Property 3.0: The emergence of a new movement

In 2007, two young entrepreneurs named Cheskey and Gebbia couldn't afford the rent on their San Francisco loft apartment.

Using air mattresses, they turned their living room into a makeshift B&B for people attending an industrial design conference who had been unable to find accommodation.

Over time, this concept developed into an innovative business called AirBnB, which has now helped 13 million people worldwide to find short-term accommodation. 20 years ago, a business concept like this would have been unimaginable.

Now, thanks to the internet, we are about to see many more property services move to the online realm. This next generation of online property businesses is what I like to call Property 3.0', and I see London being at the forefront of movement.

By 2020, I predict that the Property 3.0' movement will revolutionise the UK property industry. I say this because I am friends with and a mentor to many of these young entrepreneurs. I meet them and hear their ideas and support them as they emerge from incubators and cafes with revolutionary ideas that will shake up the property sector.

As a hub of international property activity, London is the natural home for this emerging movement. The London property market and all the services that surround it are antiquated and a constant cause of angst for occupiers. Yet, London is also home of TechCity where cutting-edge Property 3.0' businesses are emerging as a counter-cultural reaction to this public angst. Unlike traditional property businesses, this new breed wants to understand "customer pain points" and build technology products that can help address them.

We have grown up in a world where property services were complicated matters loaded with emotional baggage. Property transactions required a complex understanding of the legal system and time consuming red tape and paperwork. The incumbents wanted us to believe that most property activity was complex, arduous and expensive. Renting a flat, co-owning a property, procuring cleaning services, managing a household, and finding office space had to be complex processes that warranted hefty fees.

The Property 3.0' generation have a superior understanding of customer insight, and know how to create a technology-powered service that plays to those insights. The incumbents are unlikely to be agile enough to keep up with this rapidly evolving new breed of businesses - built on Eric Ries' principles of "lean start-up" - which are bold enough to scale up through experimentation with repeated customer trials and perpetual product iteration.

Everyone's time is precious. In the modern world we all yearn efficiency and speed. Property 3.0' will take the pain out of these transactions hiding complexity behind the scenes in reams of software code. There will of course be winners and losers, but my view is that the purveyors of Property 3.0' are about to drag the property services sector into the 21st century.

A couple of my picks have both recently emerged from TechCity with online alternatives to traditional property services. The first, Spacious, is a visionary business chaired by Rohan Silva (often referred to as the architect of London's Tech City) that adds unparalleled convenience to the process of renting office space. They provide flexibility in commercial property utilisation that high growth businesses desperately need. And the second one is Locatable, a business that is looking to solve problems related to household management - their mantra: Managing your home shouldn't feel like a full time job.

The internet is the strongest tool for businesses to harness since the invention of electricity. The UK property market is a sector that is screaming out for disruption. The Property 3.0' generation is looming in various cafes and incubators in East London. They are ready to emerge and turn the entire industry on its head. As Bob Dylan concluded in his 1964 title track, the times, they are a-changin'.

*Faisal Butt is Co-founder and Managing Director of Hamilton Bradshaw Real Estate, a venture capital firm he founded with James Caan to invest in entrepreneurs with property related ventures. He's a former winner of Shell Livewire's "Young Entrepreneur of the Year", a recipient of the much-acclaimed Skoll Scholarship, and holds an MBA with Distinction from Oxford University. Follow him on twitter at @FaisalButt_.