Human-focussed digital property platform aiming to raise up to £1m through seed funding

An all-in-one personalised digital platform that guides first-time property buyers through the entire home-buying process is seeking investment following its Beta launch.

FirstHomeCoach – the brainchild of Ben Leonard, former HSBC Head of Financial Institutions, and Paul Carse, the former CTO of the Racing Post – offers bespoke guidance for prospective homeowners, many of whom lack knowledge of the house buying process, have a poor credit rating or struggle to save up a deposit.

The platform is aiming to raise £750k – £1m through a combination of angel and venture capital investment.

The investment will go towards further product development, staff hires and supporting a wider platform marketing campaign. 

At the heart of FirstHomeCoach, which is available online and soon to launch on app stores, is a human focus: offering digital coaching, via an online knowledge base and functional check-list, to individual users – including those most left behind by society and the property market – so that they can fulfil arguably one of life’s most important goals.

Specifically, it will coach users on:

– Deposit saving

– Credit scores

– Mortgages & Insurance

– House hunting

– Solicitors

One of the platform’s unique benefits is how it helps people use their data to help themselves. The plans for FirstHomeCoach landed the team a spot as one of six winners of HM Treasury’s Rent Recognition Challenge earlier this year, with the Treasury providing £100,000 of funding to help develop the platform as a result.

The business philosophy is one of collaboration, working hand-in-hand with leading mortgage brokers, insurance providers and legal firms to offer people an integrated marketplace of trusted and transparent products and services that will assist users every step of the way to buying a property.

FirstHomeCoach is launching as home ownership rates in the UK continue to fall, with the average first-time buyer now 30 years old. According to a recent study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the chances of owning a home in the UK have more than halved over the past 20 years. More needs to be done to reverse this trend.