“We Don’t Have a Tech Problem – We Have a Thinking Problem” with Sammy Pahal, MD of UKPA

🎙 We Don’t Have a Tech Problem – We Have a Thinking Problem

There’s a lot of noise in the property industry when it comes to “PropTech”.

New platforms, new tools, new promises about transformation… and yet, if we’re honest, much of the underlying experience for agents, landlords and consumers hasn’t changed nearly as much as it probably should have by now.

So where’s the disconnect?

In this episode of The Viking Chats, I sit down with Sammy Pahal, Managing Director of the UK PropTech Association, to get under the skin of that question — and the conversation quickly moves beyond technology itself.

Because, as Sammy explains, the challenge isn’t really about whether the tools exist.

It’s about how the industry thinks about them.

We explore the evolution of PropTech over the last decade, from a loosely defined buzzword to something that now sits at the heart of how the property sector is expected to modernise. But with that growth has come confusion — not just around what PropTech actually is, but how it should be used, who it’s for, and where it genuinely adds value.

A big part of that comes down to mindset.

Drawing on her background in psychology, Sammy talks about the human side of transformation — the reality that adopting technology isn’t just a systems change, it’s a behavioural one. It requires people to think differently, work differently and, in many cases, let go of processes that have been ingrained for years.

And that’s often where progress slows down.

We also get into the role of government, and why, despite the frustrations many in the industry feel, there has been a noticeable shift in recent years. From funding innovation to engaging more openly with the sector, there is a growing recognition that technology has to underpin the future of property — not just to improve efficiency, but to fundamentally reshape how the system works for everyone involved.

That spans everything from planning and housing delivery, through to the transaction process itself, where long-standing inefficiencies continue to impact both speed and experience.

One of the most interesting parts of the conversation is around scale.

Not just scaling individual PropTech businesses, but scaling the impact of technology across the industry as a whole. What role does government play in that? What barriers still exist? And how do we move from pockets of innovation to something more consistent and widely adopted?

We also talk about the formation of Real Estate UK, bringing together multiple industry bodies to create a more unified voice, and what that could mean for driving meaningful change — particularly when it comes to influencing policy and unlocking the next phase of growth for the sector.

And importantly, this isn’t just a conversation for “tech people”.

If you’re an agent, a landlord, or anyone operating within the property space, this is about the environment you’re working in and how it’s going to evolve over the coming years.

Because the tools are already here.

The question is whether the industry is ready to use them properly.

