Buying and selling a home is one of the most stressful things you can do in life. With new technology, start-up business Hiizzy is hoping to disrupt the traditional estate agency market, save sellers some serious cash and tackle youth homelessness at the same time.
First things first, we had to ask about the company name ‘Hiizzy’, which was officially launched on 18 March this year by experienced lawyer Lewis Buckley and businessperson Allan Wood.
It’s taken from the slang term for house, “hizzy”, but the duo added an “i” to represent people coming together in a community and “cutting out the middleman”.
And in this case, it refers to completely removing estate agents from the process of buying and selling a property.
This could be music to the ears of homeowners, who have seen the amount of agent fees rise by nearly a quarter in the last five years. With these fees coming in at an average of 1.5%, home sellers are forking out around £3,500 for their service.
It’s no wonder people are turning to cheaper online estate agents, with 7.2% of house sales made through them, according to data from Statista.
But Hiizzy wants to go one step further. It might seem an ambitious aim, but 57-year-old Buckley and 50-year-old Wood say the market is ripe for disruption, with its new online marketplace offering buyers and sellers a platform for the estate agent-free process.
And, as well as saving people money, it also tackles youth homelessness.
How Hiizzy works
If you want to buy or sell your property using the new marketplace, you sign up and create a profile through the Hiizzy website.
According to the founders, the easiest way of setting up a profile is by using your smartphone, much like you would with Airbnb – a business model that has inspired the formation of Hiizzy.
Your property could then be listed and available for fellow Hiizzy users to make a bid on in just three minutes – if you have your photos ready to go – according to the partners.
As part of the process, you select the asking price, with assistance from AI technology, which also helps with creating the description of your home.
The AI technology creates the property listing after you answer a series of questions relating to your home, including, “What do you like about it?” and “What is nearby?”.
To work out the dimensions of the property, a video of your home with your phone creates a floor plan, saving time on drawing that up yourself.
However, once those aspects are created by the AI technology, you can still amend or edit them as you wish before submitting them.
Flat fee begins at £395 for ‘early adopters’
At the moment, it is free to use and will continue to be for the first 500 listings as part of Hiizzy’s ‘early adopter’ offer.
This will then rise to a flat fee of £395 once the first 500 listings are reached.
In theory, this sounds so easy and cheap, but with so many established estate agents on the high street and an ever-growing list of online alternatives, how does this new marketplace intend to leave a mark on the industry?
“Fundamentally, what this is [is] about choice, giving people choice where this is a tough place for people at the moment”, Buckley tells YourMoney.com.
The retired lawyer, who has 30 years’ experience helping local and international clients on trust and regulatory disputes, adds: “People are feeling the pinch. Interest rates have gone up and people can’t afford stuff and there’s a crisis going on for people’s finances.”
The fire to bring change to the industry was lit at a chance meeting over a house sale.
In September 2022, Buckley and his wife were each selling their respective homes before moving in together. After Lisa advertised her property on a Facebook group, Wood’s son Harrison and his partner Kerrie saw the ad and ended up buying it, without the involvement of an estate agent.
After Harrison met up with Buckley and his partner and negotiated a deal, the sale went through “absolutely fine”.
By comparison, the other property was listed with an estate agent, but Buckley recalls the frustrating experience with the transaction, during which he and Lisa “ended up doing much of the work themselves”.
“And [to] cut a long story short, we decided there’s got to be a better way”, Buckley, who retired in 2021, says.
That “better way” involves embracing new technology to help speed up the house selling process.
Wood, who works in finance and leads the global business development operations at Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland, says: “What we’ve got with this is an amazing piece of tech. And what’s really exciting about it is what’s under the bonnet.
“We’ve got generative AI in there and all sorts of stuff to help you with writing your property description and so forth. And, obviously, to produce a platform like that takes quite a lot of time, work and effort.”
The legal nuts and bolts
That’s the listing sorted, which many people can do themselves, but what about the legal side of things, as well as the administration process?
“It’s part of the future roadmap to build a complete one-stop customer journey”, a spokesperson tells us.
“Currently, when making an offer, buyers are asked to confirm they have instructed a conveyancer themselves, and then during the offer process through the platform, buyers and sellers are able to negotiate, exchange solicitor details, etc.”
