Online property platform Lintil, which promises to streamline the homebuying process by connecting buyers with mortgage brokers, solicitors, surveyors and others all in the one place and at cheaper rates, has launched in Ireland.
The service, which is free, is the brainchild of Emmet Creighton, a former property and corporate solicitor, who runs the First-Time Buyers Ireland page on Facebook, and Jonathan McLaughlin, a former science and technology lecturer.
Once users have found the home they want to purchase, Lintil provides them with a virtual assistant to guide them through each stage of the purchasing process.
Because it can negotiate at scale, the company promises discounted quotations from mortgage brokers, solicitors, insurance companies, property surveyors and more.
Users can also track the progress of their various applications while availing of various tools and information about the process.
Lintil said it already had 3,000 members in Ireland and hoped to have 6,000 by the end of the year, which, it said, equated to approximately 10 per cent of the buyers’ market. It has 26,000 members in the UK.
Confusion and stress
It said it had secured up to €1 million in funding from several private backers.
"We are delighted to officially announce Lintil entering into the Irish market," Mr Creighton said.
“The traditional way of buying and selling a home has barely evolved over the last 40 years and is almost entirely done offline, requiring buyers to co-ordinate between several different parties, causing unnecessary confusion and stress,” he said.
Mr Creighton formerly worked in the private client department at a leading Dublin legal firm, buying property in Ireland for high-net-worth, non-tax-resident individuals. His idea was to digitise this service for the average homebuyer.
“Lintil simplifies the home-buying journey by providing an easy-to-use online platform where they can manage their entire experience, and easily get access to the best service providers in the market,” Mr Creighton said.
Large-scale negotiation
“I will get you cheaper insurance, a cheaper solicitor, a cheaper mortgage than you can get on the high street because I can negotiate at scale,” he said.
“We’ve had an overwhelming response from homebuyers contacting us to sign up and tell us they have been waiting for a solution like this for a long time,” he said.
“ We ran trials for months before the launch and are extremely confident that our virtual home-buying assistant will dramatically improve what, before this, was an arduous process,” he said.
New research from the Banking & Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI) says there were 46,131 mortgage approvals in the 12 months to April 2021, valued at €11.2 billion – the highest aggregate sum since it started collating the data in 2011. In addition, the BPFI study indicated it could take until 2024 before supply comes close to demand.
