Category: Platform Updates

Property marketing gets easier with PropertyBox’s new tools for estate agents: AI-fuelled descriptions and EPC lookups

Posted on by Rosie Douglas

PropertyBox, best known for its game-changing AI property photo enhancements, has announced they are moving to become the first all-in-one AI property marketing assistant for estate agents. 

The PropTech company is thrilled to announce the launch of two new products as part of their SaaS offering: Auto-generated AI property descriptions and automated EPC lookups. These new features streamline the way estate agents write property descriptions, check the validity of EPCs and order new EPCs, freeing up their time to focus on closing sales quicker.

Following the development of these features, PropertyBox is confident they provide everything agents need to create engaging content for their property listings.

Matt Gates, Co-Founder and CTO of PropertyBox, commented: 

“We’re proud of the role we play in the property market in helping estate agents showcase their client’s properties in the best possible light. These two new products are key for PropertyBox in offering even better value for our all-in-one AI property marketing assistant – helping save agents time and money. With estate agents spending hours every month on property marketing admin, we hope to free up their time so they can focus on other key revenue-generating activities.”

Auto-generated AI property descriptions

Showcase properties in the best possible light with auto-generated property descriptions. Of course, the average time agents spend writing property descriptions varies depending on the property. However, our pool of industry experts estimates that it takes them between 20-30 minutes. In contrast, our AI can produce first-rate descriptions in a matter of seconds.

Benefits:

  • Generate professional property descriptions in seconds.
  • Text is optimised for property portals, including Rightmove and Zoopla and comprises a main property description, a list of key benefits, and a summary.
  • With just a few clicks, you can quickly add unique details about your property. 

How PropertyBox’s auto-generated AI property descriptions work:

  1. If you haven’t already, subscribe to a Starter or Pro PropertyBox subscription.
  2. Then, within a few clicks, you can specify the listing type, property type, number of rooms, unique property details, and local highlights so agents can include their local knowledge and expertise in every listing.
  3. Now, watch as our cutting-edge AI writes text explicitly tailored for your property.
  4. Copy the finished description straight into your property portal or edit it however you wish – the choice is yours!

Automated EPC lookups and ordering service

Not only are EPCs a legal requirement when advertising a property for sale or let, but a valid EPC provides potential buyers or tenants with a better understanding of how much they’ll need to budget for energy.

Since EPCs and selling property go hand in hand, how often have you had to chop and change between multiple tabs to check a property’s EPC status and renew the certificate?

Now, with PropertyBox, you can quickly check current and potential energy performance ratings. Just confirm your property’s address, and we’ll show the EPC details within seconds!

If the property has a valid EPC, you can download it with just a click, which makes publishing it as part of your online property listing or sharing it with your customer much simpler. 

Alternatively, if an EPC has expired or doesn’t exist, you can order an EPC directly within PropertyBox – for only £50+VAT! 

Benefits:

  • Automatically detected: PropertyBox automatically detects when a property’s EPC has expired.
  • Nationwide service: PropertyBox works with energy assessors across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
  • Qualified assessors: PropertyBox only partners with highly qualified, accredited, and insured assessors.
  • 24-hour turnaround: The key holder is contacted within 24 hours after the order is placed, and EPCs are ready within 24 hours after an appointment.
  • One price for all: Even if a property has 6+ bedrooms, the price stays the same – PropertyBox won’t charge you more!
  • Delivered via email: After the inspection, PropertyBox provides a link to the property’s EPC via email and your PropertyBox workspace.

How PropertyBox’s automated EPC lookups work:

  1. Once you have a Go Easy, Starter or Pro subscription, provide us with the property address.
  2. Then, with just a few clicks, PropertyBox provides the status of the property’s current and potential energy performance ratings – available in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
  3. If the EPC has expired (or is about to), you can renew the EPC without leaving your PropertyBox dashboard for just £50+VAT.  
  4. One of our qualified EPC assessors will review the property so agents can be confident in the product they are getting. 
  5. You’ll receive a copy of the EPC via email.

PropertyBox’s auto-generated AI property descriptions and automated EPC lookups are now available to existing and new subscribers alike. 

Automated EPC lookups are available from PropertyBox’s Go Easy subscription (£19.99+VAT a month) onwards, and auto-generated AI property descriptions are available from the Starter plan onwards (£39.99+VAT a month). 