They add: “Buyers and sellers are asked during the offer-making process to confirm that they have instructed conveyancers or for buyers, that they have a mortgage in principle offer agreed.
“Hiizzy’s future development plans include being able to offer the full customer journey for those users who want it, and is building relationships with trusted national partners for legal and mortgage services so that this is something that can be built into the platform as a feature at a future date.”
One element it will be offering sellers is an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). To “put the seller in the drivers’ seat”, the platform will find your EPC rating if you have one, but if not, it’ll help you arrange a certificate yourself.
Putting the seller in control also means once the listing is published, you can share the URL with your social media network, online or wherever you wish to prick the ears of a potential buyer.
This also extends to arranging viewings, which can be communicated through the 24/7 chat feature and organised through the calendar provided by Hiizzy.
Further down the selling process, Hiizzy says it “takes sellers and buyers through the negotiating and offer process within the platform, and they are asked to upload the contact details of their conveyancers or solicitors at this stage.”
Once an offer has been accepted by a seller, both parties’ legal representatives are notified, and then they pick up the process and draw up the sale contracts.
So sellers are in the driving seat and there are limitations for the new business, but one of the big boons is that Hiizzy doesn’t stop you from listing the property elsewhere should you wish to do so.
There are currently 62 home sellers signed up to the marketplace, but 570 registered users at the time of writing – i.e., people who have created a free account, and some of these are in the draft listing stage.
Also, the locations targeted by Hiizzy are currently focused on London and Jersey “as a starting point”. If you do not live in those areas, you can still make a bid, as long as you are signed up with a profile.
‘Estate agency market has it by the throat’
Buckley, who lives in Jersey, says: “The world… we stepped into is a world [that is] dominated by the estate agency market, which has it by the throat. They completely control it.
“And we don’t think that’s right. We don’t think that’s fair, and we don’t think their fees are justifiable. For example, private sellers cannot advertise their properties on some other online estate agent websites once it’s been put up for sale. So there’s a massively self-protected industry going on here.”
Buckley adds: “And we think that it doesn’t need to be that way. The estate agency world hasn’t changed in 150 years. This is a market that’s ripe for disruption.”
Liverpudlian Wood says: “With more and more people becoming digitally enabled, more people are becoming empowered to do things themselves. We think this is perfect timing for a product like this, to help people do this themselves to save thousands and thousands of pounds.”
And they want to rip up other traditions of the home buying and selling process too, with ditching for-sale signs.
Buckley and Wood consider this to be “too much like the old way”, due to it not being very eco-friendly or time-efficient in their eyes when it comes to manufacturing and installing the boards.
Aimed at young professionals but open to all ages
The target audience is young professionals, says the duo, but the founders insist it can be used by anyone who is comfortable making digital transactions.
Wood continues: “My parents are never going to use Hiizzy, they don’t even have the internet so that’s not going to happen. But my daughter just bought a property at 20 and loves the idea. I think from 20 onwards, right through to 60. Anybody can use it, and you can list your property on a mobile phone, there’s going to be older people that are comfortable using it, so why wouldn’t you use it?”
Wood explains that he and Buckley anticipate between 2% and 15% of the UK market could end up selling through Hiizzy.
Profits to tackle youth homelessness
One further aspect of this new business that the pair hopes influences other companies entering the space is what Hiizzy does with its profits.
Once the £395 flat fee is charged to customers, the donations begin and the start-up will send 10% of its revenue to help tackle youth homelessness.
Buckley says: “145,000 kids last year were either at risk of or homeless [according to Government data] – that’s one every four minutes. We think that’s an absolutely terrible statistic.
“So we fundamentally believe that empowering people, giving people choice and building what we call property with purpose is, in other words, this charitable aim through property transactions is an absolutely golden opportunity to change the world and do something really, really good.”
Wood adds that when they sign commercial contracts, they will also try to influence big corporations to follow suit with an equal charitable commitment to homelessness.
That gesture is “all part of the upsetting of the estate agent apple cart”.
In Wood’s eyes, “this industry has never been disrupted.”
“Whenever you think about buying or selling a house, you think ‘oh, I’ve got to go see an estate agent.’ That’s just simply not true. You don’t have to do that.”