Transcript

Hello everybody and welcome to the latest episode of the Viking Chats podcast and I'm delighted to be joined today by Sammy Powell of UK Prop Tech Association. Sammy. Thank you for having me Chris, it's great to be here. So we are not strangers. We've known each other for, I was trying to figure this out the other day, is it about seven years? I think longer than that because UKPA officially started in 2017. So we're closing in on a decade. And I think you were one of the first members. Yeah. So yeah almost a decade as well. Yeah. Early doors. So let's just for those who aren't familiar with UKPA because I think on the residential side and we'll talk a bit more about this later but it does I don't think it has the greatest awareness so far on the resi side and particularly we've got a lot of agents that listen to the podcast. Can you tell us a little bit about what is UKPA and kind of what are its kind of core objectives? Yeah, of course. Yeah. So we're a not-for-profit membership organisation. Our mission has always been to drive digital transformation of the UK property industry. So when we talk about property industry, we're talking about all areas of the built environment, all kind of stages of the property lifecycle from design and construction to an extent, to transactions, to the actual development, to then property management and asset management. So we look at the whole property lifecycle. So it's PropTech in the broadest kind of almost truest sense, right? Anything that if it's property and it's technology, whatever that blend means, that's kind of what you guys are supporting. - Yes, and the second part of that mission is then to create a conducive environment for innovation, which is both looking at what we can do to support PropTex to grow and scale, make sure that they've got the insight, the guidance, the expertise, and the policy barriers are not there, but also then thinking about the end user, the clients on the property side, and how we're making sure that we're giving advice and guidance to them as well on how to navigate digital transformation more broadly 'cause they're never usually looking at prop tech in isolation, it's usually part of a wider strategy. So, you know, giving them platforms to engage with other professionals in a similar situation, as well as maybe experts to come in and talk about how you form that strategy in prickly oil prop tech. So, your role for those who, again, those who aren't familiar with you, what's your kind of role and responsibility within UKPA? So, managing director, which means essentially setting the strategy for what we do, how we deliver on those things. So, generally that looks like an events programme, educational, thought leadership, content, through written formal video form, and then working with government as well. So it's to set that strategy of what we do and what the membership proposition is. So our members are usually the prop tech companies and then investors in prop tech and as you know we work partly with the British Property Federation since we're part of the organisation now who have the property members. So yeah, so my role is really to think about the membership proposition and the strategy and to keep evolving that as the industry matures. Yeah so I mean obviously coming into this you have a massive background in tech and coding and software and that was that was your life before UKPA? Yeah not quite as you know. No so yeah I always say I'm not a techie, I'm not really a property person either. My background was in psychology. I studied psychology at university and I actually, only up until recently, thought, am I actually really applying the knowledge that I've got from psychology, my degree into what I'm doing now? But I would say quite confidently now that I am because when you're bringing in any change and the transformational change and technology is quite a big transformational change often. It involves people, involves processes, it involves trying to understand how to drive that change, how to influence behaviour. If you look at Anthropic, if you look at Cullord, the CEO, she comes from a background of arts and again psychology, which is really fascinating. I saw an interview, I was reading an interview, her name escapes me right now. It's really an interview with her the other day. And A, it's really exciting to see a female CEO ahead of a big tech company. So that's really exciting. An early stage as well, not someone kind of brought in later on. But I found obviously there is so much debate around AI. We're not going to dive into the sea of AI just right now. But it was really interesting because she was basically asked like, oh, you know, shouldn't you have like a background in computer science or coding and she was that actually I see kind of the the kind of battleground of AI right now is like the ethics of it and yeah What as a society like what are the objectives? What do we really want AI to do? for the benefit of society rather than Looking at it purely as a tool and like let's just do whatever like like rather than a scientific approach of let's just see how much it can do and kind of let it roam free and actually thinking more like a societal kind of viewpoint. So it's really interesting that there's that alignment with you guys. So tell us a little bit about your career because obviously you studied psychology. What did you do in the interim between graduating and UKPA coming up? Well, I worked at Ordnance Survey for about five years. So straight out of university, worked there from Southampton. So that's kind of, you know, - So you do have property background. - Kind of. - You know, I mean, I mean, geolocation properties have a location. I mean, they say location, location, location, right? - They do. - Whether it's commercial or residential. So it's a little bit tiring. - I have, yeah. And to be fair, you know, I'm kind of half-joking when I say that I haven't got a property background because the companies that I was engaging with when I was at Ordnance Survey, some of them were PropTecs. I just didn't know that at the time because PropTec is so unfamiliar. - And it hadn't quite got that label right. - No, it hadn't, no. - It was just software. - It was just software. - And agents loved the PropTec label. I mean they fall in love with it, but they definitely, you know, probably 2019 to 2023, 2024, I think it was kind of the, at least in residential, I think it was the phrase that gave agents - Oh, can imagine, yeah. It's a double-edged sword, isn't it, having a label on these things. You know, it's good to, it helps people to try and make sense of something new, but at the same time, it can be almost scarier and become a bigger thing than it actually is. As you say, it's just software. - Well, I think, yeah, exactly. And I think as we've talked about, you know, and we're going to this more later