Real estate
One knowledge base and a website for a property developer
Four partners buy, renovate and sell buildings. They had no shared email or website, and their documents were spread over personal laptops and drives.
- Business
- Property development: buy, renovate, sell
- Team
- 4 people
- Delivered
- A file for every property, and a website
The situation
A property-development partnership founded in 2022. It buys old city-centre buildings, renovates them and sells them, sometimes as individual apartments. Each of the four partners used their own laptop or tablet and their own email account, on different devices and providers. Documents were spread over several drives on several computers. Some existed only on paper, and some only in the partners' mailboxes. There was no shared email, website or domain name.
Phase by phase
Phase 0 · Free demo
Demo on a real property
One of the partners got a demo using a building the partnership was considering buying. During the demo, a connection to the land registry was built to pull in the building's details.
Phase 1 · Goal
Plan for the knowledge base
The partners decided what to set up and how the knowledge base would follow their way of working, from finding a building to selling it.
Phase 2 · AI readiness scan
Data, devices and email accounts
Meetings to map the data the partners already had, where it was stored and which email account each partner used. One of the main users works on an iPad that cannot preview the knowledge base's files, so PDF conversion was added to the plan.
Phase 3 · Connecting
Email and property data sources
The knowledge base was set up on a shared drive and connected to every partner's email. It also connects to the land registry, the main property-listing portal and a voice recorder app. Files are converted to PDF for the partner on the iPad.
Phase 4 · First project
Property pipeline
The knowledge base is organised as a pipeline of research, purchase, renovation and sale, matching how the partners already worked. Interviews and braindumps with the partners filled in the details of each project.
Documents and email
About 3.5 GB of documents for the different properties was added, including scanned paper, along with the relevant email. Everything is sorted into accounting, bank, legal and office, named by date, with one folder per property.
Conflict checks
New information is checked against what the knowledge base already holds. When it conflicts, the partners are asked which version is correct.
Website
The website was built from the knowledge base in one day. The text, the structure and the photos all came from its files. The domain was registered and the site went live.
Deal analysis
Property skills underwrite a building the way an investor would and produce a deal sheet. The partners can also discuss a deal with an assistant set up as a real estate strategist.
Lead intake
When a tip about a building comes in, even with very little information, the knowledge base creates a file for it with everything it can find and a starting point for further research.
Microsoft 365
Company email moved to Microsoft 365 in one afternoon. The knowledge base moved to SharePoint, so all four partners reach it in one place.
Daily operations
The partners use the knowledge base to refresh deal sheets, process incoming mail, check loans against bank statements and pull running costs from the books.
Results
1,615
files structured, about 3.5 GB
10 + 4 + 3
properties being researched, in renovation and sold, each with its own file
24
contact cards, linked to their deals
1 day
to build the website
Website built from the knowledge base
Nobody wrote copy for the website. It was generated from the files the business already uses, and it is updated from the same files.
The four partners run the company from one knowledge base that holds every building, deal, contact and document.