PropertyBox is offering a free 7-day trial, inclusive of 40 property photo enhancements and 2 floor plan re-draws. 

For more information about PropertyBox’s newest features, visit the following product pages:

About PropertyBox: PropertyBox is best known for its intuitive AI property photo enhancements and professional floor plan redraws. Fast forward to today, and PropertyBox now offers agents an even broader suite of features to help them transform their property marketing, save time on admin and sell properties faster. Trusted by leading estate agents like Hunters, EweMove, Martin & Co, Yopa, eXp UK, and more, PropertyBox is a reliable AI marketing assistant for estate agencies of all sizes. 

Contact

Rosie Douglas

Campaign Marketing Manager for PropertyBox

Email: rosie.douglas@focalagent.com

Introducing ‘Properties’ – Store all your photos and floorplans under one property

Posted on by Callum Domigan

We’ve made some improvements to your PropertyBox dashboard, meaning it’s now much easier to manage your orders. You can now store all the photos and floorplans in the same place under a single property name, rather than under separate orders.

What’s changed?

No more flicking between separate orders to find the images you need. Just click ‘Create Property’ on the main page, assign the Property name of your choice and once inside, you can upload as many photos and floorplan sketches as you like – ten at a time. There is no limit on the number of photos within a Property – and once they’re enhanced, you can download them altogether, making it even faster and easier for you to get new listings online.

What about existing orders?

We’ve already sorted your previous orders, whether it was a photo enhancement or floor plan order, into ‘Untitled’ properties. Everything is easy to find by address or postcode, and you can rename them any time you wish by simply clicking the pencil icon and entering a new Property name.

How will this help me?

In a nutshell, Properties will make it much easier for you to manage your PropertyBox orders, go back to past orders, review enhancements and download all the photos and floorplans by listing at the same time.

If you have any queries or would like to arrange a demo, just contact us on live chat or support@propertybox.io.

Object Removal now live!

Posted on by Callum Domigan

Photographing people’s homes usually means working with a lived-in space packed with belongings. Despite the best effort of agents to prepare a property for a shoot, there are often objects that get in the way of the perfect photo, whether it’s clutter on a kitchen worksurface, toiletries in a bathroom, other agents boards or an unsightly wheelie bin in the driveway.

 

The solution?

 

The new AI-driven PropertyBox Object Removal tool instantly airbrushes these eyesores and seamlessly backfills the space to match with the surroundings. Agents simply upload their photos for our regular enhancement service, then simply highlight any objects they want removing using an online pen, with an adjustable brush size for ease of use.

 

The finished photos, complete with objects removed, are then ready to be downloaded within seconds helping agents to get properties listed quickly and saves time on-site staging the home.

 

 

How Object Removal benefits agents

 

  • Works with both sales and lettings properties
  • Cleaner, tidier shots are more appealing to buyers / renters increasing the likelihood of a viewing and sale
  • Saves agents time during shoots, knowing clutter can easily be digitally erased afterwards
  • Helps agents create stand-out photography that presents the property in the best possible light, winning the click on the portals
  • Gives buyers a clear idea of the space without distractions, helping them visualise living there
  • Gives greater flexibility and editing power to agents taking their own property photos


What’s the cost? 

 

There’s currently no additional cost for our Object Removal service, it’s simply an added benefit for our Starter and Pro subscribers – and you can use it as much as you like! Just upload your photos for enhancement as normal, click on the edit button against the photo you wish to remove an object from and click on the eraser icon.

 

PLEASE NOTE: The object removal tool should not be used to remove permanent objects or large objects in the foreground.

What’s new at PropertyBox this Spring?

Posted on by focaladmin

The product team at PropertyBox, part of the Focal Group, is working hard behind the scenes to continually develop this innovative product to help estate agents look the best they can online with enhanced photography. But that’s just the start of it. We caught up with Product Director Michael McHugh and Product Manager Victoria Znamenskaya to find out what’s new at PropertyBox and what exciting announcements are in the pipeline this spring.

Working alongside PropertyBox’s designers and developers, Michael and Victoria use in-house artificial intelligence (AI) to refine and develop the product making it the best in the market.