in our chat, but you know, we were talking about what the UKPA does on what is kind of prop tech. When you think about the entire built environment, everything that is property and all aspects of it, not just existing entities as well, the whole land analytics, data planning, everything, you look at all of that and software to service every element of that. It is such a broad, I think that's the thing kind of put people off outside of PropTech was the fact that it was such a broad label. And there were lots of companies out there that were very keen to adopt it in the early days when it was a buzzword. And yeah, I think that broadness kind of slightly overwhelmed people because literally if it had kind of any correlation to anything remotely property related, it kind and got slapped with that PropTech label. And I think there were quite a lot of existing softwares that had been around five, 10, 15 years, who'd always been very happy to call themselves software companies and suddenly started calling them PropTech. And I think a lot of agent entities were suddenly like, oh, why are you changing what you call yourself? Just stay in your lane. - Yeah, you're right. I mean, yeah, some of these companies have been around for 10, 15, 20 years. So, but I think it has also helped, as you know, doing quite a lot with government, as I'm sure will come onto, but I think if we hadn't had a term that we could use an overarching term to help make sense of this sector, this new emerging sector to an extent, there would be lots of new companies that have formed as well during the last nine, 10 years. And so I think if we didn't have that a way have to bring that all together we wouldn't have been able to influence government and engage with government to the extent that we have. Well I think flipping it the other way right if you just call it software I mean talk about the world's broadest category as well. Software is everything from a computer game or like Sudoku to what we're talking about to AI to you know that is also an insanely broad category. Yeah so yeah I think and I think that's that's the challenge isn't it? It's that you do establish these labels and I know I know some people have tried to even kind of some entities have tried to create kind of other sub labels like I know Good Lord for example they've quite often used the label Rent Tech because to try and identify the fact that yes they are PropTech but it is very much about the rental market. Yeah. I don't necessarily think that's it's caught on that much. I don't I don't think people are too fussed. I don't necessarily think the marketplace is too fussed about labels too much. I think they just sometimes get a bit frustrated but with like the buzzy attitude of things around software. So we were talking about, so you did five years at OS. And so what was it about, you know, early doors UKPA? So that would have been with Eddy. - Yep. - In the early days, what was it that kind of excited you about the idea of creating this kind of UK Prop Tech Association? From working in, I mean, it was a really brave leap from you to go for something like Ordnance Survey, which is a massive organization, a major entity. - Yeah. - To then kind of leap out of that into this, I mean, I know it wasn't originally a not-for-profit. It wasn't the original structure, but under your stewardship, it pivoted there pretty quickly. But yeah, I'm always kind of intrigued. Like that was quite a nice setup that you were in. And then to go to leap out of that into a complete startup environment, which was very like, you know, let's see what happens. - Yeah, yeah. - I mean, if you can remember, What was it that kind of made you go, do you know what, this could be quite interesting, this could be quite fun? - Well, so being completely and totally honest, at the time, so I'd worked at Ordnance Ovi for five years, I'd wanted to move to London. So I said, I was in Southampton, wanted to be in the big city and live my life here. And my very first manager in the role that I had in the land and property team was Dan Hughes, who lots of people know in the industry. So we'd always kept in touch and actually, Ordnance Survey was going through round of redundancies. But the team that I was in was going from 13 people, I think, to four. - Wow. - Yes. - And you kind of wanted to change. So you were kind of like, do you know what? I'll make this decision easy for you. - Yeah, so I went and I could have applied for other jobs there. Yeah, and I just thought, I had a decision to make. do I apply for other jobs within Ordnance Survey or do I try something new?" And I thought, "Well, this is quite an opportune moment for me. I want to meet London. This is a good move for me to maybe try something else. I've been there for five years already." And at the same time, Dan had reached out to me and said that there's this new organisation that started and that he thought I would be a good fit for a head of membership's role. And he wasn't aware at all that any of this was going on at Ordnance Survey. So it was just all just quite fortuitous. Kismet. As often these things kind of, oh, it's right place, right time, right person. Yeah, absolutely. So he introduced me to Eddie and we had a chat and I thought, oh, this is quite different. I'm having an interview, I think at Future PropTech. Yeah. An interview. Yeah. So very different to the environment. Back in the days when Gary Jimmour was still piloting that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it was all quite new. I hadn't really heard of PropTech, but I knew I was familiar with some of the companies that were calling themselves PropTech, like LandTech, one of the first companies that I was aware of. I was like, okay, well, there is a link here, but this is a very different environment. It was just me and Eddie, and going from a government-owned company of 1,000 employees, team of 13, to just me and the founder, was an absolute shock to the system. - And I'm sure he'll take this right way. Eddie is definitely not like a government organization in terms of his approach to things. So yeah, definitely, like, God, that was literally kind of night to day. - Yeah. - It was really exciting though. - Yeah, it was exciting. I think I'm someone that's always up for a bit of a challenge and probably just dive in and then think, okay, now I've gotta figure it out. - Figure it out. - Yeah, and I guess that's quite helpful because a lot of our members that are running startups do that. So in a way, I could relate to them because I've gone from really government corporate with lots of processes for everything, for good reason, but you have processes for things. you have a hierarchy to flat structure really and having to figure it all out yourself, which is what startup founders have to do. - Yeah, and I think also with Eddie, you had someone who had kind of the big