A Chat with Mark McCorrie, Founder and CEO at 360 Estate Agent Tour Company: Made Snappy

Made Snappy helps letting and estate agents create their own google street view style walkthroughs of their properties so that anyone buying or renting a home can view the full property online. It only takes about 20 minutes to take the photos and put a tour together.

Many estate and letting agents haven’t adopted the technology as they feel they are losing leads by showing too much of the property, though in reality, this is not the case. Made Snappy is working on innovative new lead capture technology to balance the needs of agents and buyers, which they hope will drive mass adoption in the market and make it uneconomical for remaining agents to compete without using virtual tours in their lead management processes.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
Made Snappy was born in 2019. I used to run a small letting agency in the Midlands where we had around 150 tenants. We were renting to about 10 tenants a month, which meant somewhere around 40-50 viewings a month. I frequently did viewings outside hours when my staff were off, and regularly I would turn up to a property, show the tenant inside, and they would tell me they didn’t like it.

They had seen the photos, but photos don’t give the most accurate impression of what a house is like or how it feels. This felt like a huge waste of time for both me and the viewer. I built Made Snappy for my agency at first, and then I saw huge benefits from it. That was when I thought about turning it into a business and sharing those benefits with other agents.

Having previously designed software for the aerospace industry for clients such as Boeing, I gave up my career to become a letting agent before launching Made Snappy. I think starting my lettings operation is what caused me to lose most of my hair but what it did give me was a real understanding of the industry and what letting and estate agents need.

I wanted Made Snappy to be the virtual tour provider built for the UK letting and estate agency sector. It’s an easy-to-use software platform that enables agents to quickly create their own virtual tours with any 3D camera for less than £2 per tour, per month.
 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
Agents were starting to adopt virtual tours before the pandemic, but the pandemic gave many a big push to find an efficient solution that helped them continue doing viewings. At the start of the pandemic, I was the only person working in the business. During the pandemic, we had to change our office 3 times as we took on more staff, and now we have a big office with 9 staff and plenty of room to grow.

We saw a significant increase in clients when the first lockdown struck in 2020, with 95% of those clients continuing to use Made Snappy’s virtual tours a year later.

Made Snappy is now one of the fastest-growing virtual tour companies in the UK, with clients including Pattinsons, Martin & Co and Hunters. The software boasts unique features aimed at UK estate agents, including lead capture (the requirement to register before viewing the tour), view counters to show popularity with vendors and branch management. It is the ideal solution for agencies seeking to use their time more efficiently and effectively.
 

What can we hope to see from Made Snappy in the future?

 
Well, I’m committed to my mission to make every property in the UK have a virtual tour by 2024. About 14% of properties for sale and 7% of properties to let in the UK have virtual tours (source: Rightmove data analysed my Made Snappy) so we have a way to go but the momentum is definitely there. In addition to this, our new lead capture tool is proving popular with agents and shortly we will be launching a brand new product – Forever Tours. Watch this space!