PropertyWire speaks to Dan Lifshits (pictured, left), chief operating officer at Dwelly
As reported last week, Dwelly is a tech firm that’s purchased Hull estate agency Lime Property, while the plan is to buy or link up with a number of other agencies to transform them with technology.
Dwelly’s selling point, at a time where it’s quite the buzzword, is utilising Artificial Intelligence (AI) to streamline lettings and property management.
Dan Lifshits comes from a tech background, as he was the youngest associate at consulting firm McKinsey in Europe at the age of 21, as well as a board member and advisor to over 10 tech-based startups.
Unusually he previously rivalled his two Dwelly’s co-founders, as CEO Ilya Drozdov (pictured, centre) and CTO Dmitry Khanukov (pictured, right) worked at Uber in Continental Europe between 2014 and 2018, around the time Lifshits was working at its rival Gett.
During that period Lifshits describes being in “fierce competition”, as they would see each other at government roundtable discussions, before their careers diverged.
Lifshits would return to the UK while still working at Gett in 2020 as UK general manager, while Drozdov and Khanukov founded a property management firm called PIK rent or “arenda” in Eastern Europe in 2018, where they ended up with more than 10,000 properties under management. They would go on to sell the business in 2021.
The Dwelly name was established in 2023, though the firm now looks to be building up steam, after purchasing Lime Property, bringing 1,000 properties under management in the process.
“Where is there demand and supply?” Lifshits asks. “Where is the market fragmented? What is a market that’s an operational business but technology adoption is not where it could be?
“Long term residential property ticks all of the boxes.”
The technology
The plan with Dwelly is to improve the estate agency model by streamlining processes for landlords and tenants.
With property management, the firm will use automation and large language models, for example speech-to-text and text-to-speech technology, to extract details of property management calls and if an appointment was agreed.
On the lettings side, technology will connect people’s names to properties, while there will be tailored links for tenants to see the details of a home. There are 360 property tours, pictures, as well as room-by-room details.
Tenants will be more clued up than most, as there will be information on who the neighbours are, as well as points of interest like schools and shops.
References and tenancy agreements will be digitised, which Lifshits said should reduce landlord void periods to two or three days on average.
The purpose of purchasing Lime Property was to help Dwelly troubleshoot using its various technologies, before rolling them out across other purchased agencies.
“There are not that many estate agencies aiming to put technology as key pillars,” Lifshits says.
“There are great businesses, but a lot of the work they do is repetitive, like communications, admin work, updates and maintenance.”
The pandemic
While the covid-19 pandemic made business hard, Lifshits reckoned it may have actually helped Dwelly, as the industry became more receptive to utilising technology.
“People moved out of the city centres but tenants got more adoptive to things done online, such as referencing and tenancy agreements,” Lifshits explains.
“Some behavioural changes made the technology-led focus easier.”
Human element
While Dwelly is looking to identify areas where technology helps, the plan is to keep things old school in some places.
For example, the plan is to retain a people-first approach in inventories, as Lifshits still envisages the agent being there to hand over the keys to the tenant.
“It can never be a digital business alone,” he says. “How much can we empower people with the technology to do what they need to do in the most efficient way?”
Another example of where a human approach is needed is in disputes, for example the tricky situation where you need to determine whether a breakage at a property was the tenant or landlord’s fault.
Lime Property
When Dwelly bought out Lime Property, its managing director Sam Humphreys remained – and became a Dwelly shareholder.
Lifshits acknowledged that buying estate agencies is a “known game”, but said the approach is different from a private equity firm, as the management is being preserved and technology is at the heart of what’s changing.
Lifshits seems personally committed to the Hull project, having relocated his family to the city.
The current priority is building a reputation with brokers by proving that Dwelly is improving the estate agency model. Lifshits points out that the business leaders have a track record – having grown the European business to managing 10,000 properties in just three years.
Dwelly also hired Paul Jardine, who was previously former M&A director at LSL, then COO at Purplebricks, to ensure Dwelly is taken seriously.
Expansion plans
Lifshits says there’s a “hot pipeline” of agencies that Dwelly is looking to buy out.
“The plan is to keep building and growing the business,” he vows.
Asked if he’d consider expanding internationally, he says “there is a high degree of transferability”, though the focus is on the UK in the next couple of years.
Lifshits and the other directors clearly have lofty ambitions for Dwelly, as the company is just getting started in terms of its remit of reinvigorating the estate agency model.