idea of what UKPA could be, but I don't think he had too much idea of structurally what that looked like as a business. So again, kind of giving you that blank canvas. I think he would have been, I imagine, quite happy to kind of give you the reins of, Right, we need to put this in place and we need to think about XYZ and-- - Yeah, just kind of, yeah, if you need structuring and processes, put that together. So yeah, and I think I'm probably somewhere who's more comfortable in between. So it was definitely out of my comfort zone. I think I've probably been out of my comfort zone for nine years. (laughing) I don't think there's one day-- - You've got comfortable with being uncomfortable. - Yeah, kind of. - It's a new place to be. So obviously you had kind of any stewardship early doors and then it was about a year or was it two years? It was it was that then it made the pivot into the kind of the kind of the resetting of it. You moved into a not profit, established the boards, did the rebrand and the kind of relaunch. Was that was that just that was just pre-COVID wasn't it? It was pre-COVID yeah so we we um we became a not-for-profit in the March 2018 so I joined in July eight to 17. So less than a year later. - Well that actually happened quicker than I thought that actually. I had it in my head that was a bit longer. - No, yeah, happened very quickly and then we appointed a board of directors, which you were on as well. - I wasn't on the first one. - I was second. - I think I was on the second one. So I remember, I'm trying to remember who was on the first one. I remember obviously Olly from Coyote, you have Matt. Yeah, I think Mark Bruno from Dacia, he was on there, yeah, quite a few different people. But I think what was great there was you had some really quite established proptechs there, which had some great resources, and they were a great asset to UKPA in those early days. Yeah. I wasn't a lot of revenue, you know, I think they, from what I recall, they kind of, there was a lot of assistance with delivering the new website and office space for meetings, and where you worked from and things like that. I remember, in my mind, Ollie stands out a lot. I remember Ollie being a hugely kind of engaged and supportive character and coyote being very supportive of it, not to dismiss anything any of the others did. I'm sure this other listeners was going, "Hold on a minute!" I know, I know. But I don't know why. Maybe I just remember Ollie because he's a fellow beardy. It was Ollie and Matt, Matt Pochett who became chairman. - And that's Infobode. - Infobode, yeah, CIO Infobode, yeah. So Matt had had experience in kind of bringing communities together. So he was appointed as chair, and then we had the board and yeah, Matt and Ollie and I kind of basically got into a room and just drew up a bit of a straw man business plan for UKPA, and then Ollie put a lot of resources into it from his own company to help with the website the new branding. So yeah, and then all of that happened basically in 2018. And then we relaunched and rebranded in 2019. So yeah, there was a lot of meetings, kind of looking at logos and new color palettes and things and website and thinking about what do we, what's our proposition for members? Do we, you know, and that at that time, everybody wanted to get together and have and you know come up pre-covid, when everyone was still buzzing around everyone loved the meet-up and I think there was you know there was a lot of buzz in the early days of the UKPA there was a lot of different companies from all different aspects of PropTech as you know you know like you said I was very early member as an individual and then I'm bringing the repository on board because yeah you know like you said there was this huge buzz you know PropTech had become this big buzz were but like you said there was a lot missing within that in terms of you know as we've touched on the label kind of was great but it also to a certain extent for the industry kind of confused things. It became this broad label and then like we said you know there were challenges with government and funding and architecture and awareness and all this kind of stuff so yeah lots to tackle but I think those early days yeah when everyone being very sociable and everyone was still in offices typically five days a week in Georgia and always kind of just down the street ready to go for a catch-up and a beer or maybe not. But yeah I think it was really exciting those like early days and whilst UKPA kind of was finding it's feet, you know, and I think, I think when you're running, you know, hand this over to you because I've never run a not-for-profit, but I think there must be some quite different challenges you face with that because when you're running a commercial business, you know, the commercials kind of kind of drive the objectives, right? Like you've got your core objectives, but fundamentally you will have your growth plan or your targets and most of your decisions will come back to that core thing. Whereas I imagine with UPA, there were so many challenges that were so broad but at the same time you guys had to establish some core revenue just to supplement the structure of running the operation, right? You and the team that you've built around you, you know, you've still got that business side of the element, of the structure. So what's that like trying to, not having like I said, not having that kind of overarching like profit driven commerciality, what's that, what's that journey like trying to balance kind of what you're trying to achieve but the fact that also you know it's not like you've got a product to sell you can't kind of you can't overtly commercialise it because then it kind of pivots into into something altogether different. Yeah I think I mean it is challenging absolutely I think it suits me because I've always been somebody that's been driven by wanting to make an impact and not necessarily revenue driven or commercial driven in that sense. But of course, you do have to make it stack up because the end of the day, I'm employed by, well, by BPF now. So I have to the salary from that. And then if I have a team, and I was trying to sort of make sure we had enough resources behind it to do what we needed to do, then I have to pay them as well. So we do have have to be able to cover our costs, but in a way that is still achieving our mission, that's the primary focus for us. And then revenues secondary to that. And I think the biggest challenge is that if I compare to our members, they're startup founders, that's obviously a whole set of other challenges, but you can raise investment. And if you're successful and amazing investment then you can you can bring the right people in quite quickly and and make an accelerate faster and I think for us it's it's been a slower growth because you can't leverage the commerciality of it because