Ex-Agents Bet On New App To Topple Facebook In Property Networking

Two brothers who cut their teeth in the trenches of British estate agency have turned founders, launching a new social media app designed specifically for the property industry. Chris and David Tremlett, who between them have worked at traditional agency Pointins as well as online disruptors Purplebricks and Yopa, have brought Gatha to market, describing it as a free platform built to serve agents, landlords, developers and others in the sector. Their stated ambition, as reported, is nothing less than to oust Facebook as the default meeting place for property professionals online.

The news may look like a niche tech launch, but it touches on something that matters a great deal to anyone active in UK property: where and how industry information, deals and networking actually happen. For years, much of the informal infrastructure of the sector, from agent-to-agent referrals to landlord forums and developer chatter, has sat inside Facebook groups never designed for commercial or professional use. A dedicated platform built by people who have actually sold houses for a living, rather than general-purpose social media engineers, speaks to a growing appetite across UK business sectors for tools tailored to specific professional needs rather than repurposed consumer apps.

That the founders have experience spanning both the old world of high-street agency, via Pointins, and the new world of hybrid and online agency, via Purplebricks and Yopa, is significant. It gives Gatha credibility with two very different constituencies: traditional agents in cities such as Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Newcastle who still rely heavily on local relationships and word of mouth, and the increasingly digital-first operators who have reshaped how properties are marketed and sold over the past decade. A platform that can bridge that divide, rather than serving only one camp, has a more plausible route to the scale needed to challenge an incumbent as entrenched as Facebook.

For buy-to-let landlords and property investors, the practical implications of a dedicated industry app are worth watching closely over the coming months. Much professional knowledge-sharing in UK property, from regional yield comparisons to planning quirks in specific local authorities, still happens informally and often inefficiently through scattered Facebook groups with inconsistent moderation. A purpose-built app with a free entry point lowers the barrier for landlords and smaller investors in regional markets, including Surrey's commuter-belt towns and the northern powerhouse cities, to access the kind of networking and information flow that has traditionally favoured agents and investors with the deepest existing contact books.

Developers and commercial property investors stand to benefit too, if the platform gains traction, because professional-grade networking tools tend to accelerate deal flow and off-market opportunities, areas where speed and trust matter as much as price. First-time buyers are less directly affected, since Gatha is being positioned as an industry tool rather than a consumer-facing portal, but any platform that improves efficiency and information-sharing among agents has the potential to filter through to a smoother transaction process further down the chain, something the UK market has long needed given the well-documented friction in its conveyancing and sales process.

The harder question is whether Gatha can genuinely dislodge Facebook's network effects. Social platforms succeed or fail on critical mass, and Facebook's property groups, however imperfect, already have years of accumulated membership and inertia behind them. A free app launched by two founders, however well-credentialled, faces the classic chicken-and-egg problem of persuading enough agents, landlords and developers to migrate their conversations to a new destination before the old one has lost its usefulness. Over the next six to twelve months, the real test will not be the quality of the app itself but whether Gatha can secure early adoption among enough influential regional agents and investor networks to create the gravitational pull needed to draw others away from established habits. If it succeeds even partially, it would mark a notable shift in how professional networking operates across the UK property industry, and a reminder that proptech innovation is increasingly coming not from venture-backed outsiders but from practitioners who have lived the sector's daily frustrations first-hand.