Earlier this week I travelled with my family home to my parents place (Karlskrona) to celebrate Christmas (starting with a few days of remote work). To my surprise, the first thing I see opening the local paper (BLT); is a story about a new App (Huskolla) for the residential market! Brilliant.
In the photo: Fredrik Malmros, CEO Infotrader & Nicklas Platow CEO Rapparna.
Background
Even if I was surprised to see the article it came as no surprise when reading about who was behind it. The company InfoTrader has been around for over 10 years creating information services for, among others, the property industry. In cooperation with Rapparna, a newly formed app consulting firm in Karlskrona, they have started the company Huskolla AB which owns the app.
Benefits
First of all the app is free to download from AppStore (an Android version is to be released). After installing the user is able to search among all single family houses and summer houses in Sweden (in total some 2 million properties) by entering an address or using the map.
When clicking on a property an information screen appears.
The data includes:
* property name (id)
* plot size
* building area
* address
* assessment value
* latest change in ownership (price & date)
* Residents name & telephone number
In the menu to the right a number of extra services could be purchased:
* detailed property info (75 SEK ~ 8 Euro)
* value approximation (85 SEK ~ 10 Euro)
* neighbourhood data (49 SEK ~ 5 Euro)
* property boundaries (22 SEK ~ 2 Euro) See screenshot above.
The data covers all single family houses and summer cottages in Sweden.
No commercial buildings or farms.
Of course, it also includes augmented functionality.
My Thoughts
To my knowledge this one of the first services (regardless of App or not) that for the public makes it extremely easy to find the property name, size, assessment data and so on. (There are a number of professional services that shows more detailed info but also demands an agreement from the government to use.) There is a service provided by the Swedish Land Register, but it cost 50 SEK per report and has no mapping functionality.
What I find most interesting is that the name and telephone number is displayed. I've never seen a service (for the public) that displays this data. However, as stated in the App it isn't the 'titled owner', instead it is the registered resident in the building (in Swedish 'folkbokförd'). In other words, this data is not extracted from the Swedish Land Register.
It will be interesting to follow how this service (and other like it) will evolve in the future. The potential in apps will for sure unlock lots of interesting data.