you're going to compromise what you are as an organization right yeah if you guys well you'd made that you'd made that very right decision you know early doors to make it a not-for-profit yeah and that's great because I think it legitimizes It brings a huge amount of legitimacy to what the core objectives were. But it equally kind of handcuffs you a little bit. Because you say, you can't go, oh, invest in us and we'll grow to XYZ. Or buy a stake and the dividend will pay back your investment over five years, whatever it is. But I think you're right. I think it's really interesting what you were saying. I think for me, like that kind of entrepreneurial mindset is about building a business. I think money and profitability, like I said, I touched on for a lot of businesses, you're brought back to that. - Yeah. - Because that is typically how a commercial entity is ultimately or the most simplest terms is assessed. You know, what's your growth? What's your profit? - Yeah. But I think if you talked to most people who start businesses, like yes absolutely there was a commercial objective both personally and commercially but I think you know if I think about me with the depository my passion is very much in the objectives of what we're trying to do and developing the product and the commercials are kind of like a byproduct of that. I something and hopefully will make some money along the way as well. And I think for a lot of investors, I think for a lot of entrepreneurs, I think for a lot of people who end up leading and guiding and framing businesses, organisations, I think that is, you know, that's the core, I think that is for most people, the driver, that fascination, that passion with wanting to solve a problem, with wanting to make something better, with wanting to help people. Yeah. I mean, you know, those tend to be kind of the core three things that underpin that. And of course, there are some that we all know there are there are plenty entrepreneurs out there where it is just about the money and that's all well and good and nothing wrong with that either. But yeah, I think I think when you're when you're driving something forward and you're really, you're really driven more by by your purpose and objectives, the commerciality. I think you know I think it can be a slower longer journey. Yeah and at times it can feel tough but you also you get a bit of kudos for the authenticity of it and also you wake up every morning feeling totally happy with it you are and what you're doing. Yeah you look yourself in the mirror and can you feel pretty happy with where you're going with it. So so look obviously I joined the board I'm forgetting now, whether it was 2019 to 2021 or 2020 to 2022, I can't remember. I think it was 2019 to 2021. I think so. I seem to remember we did manage to get a few in-person board meetings before the joy of taking it. Hip hip hooray, which as we all know for tech was kind of a blessing and a curse on the story. Because like for everyone, obviously the market, well pretty much all markets froze for about six months in it because no one really knew what that new world was like. But I think if we're, from a prop tech perspective, I think it definitely shifted a lot of people's mindsets, particularly those sat on the fence who were kind of looking at prop tech and being like, "Yeah, it might improve things, but this has always worked. The business is still growing, it's still profitable and this is how it's always been done. So, you know, I think it did shift the need of obviously the massive thing with remote working, which is, you know, lots of businesses now. I mean, you know, you're seeing a shift. There are industries and businesses that have obviously increasingly shifted back to a more traditional office structure of five days in. But I think what is nice now as well is I found it's generally changed everyone's attitude to doing things online. Like, you know, I mean, I think with us, depository dealing with, with, you know, most of our clients, the vast majority of our clients, we never meet in person. We do everything online, webinar, our demos, our set up calls, training, support, you know, we do everything online and I love that. For us, I think for a lot of bootstrapped and early stage companies, it's really good. Not only to be able to tap into that, but I think what was really interesting was pre-COVID, there was a real resistance to that, but there was also kind of a, There was kind of a, what's the word, an attitude or a kind of people would almost look down and like, oh, you don't want to come and see me face to face. Yeah, yeah. It was a different culture. It was, it was a mindset. There we go. It was a different culture, a mindset, an attitude to it all. And I think what was nice was not only did we get tech make it better, easier and simpler to do, but it massively changed everyone's mindset around it from being like, oh, God, you can't come and see me in person can't we meet up to be like to now it's like oh can we can we just do this online yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah and yeah so so and maybe also so like we said you know I was quite partially involved with early early doors in the organization was really quite exciting where it was going and I said, "Sat on the board." But as we know, and I've never talked about this openly, I have great respect for you guys and where you were going. But as you know, I quietly stepped away after my board seat and it was because we'd spoken about in the kind of during, particularly during that board term, in the early stage or really up until now-ish, there was this kind of natural lean into the more commercial real estate side of the proper tech business. And I think it's very understandable why that was. I think A, you're talking about much bigger assets, I think for a market place as well, it trades in a very different manner to residential. As we know, residential A, you've got a bajillion individual homeowners. So you've got this insanely fragmented property ownership market. But also when you look at real estate in the UK, we're unlike pretty much any other country. In terms of most countries, the industry is kind of 80% corporate to 20% independent. But in the UK, in residential agency, it's completely opposite. 