Orbital Witness raises £7.5m to transform residential leasehold property due diligence

London, UK: The technology platform Orbital Witness raises £7.5m to transform residential leasehold property due diligence.

Key points from announcement:

• • Orbital Witness uses generative artificial intelligence (AI) to transform and automate the process of transacting property – helping free solicitors and their clients from onerous levels of paperwork
  • The platform has already become indispensable in commercial real estate; over 2,000 lawyers and property professionals at clients including Mischon de Reya, Freshfields, Slaughter & May, Tesla and M&S have saved more than 74 million minutes across 76,000 transactions
  • The team has now raised £7.5m in venture funding and will use the capital to expand into the residential market, with an initial focus on leasehold property; enabling conveyancers to boost capacity and provide home buyers with a greater level of transparency into issues at the start of the purchasing process

Orbital Witness, the technology platform revolutionising the UK’s £4bn property due diligence market, has raised £7.5m in venture capital. Their ‘Series A’ round was led by proptech investor Parker89 and joined by LocalGlobe, Outward VC, Seedcamp, Portfolio Ventures, and Realty Corporation.

Launched in 2018, Orbital Witness uses machine learning and AI to help lawyers and property professionals significantly reduce the time and cost involved in the property due diligence process. Already making waves in the world of commercial property, this investment will enable the team to roll-out their first product aimed at the residential conveyancing market; helping expand the capacity of residential conveyancers and reducing the rate of transactions falling through.

The Orbital Witness platform replaces the paperwork-laden due diligence process faced by lawyers – much of which has remained unchanged for decades – with a system which can automatically pull and analyse data from public sources including the Land Registry and Local Authorities in a matter of seconds. The company then uses generative AI and natural language process techniques to dissect lengthy documents, such as leases and deeds, providing legal experts with an overview of issues that might affect a property transaction as soon as they open a file.

Commercial property firms have been quick to embrace the technology, which is already used by over 2,000 property lawyers and real estate professionals, including all of the UK’s ‘magic circle’ law firms, as well as by in-house teams across major property developers and insurers such as the Dominvs Group and Zurich, and infrastructure teams at Tesla.

The platform has powered over 76,000 transactions and saved professionals over 74 million minutes that can instead be used to process a higher number of transactions or divert expertise elsewhere. 

The expansion into the home-buying and remortgage market will now bring the same benefits to residential conveyancing law firms – an area of the market which is struggling to recruit and retain legal talent. The team behind Orbital Witness is initially focused on helping conveyancers handle the increasingly complex area of leasehold transactions, whilst giving them the capacity needed to advise a greater number of clients whilst maintaining speed and accuracy. 

Initial pilots suggest that the platform saves an average of 50 minutes per leasehold property transaction – meaning a residential conveyancing lawyer taking on 20 cases a month could save as much as 25 working days in a year.

Orbital Witness has focused on uses of the technology that will empower conveyancers to spot and flag issues or risks to clients much sooner in the transaction process, protecting clients from emotional and financial fall-out further down the line. In 2022, the average residential property purchase took five months to complete and over 35% of house sales fell through. 

This comes at a time when National Trading Standards is pushing the industry, including estate agents and online property portals, to be more transparent with ‘material information’ about homes being listed on the market.

Orbital Witness co-founders Will Pearce (left) and Ed Boulle (right)

Will Pearce, who co-founded the business along with Ed Boulle after seeing first-hand how much paperwork lawyers are required to handle during a property transaction, comments:

“We transform how property due diligence is handled and empower legal experts to get an instant picture of everything they need to know about a property, enabling them to advise their clients quickly and with maximum clarity. 

“We’ve had unprecedented demand for our platform amongst commercial real estate specialists and we’re excited to bring it to the residential market.

“Right now, conveyancers are drowning in paperwork.

“We want to free them from that burden so they can spend less time trawling documents and more time proactively supporting their clients. 

“We’re grateful to our investors for making this next phase of our product development possible and we’re looking forward to working with them closely as we continue to grow.”

The Orbital Witness team

This raise, which brings Orbital Witness’ total funding to £11.5m to date and comes off the back of a year in which the company’s revenues doubled, will be used to expand their 40-strong team and build key partnerships across the residential property market. 

Ben Carroll, Managing Director at enact, the largest direct conveyancer in the UK with over 1.2 million transactions under its belt, comments: 

“At enact, we’ve been defining and refining the process of delivering conveyancing services at scale for 20 years.

“As the demands on conveyancing lawyers grow increasingly complex, we’re focused on automating time-consuming steps in the conveyancing process to further our industry leadership.

“Partnering with Orbital Witness to automate title checking for our leasehold work has the potential to simultaneously unlock capacity, speed up transactions and reduce risk.

“This is an important part of our strategy to lead the industry transition to automation.”

Kindly shared by Orbital Witness

Main article photo courtesy of Pixabay