Landlord tech company Lendlord is looking to expand into the United States this year.
Its chief executive Aviram Shahar told Property Investor Post that the group is researching into the US, with the aim of rolling out its service in the country by September.
Lendlord operates a portfolio management platform in the UK which enables landlords to log their income and expenditure, as well as select a mortgage or bridging loan.
Aviram Shahar, chief executive of Lendlord, said: “We just started researching the market in the US.
“In the UK our users are semi-professional landlords, not large or small ones – we want to find the right markets in the US with the same userbase.”
He discussed the differences between the US and UK markets.
In the UK a key part of Lendlord’s offering is monitoring mortgage deals, informing landlords when their fixed or reduced rate period is ending and helping them to switch to a more suitable deal.
In the US however longer-term mortgages spanning as long as 30 years are common, so the refinance market is smaller.
As a result, the US version of the platform may place more of an emphasis on bridging finance, which is commonly used when landlords need to buy a property and conduct works on the place before it can be mortgaged.
In the UK Lendlord operates as an unregulated bridging lender by using funding from Fairfax Capital – and it seems there’s scope to develop a similar offering across the pond.
The company is able to use its data on a landlord’s individual portfolio to calculate risk, meaning some landlords can get a cheaper deal due to having especially strong portfolios.
The US isn’t the limit of the company’s ambitions, as Lendlord is also eying u both the Canadian and Australian markets.
Lendlord launched in June 2019 and currently has 4,500 users, while its CEO said the userbase is growing by between 6-10% every month.