80% independent to 20% corporate. So it's 80% one to three branch agencies. And then you've got your handful of big players. And that is starting to shift now. I wonder if that's maybe shifted more 70, 30 now with the fact that you have got the bigger corporates kind of they've been acquiring quite a bit the last few years. I wonder if that's shifted a little bit, but still. And I think with that came the challenges of you could know company could go out there tap into a massive amount of housing stock with ease. And equally, you know, outside of your handful of corporates, you have this incredibly disseminated market. So to get any really quick market permutation was really, really hard. Whereas within corporate real estate, of course, very different, much fewer players in the agency market, much bigger, if you want to call it portfolios. And then equally looking at the client base, you know, you've got REITs and things like British land and all this sort of stuff who have millions and millions of square foot of real estate that you can tap into and partnership with and I think equally that was really exciting because for example, if you worked with someone like British then you could work with everything from how to make their buildings more energy efficient to the kind of tenant community groups within commercial buildings like community experiences or this sort of stuff. So I think it was it was easy to understand, although it felt a bit frustrating at the time. And it was really easy to understand why UKPA kind of just found itself pulled that way. Because I think the conversations were cleaner. And bigger. You could have these big conversations and things could happen. Within six, 12 months you could see a massive... again, I don't know why I keep referring to British land, but you could see big entities like that, probably the only massive commercial entity I know of, because it's not really my bag. But you've got Portland and the States as well, you know, a great Portland and the States as well, is another great example. Also, because they were big entities you had some really interesting leadership on the commercial side. Yeah you always had people that were in innovation roles. Yes. There was you know a huge surge in in heads of innovation or and now increasingly it's you know becoming C-suite level as well but those were the people that typically then engaged with us because they it was part of their job. It was their core job. - We had some fascinating talks. I can't remember, you'll remember the chap who I think was heading up in innovation for GPE for Great Portland Estates. - James Pennett. - Yeah, like I remember some of his talks were fascinating and I remember sitting there thinking, my God, if we had a residential entity, that A had this kind of market share, but B had this kind of attitude of a really bold strategy but that was clearly open to, you know, adaption. A huge embracement of innovation, you know, like you said, heads of innovation. I think what's really interesting is you look at, you look at residential real estate now, and we're still not there yet. You look at your big, you know, you look at your LRGs, your Lomans, your Connells Countrywide, TPFG. The corporate structure is still very traditional. You've still got your CEO, your CFO, your CTO, and CIO, whatever. But they're still, I think in residential, they're still operating quite a traditional format. I mean, I can't think of any of those who have an open and public kind of innovation, digital innovation strategy, whereas loads of commercial entities have had one for the last five to ten years. Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, that I'd love to understand within the corporate world, because again, it's, you know, corporates approach things from a very different mindset. And I think to independent business, obviously, and I think it's really interesting that we that we had that kind of eagerness within commercial. There was this much, there was this instant appetite for like, oh, this is exciting. You know, we can change things to where as I feel it in residential, it's still quite reactionary. Yeah. There are many entities out there who have a very clear digital strategy of, you know, what do they want to achieve with tech in the next five years? Yeah. And I think there's also different incentives. Yeah. It's the structure of the organisations, but it's also then as part of that structure, the incentives that you have to use technology or not. In the agency world, if you're able to get instructions and then sell property and still make a decent amount from that, then where's the incentive to use technology? I think that is changing now. I think there's obviously a big drive from government to digitise the transaction process, to digitise planning, all different areas that affect ultimately the consumer, which will hopefully drive that change as well. But in the commercial space, it's been very much about how do we increase efficiency and cut costs and increase the value of the asset. or make the asset more appealing with the kind of tenant communities. And, you know, I mean, I suppose the closest I can equate it to in Resi is the built rent space. I think that is where you've got a kind of similar mindset in terms of they've wanted to kind of almost each development is a brand with a lifestyle and a community. And that is all driven into gaining value, perceived value and also a realized value as an asset with facilities, amenities, partnerships with things like Uber and all this sort of stuff, the kind of kind of deliberate experience. And I think that's the closest, but obviously Build2Rent because of the ridiculous planning and development processes in this country, obviously, like Build2Rent is growing, but it's not been the huge delivery of housing that I think so many had hoped. I think a lot have been surprised. We obviously had John Lewis completely pull the plug on their operation recently, you know, you've got really, and now you've got that slight pivot into you've got the likes of Blackstone and Lloyds, who, you know, Lloyds are buying second hand homes, you've got Blackstone, Blackstone picking up a lot of the new build developments, going straight to developer and acquiring developments, then obviously you've got the likes of essential living and so on and so forth in the build space. But I think they're probably the closest to the commercial real estate kind of attitude and structure, but they're a very small, fundamentally there's still a very small part of residential real estate. So, whereas commercial, this is a, this is, this is centuries old. So there's assets old and new. And yeah, so, look, I think it's really interesting. It's really interesting we've got that. And so touching on that, so we are running out of time. So we're actually hopping on a call with MXCOG later, aren't we, with a bunch of people about some of the things you touched on. And it's really good to see government, government are getting better. I think a lot of the messages that we're giving them are fundamentally the same messages we've been giving them for the last five to 10 years about structure, architecture, access to systems, the digitization of really anything that government dictates or delivers. - Yeah. - Has got to be delivered in a kind of digital first format. We've talked a lot about the adoption of UPRNs, to kind of streamline how data is linked to a property for the benefit of everything