 

What’s the thinking behind PropertyBox?

MM: The best way to help the 60% of agents who take their own photos and need to get them enhanced is to offer them a really fast high quality result every time, so we can add value to their business and help them win the click and the instruction.

VZ: We’re using AI to achieve this so we can make improvements, upgrade the service and add features making our customers’ jobs a lot easier and helping them to work faster and more efficiently.

 

So what’s new this spring from PropertyBox?

VZ: We’re now offering “try before you buy” so customers can upload up to 10 photographs from one property and see the amazing results in seconds. The photos will be brightened, straightened and blue skies added and then they have the option to sign up and pay if they want to get those enhanced photographs back and ready to upload to property portals and their own websites. This gives new customers the opportunity to see what we do and give the service a try.

MM: We’re adding more flexibility to our pricing, with two further price plans for agents who need to enhance fewer photos cost-effectively. The first is “pay as you go” with no monthly fee, you just pay 70p for each enhanced photo; secondly our new “starter plan” for £39.99 per month, per branch, for up to 100 photos and 35p per extra photo. For agents with more volume, they would pick the current “pro plan” at £79.99 per month for up to 250 photos, then 25p for any extra photos. Larger agents can contact us for tailormade packages.

 

What do you like most about your roles?

VZ: It’s about being creative and finding the perfect solution to all the challenges faced by agents who want to look good online.

MM: I think it’s being able to take an idea and using the constituent parts from AI and design, building it into something that processes images for estate agents in seconds. It’s like you’ve got a problem and how do you solve it. When we show people what we’ve done they are genuinely blown away, it gives me great satisfaction.

 

What other innovations are you planning at PropertyBox?

VZ: There are a huge range of possibilities – we’ve only just started! We want to grow and add many features to our product to make estate agents’ lives easier – making sure everything is possible in one place.

Now every agent can benefit from great visual content in seconds

Posted on by focaladmin

We know from our customer research that being able to showcase the property that looks the best it can online is the key to winning more instructions, getting more interest from buyers and selling property faster, for a better price. That’s why our innovation team have been hard at work developing PropertyBox, so all estate agents, whatever their size, can have access to professionally enhanced photos, returned in seconds so they can be instantly uploaded to websites and across your social media platforms for immediate impact.

 

 

AI Technology

 

We use leading digital technology, including AI, to provide vertical correction, brightness adjustment, colour enhancement, shadow boosting and blue-sky replacement, all the visual elements that win the all-important click. Finished photos are back in the agent’s inbox within seconds and the service costs half the price of solutions that take hours and are often returned at times when you’re not doing your admin work, wasting precious marketing time and frustrating your customers who want to get serious buyers through the door quickly.

 

Customer Privacy

 

We know how important it is to protect your customer’s privacy so as well as creating far superior images, each one is also fully GDPR compliant with personal photographs blurred and car number plates obscured.

 

No Manual Editing

 

Using an instant photo enhancement service means no more hours wasted manually enhancing photos yourself – each one can simply be uploaded from a phone and instantly processed at any time of day or night. That means amazing photography on all your listings in seconds, freeing up your time to carry out valuations and win more instructions in this highly competitive market.

 

Scale-up listings faster with professional photos edited in seconds

 

Professional-looking visuals could be what tip the scales in your favour, encouraging vendors to come to you rather than one of your rivals. Those who market properties the best will always win the listing and in the current supply shortage, agents can’t afford to miss out. The best way for agents to compete to win valuations, successfully converting them to instructions, is to stand out with professional-looking photography and floorplan, add 360 tours and you will show the seller you’re serious about marketing their property.

 

We find when estate agents start to use visual content, they change their position from, “Is this something I really need?” to, “This is helping me show customers just how much better I am as an agent and how much more I can do for them,” and that’s helping them win greater market share.

 

Businesses across the world who are invested in high quality visual content recognise its power and, if done well, the difference it can make to the bottom line. According to AirBnB, colour is the most important component affecting demand for its properties. Their research shows that improving colour attributes by one standard deviation could bring extra revenue of almost £5,000 a year for a single rental property. Quite simply, improving photo quality has a direct economic impact. That’s something to celebrate and now the tools are literally at your fingertips.

 

This article was first published by Estate Agent Today.