makes appraising sites easy and we have an online community where you can network with industry peers, promote sites, contribute to our product roadmap and stay up to date with the latest market trends. And it’s all coming to the US soon.

In summary, we've built the tech you need to find more leads than ever, make your teams more efficient, and increase your conversion rate with vendors, and as if that wasn’t enough, we’ve made it with user experience top of mind. That means you and your team can find value through a fast, intuitive interface and in as little clicks as possible.

I could talk about this topic for days, but I’ll pause here for now.

I hope that some of what I’ve said resonates with you. With a bit of luck and a fair wind behind us, I know that together we can revolutionize real estate development and shape the future of housing in the US.

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