from compliance to regulation, to trying to solve the nightmare that is buying and selling a residential property in this country and how long it takes. So just a couple of things to touch on. So tell us a little bit. So UKPA or rather BPF owns UKPA. There's quite a large change going on the moment. There's a very exciting change going on. Do you wanna just tell the listeners a little bit more about this fairly recent kind of multi-merger and what that kind of means and what we're gonna be seeing in the coming months? - Yeah, of course, yeah. So, as you said, we are part of the British Property Federation. We merged with them end of 2023. So we are governed by BPF, which means we've now had access to the last few years, a wider reach of property companies and professionals interested in technology, run a tech and innovation program, bringing our members together with BPF members and have been weaving technology into the policy work that the BPF does. and that's really a big part of what they do is BPS kind of bread and butter is to engage with various different government departments on policy which affects real estate. And now the members of BPF Association of Real Estate Funds RF and Investment Property Forum have voted for a merger to happen between those three entities to form real estate UK. So So from beginning of May there will be you know brand new website all three organizations will be under the REUK brand so there will be no BPF RF and IPF anymore and we will become part of real estate UK which is the label suggests is kind of like a super real estate entity yeah yeah so I think you know all the three organizations have been doing slightly different things and but I think compliment each other well. And I think I've also been engaging with government. And so this is a way to have a unified voice back into government to represent the entire real estate industry in the UK. And to just be more powerful. - More good join messaging as well, right? More powerful messaging. Make sure everything's a bit more aligned. - Yeah. - And yeah, hopefully. I think it's really exciting. I think I'm really excited to see whether we see a shift in how much government listens and more importantly acts on what we're telling them. And I obviously like, whilst there is a consistency within the people within MHCOG, they are ultimately always to certain at a whim to whichever political party and leader we have in power at the time. obviously they are at the mercy of whatever where the wind blows to a certain view that extent but it would be really nice to kind of see some of these core things that we've just touched on come to fruition because I think we all agree they are kind of the building blocks the kind of core infrastructure that's going to allow so much more exciting things to happen. - Yeah, yeah. - And it's, you know, and in terms of the UK PropTech team, which is a massive part of the UK economy, it's gonna create a much more exciting landscape for more companies to come into the space, particularly with AI and everything that's doing with coding and development and the kind of the generation of ideas, particularly at an MVP level anyway. Yeah, I think it's, you know, it's also about that, right? It's about building this really exciting kind of architecture where we can continue to grow the UK prop tech scene as a global, as a globally desired and exciting and innovative platform. Yeah, that's really exciting. I think there's yeah, the two two kind of ambitions that you were seeing from MHCLG one is how do we improve the services that you know, affects the public when it comes to housing so delivery of housing, the planning process, the transaction process, etc. How do we make it more efficient, transparent, faster as well. And all of that is to do with the economic benefits of that, but the experience of the members of the public. And they really understand now the importance of technology underpinning all of that. So they've been funding innovation for a number of years now, I think they've invested, well, not invested, but given grant funding for about 16 million pounds to local authorities, typically to use PropTech. So, you know, they've also been putting the money where the mouth is, you know, they've been driving it, but also funding some of this stuff as well. But the other part of it, as you mentioned, is the PropTech sector as a whole, it adds so much to the economy. And that was quite clear in the opportunity for PropTech report that we launched with them last year or 2024, I think it was. So that's really shown the impact that PropTech has today across the boat environment, but then the potential impact if we were to scale PropTech. So that's really what they're trying to do now is to think about what role does government play in helping to scale PropTech? What levers can we pull to unlock innovation, unlock scale, a cross-proptech, and then specifically with the housing lens as well to build 1.5 million homes and all of the things that have to happen to be able to achieve that, including the planning process as well. So there's quite a bit there and they've been funding us working closely in partnership with us to look at all of those things and to bring convening the right people across public and private sector. And now we're really getting into the weeds of the levers, what policy interventions, what levers do we need to be able to grow the proper tech sector, which is the core that we've got. Yeah, I think what's been nice as well, and I noticed this very much through the evolution more recently of what was the renters reform bill and now the renters rights act. What's been nice the last couple of years on the residential side is that definitely seems to be an attitude shift from government organisations like MLX CLG to actually engage with the industry more. Not just PropTech but also real estate industries, estate agencies and actually what's been nice as well whereas before there was some engagement but it was very much behind closed doors and with the big boys. Throughout that that renters reform rights journey both conservative and labor there's definitely been an opening up. I think look we don't always get what we want and I think you know that's something you've always got to understand particularly when it's more legislative than technology or architecture but it definitely feels like government's attitude has shifted a little bit in terms of help us understand this better so that we can kind of help you make it better kind of effect. That's been quite nice. And so just to round this off and we're not going to go into too much detail because you're obviously there's going to be more about this coming out more formally in the coming weeks. But what's been really exciting is we've been engaging again more than usual recently because partly with the merger and everything else, but also