Duncan (pictured above) is no newcomer to the financial world; his experience and knowledge coupled with a calculated ambition has seen him launch specialist lender TAB, which introduced its TAB Property offering in December last year.

TAB Property, a concept which amalgamates fractional ownership and fintech, was pioneered to help more people build a property portfolio without having to invest large swathes of money and resources. This proposition intends to bring what may otherwise be inaccessible assets to the everyday person — an idea Duncan describes as “democratising real estate”.

“We want to open up [real estate] to hundreds of thousands of people in the UK that might have savings and a good job and aspirations to own property, but don't have the knowledge or the power to go and buy themselves,” said Duncan.

TAB Property — which has already bought commercial assets in the form of two Travelodges — also hopes to bring more liquidity to the real estate investment market.

“[An] age-old problem with real estate is that it's illiquid, meaning that if I finally save up a deposit and I buy a BTL property, accessing my money if I need it is impossible,” explained Duncan.

“It means putting the property on the market, waiting for somebody to come and view it, and then you've got your lawyer arguing with my lawyer — getting things over the line is really difficult.”

“We're now opening it up to thousands of people that just previously weren't considering it [or] didn't have the ability to invest in this type of property. We want to bring institutional-grade investments, which is what these kind of big hotel brands are, to everyday people.”

TAB Property allows people to invest from £1,000 into an asset with the aim of producing a long-term sustainable income. Through this option, investors can choose whether or not it is something they want to invest their money into, while leaving the otherwise time-consuming details — such as legal and tenant issues — to the pros. In the meantime, owners can gain a monthly income based on the shares which they hold in the property. 

With TAB Property’s bid and offer system, share owners can put their part of the asset back up for sale at a price of their choosing; the time it takes to sell is then based on how high or low they decide to sell it for.

So far, the search for suitable assets to offer for investment has seen the company review over £1bn of potential buildings.

“By looking at a number of different types of transactions up and down the country, doing lots of market research on who are good tenants, who are bad tenants, and [where] the good areas [are], a lot of what our customers are investing with us for is our ability to go to market and assess these things,” Duncan highlighted.

While the idea may seem somewhat new, he sees believes the real estate market may be late to the game and that ‘democratising’ assets is an already tried and tested method in a number of other markets such as art, gold, and cars.

However, it’s not simply financial opportunities that Duncan sees — he also envisions further opportunity for the property finance industry to utilise technology to create more efficient and streamlined processes for purchasing assets and managing investments.

•   The Finance Professional Show 2023: The Video
•   TAB completes three commercial mortgages worth over £5m
•   TAB launches new fractional ownership investment product

“What I've experienced in my career is technology hasn't really been adopted in the finance and property market as quickly as it has in other areas… there's a real lack of tech.”

With proptech — such as smart heating with a mobile device  — now incorporated into everyday homes, Duncan predicts it will become more prevalent when it comes to investment.

“As far as proptech is concerned, you can now delve into a huge amount of detail about a particular area, its population, and its likely growth and investment. Access to information is much more readily available than it ever has been before, and I see that continuing.”

Duncan sees TAB as a company ready and willing to use this new technology, such as investing in AI to consolidate TAB’s financial data, lending policies, and procedures for customer consumption, allowing for information to be quickly accessible and questions to be answered faster.

Nevertheless, Duncan is determined to keep TAB’s roots as a real estate-centric business, while using technology to its benefit.

“We just want to make sure we consider ourselves to be a property firm, using technology to our advantage rather than a tech firm wanting to have a property investment arm.”

“The market is big enough, and I think [the younger] generations are moving towards the digitised environment —  we're not only not worried about it, we’re really happy to help.”

According to Duncan, the experience and knowledge TAB has acquired across the sector throughout its journey is set to ensure the type of investments it offers are suitable for investors. “We've learnt from others' mistakes and we're leveraging technology to help us offer the best types of investments,” he added.

For example, the very process of how a customer manages their debt is something Duncan wants to see streamlined, removing what can often be a “cumbersome” process. This means allowing borrowers to utilise online technology to quickly log in and see how much they owe, when it is due, and produce a redemption statement.

Duncan also has ideas of TAB Property eventually evolving into an estate agent, whereby sellers can market their property across thousands of potential buyers looking to club together and collectively purchase the asset.

While Duncan also gives a nod to the potential of fractional ownership moving towards land buying and development, he appreciates that growth comes steadily, and is not one for charging into plans with simply his fingers crossed and a hope for the best attitude.

“I think we've got a very comprehensive plan of how we're going to get there over five years — some things are not necessary to do right now,” he stated.

“We've got very few assets; we're listing them one at a time. It doesn't make sense to market to 100,000 people to try and get a huge number of signups, because we don't have enough product to show them. There are stepping stones when building a business so that it makes financial sense for us.”

However, as TAB Property grows — which it aims to do via self-funding — Duncan sees an opportunity for real estate to open its doors to a wider audience and for the project to expand and contribute to the democratisation of the real estate market.

“There are lots of things in the pipeline that, as the business grows, we think will be really positive.”