Property Detective was founded in 2011 as the result of a home purchase that went badly wrong.
In May 2010, Property Detective's original founder, Barry Bridges, finally got onto the property ladder and moved into a family home with his (then) fiancee. Over the course of the next year, however, he learnt the hard way that in spite of the surveys, searches, checks and questions asked, sometimes not everything is what it seemed. In October 2011 he teamed up with Jack Waley-Cohen to build a prototype tool that helped homeowners find out whether their new home would be within range of church bells; together, they took the very first version of Property Detective to Seedcamp, where they were a London finalist in 2012 and invited back to the investment committee (but didn't get investment).In April 2012 they secured a significant tranche of angel investment and set about building the first prototype version of Property Detective, which launched on the day of the opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympic games. This was swiftly followed by more investment and a major re-launch in March 2013 with the site similar to the one that you can see today.
The team has evolved significantly since then and over the past 8 and a bit years the company has grown and grown and is, today, as well as a resource for movers, a location-specific digital data company offering it's services to a number of industries including, not only the real-estate sector, but also utilities, media, logistics, retail and local government. The company will continue this growth with a team of dedicated, innovative and entrepreneurial developers, statisticians, project managers and economists around it. We are very confident in calling ourselves the market leader in location-specific research and are very pleased that our reports have been recognised by COPSO as being of such a high standard that they qualify for PCCB accreditation (which is something usually reserved for the searches that a solicitor does during the conveyancing process).
Slowly, but surely, Property Detective is changing the way that people move home and companies research local areas. We are helping people and companies make more informed, smarter decisions about where they want to live / locate / invest, by giving them the complete picture ‚warts and all ‚ as to what a property, street or neighbourhood can offer them. From property market data (including rental yields, transaction data and local comparables), to nearby local developments, schools, crime rates, demographics, flightpaths, noise and smell nuisances, retail and leisure opportunities, broadband speeds and much more. No rose-tinted lenses: just the whole truth, at the click of a button.
Our Partners
- Ordnance Survey
- Yelp