with the space moving, you know, we're now looking at this kind of residential steering Yes, we are. So in our kind of objective to really amplify our influence and to represent the PropTech sector more broadly, we've introduced this new residential PropTech committee alongside two other thematic committees in the membership as well, which will help us to really know the right things to be saying to government. I mean, one of the biggest challenges I have we've talked about PropTech being so broad, our members are the ones that have the knowledge on the ground of what really is going to make the biggest difference to them or what's the biggest challenge that they've got. So being able to really work with the committee to understand that greater depth will help me be able to represent our members better and really drive change there and then shape the right events, the right thought leadership to bring in the right people in terms of the bias side to that as well. And I think there's a really exciting group. And again, we're not going to name any names now. But there's the initial meeting that we've had. There's some really interesting people sat around that table, from a lot of different areas of experience. But there's a lot of people sat around that table. We've kind of been there and done it. They've been through different aspects of agency or supporting agency or large-scale residential operations in some kind of shape or form. And that's really exciting. And I think, you know, looking back to as we've talked about very openly, kind of my, sometimes my frustrations in the early days with UKPA, because it felt like sometimes there was only a couple of residential voices in the room. And a lot of them were kind of startups like me, rather than we didn't necessarily get the big established Resi Proctec players engaging that much early doors. what's nice is sat around that table, you know, the other day, there are absolutely some big names individually, but also some really well-known, well-established entities sat around the table. And I think it's really exciting to see what that's going to achieve because it was nice, you know, talking about when we briefly touched on what we kind of all thought our core objectives were. And there was a lot of commonality there. Yeah. And I think for you guys, you know, as UK real estate, like you said, having these these pockets of expertise and focus now, a allows you to drill down into that, but it will also allow you to spot the massive commonalities between that. Oh, hold on. You know, I think you keep you. UPR ends is probably a not quite an obvious one. that I think we'll see come into all of them because it kind of underpins the data architecture of how things are attributed and kind of this data and everything else. So I think that's that's one that will come out. But I think what will be really interesting for you guys is as you see this is is these commonalities of these quite different entities of focus. Yeah. But these threads and where it kind of where it where it really aligns. But also it's that oh actually if if that happens, and that kind of leads to that, and that will deliver that. Yeah. I think it's a really exciting, really exciting time. Yeah, well, it allows us to, as you say, be able to really kind of spot these threads, and then we can tell a better story to government if we can say, look, across the PropTech sector, all of our members or significant amount of our members are asking for this. If we do this, it will unlock potential for this part of the sector to grow, which has this impact on the UK government's ambition. So I think it allows us to do that. So above that those three thematic committees will also have a research and policy board, which will look at those commonalities. So we'll really have a kind of mechanism to be able to do that. So just lastly, before we sign off, so something I think it's worth saying is the UK PropTech Association, it's absolutely not just for PropTechs, right? It's really important that we get agents, both individuals and businesses, kind of engaging with the organisation and bringing that whole ecosystem kind of to the table. We want agents in this conversation, both as individuals. I mean, I'm quite a unique entity set around that table in terms of I still do both day jobs. But we've got, and again, you look at a lot of the people set around the table, we're talking about a lot of them are have walk the walk before the roles that they are in now or again they're still very much in that space. So let's just talk a little bit about how people can engage with UK PropTech because there are a few different kind of memberships and ways people can be part of kind of the community isn't there? Yeah so our membership model is for PropTechs and then technology investors. We still have others involved in terms of the events. So, typically, we target the property side through BPF or will be Real Estate UK, so property companies that are part of that organization automatically be sent invitations to events that we put on. Because most of the events that we do is about bringing tech and property professionals together. But outside of that, we're also partnering and working closely with organisations like Property Mark, as you know, to broaden that reach even further. So even if they're not, even if it's an agent that's not, you know, a BPF or a state UK member, they can still get involved and attend the events. We're really keen to make sure that we're bringing everybody into this. Yeah, it's really important that agent is a part of that, part of that whole ecosystem. Yeah. So look guys, if you want to find out more about the UKPA, what's the website to address again? Is it ukproptech.com? UKproptech.com. There we go. Simple. You'll find tons of information on there, not just about the organization and what it does, but also talks that they've held before, schedules that are in the future, membership categories all that sort of stuff. If you're interested in just coming along and checking out a session to see what it's about, reach out to Sammy and her team and just kind of say hi and I'm sure they'll figure out a way to accommodate you in some way or another if an event's not too full. But yeah, look Sammy, it's been great catching up. It's really exciting to see what this next kind of phase of growth for the UK PA is and off the back of UK real estate and all this other stuff. It's really exciting to see and it's yeah exciting to see you still at the helm and still doing it. Still here, still doing it. And we're the smart ones you folks. No it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me. Guys thank you so much. Like I said, do check out the UK PropTech website, connect with Sammy on LinkedIn. And yeah, if you've got any questions, hit them in and we'll share them and come back to you. But until next time, bye.