After launching earlier this year, digital property platform OpenLot has gone from strength to strength, with the pandemic playing to the portal’s strengths.
OpenLot shows potential buyers vacant blocks of land with the portal offering matching house and land options.
At the moment it only operates in Melbourne, and has seen as uptake in customers as the city is locked down.
“Whilst many businesses have suffered devastating losses as a result of the pandemic, OpenLot has gone from strength to strength because of it,” Founder and CEO, Qi Chen said.
“This has been supported by the HomeBuilder Grant which created three times the search volume around house and land on Google in the last four months.
“Adding to this growth, developers and agents are recognising buyers are staying at home searching online, as opposed to visiting display offices, which has encouraged them to adopt new platforms such as OpenLot.”
Qi Chen started his career at Realestate.com.au and worked at REA before launching the platform early in 2020.
He describes OpenLot as “a one stop shop” in which “finding the right builder and home design, dealing with land settlement delays, separate mortgages for land and building, knowing the conveyancer, fencing and landscaping and of course – finding the perfect housing estate” is simplified.
“Many consumers already know what they want, while the portal provides additional valuable information such as settlement tracking, social updates, related news, nearby schools, historic land prices and nearby housing estates,” he explained.
The website has over 23,000 active new home visitors per month on the platform and currently partners with several leading businesses in the industry.
There are plans to expand to NSW and Queensland within the next 6-12 months.
