By Adam Wakefield
After a six year stint as its head of property investments, Van der Vent parted ways with the PIC. During that time, the PIC’s property portfolio had grown from approximately R1-billion to almost R50-billion. So, what does one do after doing it all in their field?
For Van der Vent, it was something similar, yet very different.
“I’ve been involved in the acquisition and sales end of property for many years, particularly with the PIC,” Van der Vent says. “I was doing some consulting and my business partner Karen Miller and I were consulting for the same people, [and we] found that the process was so cumbersome.”
Van der Vent and Miller would, for instance, be interested in a large property in Johannesburg but acquiring information about the property was a tedious task.
“What we were wanting to do was find a method to have a quick squizz at a property, understand what underpinned it, and then make the quick decision: are we interested or not?” Van der Vent explains.
“Our other partners were involved in the online space already with the sale of second-hand motorcars, and we thought, ‘Online works’. We have an existing platform in the car business. Let’s try and see if we can do it in property.”
Creating an online marketplace for property proved to be more complicated than expected, given the legal minutia attached to the sale of property.
However, once the legal aspects were addressed, Van der Vent and his partners created a platform where property can be viewed, due diligence processes followed and formal offers made, all online.
“It was sufficient enough to bring me out of retirement. I’d done R50-billion worth of transactions in the space of five years. So from doing a deal point of view, I’ve been there, done that. For me, the tech side was really interesting and it’s been a nice new challenge but it has also allowed us to think creatively,” Van der Vent explains.
With his experience in putting together and executing property transactions, combined with the technical abilities of those behind their software, Quoin Online is the result of doing deals translated into code. However, that does not mean the fundamentals of the commercial property sector are tossed out the window.
“One almost needs to be providing more information and deciding for people what information they need, because, often, they don’t know what they need. A poor property doesn’t get any better because you are selling it online and a deal doesn’t get any easier because you are doing it online,” Van der Vent says.
“What does get easier is access to information and access to how to put it together. The skill set of doing a deal still remains and we just want to provide the tools, so that’s been exciting.”
Quoin Online launched in July 2014 with the disposal of 27 properties which formed part of the Fountainhead Property Trust’s portfolio.
“We had about 250 buyers who were interested and they were scattered around the country. They could look at, transact, make offers, do follow up queries, and due diligence all online,” Van der Vent says.
“It allowed Fountainhead to streamline the system and where they probably would’ve had 20 to 30 people having to work on follow up queries and sending information, we were able to compress it into a very manageable process using the online system.”
Today, Quoin Online interacts with more than 5000 registered buyers on its platform, with that number growing weekly.
Prior to Quoin, Van der Vent had not had much interaction with the online space. However, his interest in the space started to develop at the PIC as it was having real world consequences within the property sector.
In addition, his experience as a board member of the Pareto property group and being responsible for putting together their portfolio of shopping centres exposed Van der Vent to how online disrupted set market practises.
For example, banks were taking smaller space compared to 10 or 15 years ago, but the most important signifier of online’s potential was the increasing scarcity and disappearance of music stores such as Musica and Look&Listen, who used to need 400-plus square metres of floor space to place their product. Online changed that.
“For me, there was always a sense online was going to be the way forward. I never quite fully comprehended how it would be and I think the mobility of it is something I didn’t necessarily take into account,” Van der Vent admits.
“For example, when we started writing our system software, we focused on laptops and iPads. By the time we were ready to launch, people had dumped their iPads and were doing most of their stuff on mobi sites on their phones.”
With the changes in technology, what Quoin sought to do was simply “harness other people’s bright ideas”.
“I’m far from being a bright idea man in the space of technology. There are so many people who are so much better at it. What we’re just doing is saying how can we take that technology and make it work in the property space for what we’re doing,” he says.
With Quoin Online now established, two areas where Van der Vent is intent on exploring is 360 degree video and virtual reality, as they both offer prospective property buyers a new way to look at a property.
As Van der Vent says, “If you going to be spending R20-million on a property, you are still going to want to go to look at it physically, but through the platform, it at least gives you that first glance and helps you make informed decisions.”
“That’s what it’s about.”