Since its inception in 2017 Yourkeys has been a pioneer in the property industry as the first property platform to take the entire property sales process online. Recently the firm found success in BUILD’s Design & Build Awards where they were righteously awarded the accolade Best New Technology for Housebuilders. On the back of this win, we profile this revolutionary company to find out more.

Drawing on the expertise of its Founders, Yourkeys offers a unique solution that aims to reduce the hassle from purchasing a home. After all, buying a house is ranked as the no.1 most stressful experience in modern life. This is largely due to poor communication and the protracted nature of the sale, and as a result 39% of all house sales fall-through, which represents £1B of costs to UK housebuilders. Their technology accelerates the time it takes to exchange contracts to just 21 days, which means fewer sales fall through.


When Co-Founder Riccardo Dawson worked for Shape, a midsized house developer building 450 houses PA, he witnessed the enormous strain of the buying process on both buyers and developer. He was baffled that housebuilders, selling the most expensive thing that anyone buys in their life, didn’t project themselves in a more exciting and professional manner. Furthermore, he pondered how it was possible that the process was so tortuous that instead of stimulating passion of their new home, the process actively alienated and patronised buyers. That was when he realised that, while house buying wasn’t exactly broken, it just didn’t work, and was the turning point for him to strive for a better solution.

YK Platform Online

That coupled with the fact that the world was moving towards digital, where even an item bought on Amazon had full visibility of each delivery step or a £10 Uber journey provided real time visuals of the arrival time, demonstrated how archaic the house sales sector was.

Building upon this experience and others, Riccardo co-founded Yourkeys, and the firm has now created a solution that radically changes the way new-build houses are sold and bought. All stakeholders use one central operating hub with the buyer being fully involved in the entire buying process. This means that all communication between the developer, estate agent, mortgage broker, buyers conveyancing solicitor, sellers’ solicitor and surveyor, is completely transparent with everyone updated at every step of the process through visibility of the sales progression. 

The platform itself launched in 2018, and it has already secured 24 housebuilder clients including Kier, Shape, Howarth and Joseph Homes. The company is also in ongoing discussions with a further 27 housebuilders including Galliards, Bellway, Redrow and Barratts, meaning that it is on target to secure over 100 clients by the end of the year.

Looking ahead, Yourkeys is continuing to enhance its solution to drive a revolution in the house buying market. Once the firm has a critical number of developments on its platform, the firm will then focus on driving house buyers to it to enhance its success even further throughout 2019 and beyond.

Name: Riccardo Dawson 

Website: www.yourkeys.com 

Email: [email protected] 

Address: 1 Poultry, London, EC2R 8EJ, United Kingdom 

Phone: 020 8088 2300