Proppa

A couple of years ago I moved into a leasehold flat and somehow ended up responsible for helping manage our small block of five units.

What followed was eighteen months of WhatsApp arguments about whose turn it was to chase a Fire risk Assessor, a shared Google Drive that nobody could find anything in, a spreadsheet for the service charge budget that three different people had edited and nobody fully trusted, and an AGM where we spent forty minutes trying to find the minutes from the last one.

This wasn't unusual. This was just... what managing a small residential block looks like.

The other side of the problem

My co-founder Ben came at this from a completely different angle. He spent years as a director at a property management company overseeing 1,000+ units across 100+ blocks professionally. From his side, he watched leaseholders in small buildings - the ones with 3 to 15 flats - fall through the cracks constantly.

The professional tools his company used were built for large portfolios managed by trained agents. They were expensive, complicated, and completely unsuited to a small block where the "property manager" is just a leaseholder who drew the short straw at the AGM.

He also noticed something else: managing agents quietly dread small blocks. The fees don't justify the admin. So small blocks either pay over the odds for a service that's built for someone else, or they go it alone with WhatsApp and hope for the best.

When we compared notes, the picture was pretty clear.

What we found when we looked properly

There are 2.9 million leasehold flats in small blocks across England and Wales.

They collectively pay £3 billion in annual service charges.

And there is not a single platform built specifically for them.

There are enterprise tools built for large professional management companies. There are document portals that let you upload a PDF. There are WhatsApp groups. That's basically it.

No platform that handles tasks, finances, documents, votes, compliance and community in one place - designed for residents rather than professionals, priced for a small block rather than a corporate portfolio.

We looked pretty hard. The gap is real.

So we built Proppa

Proppa is a block management platform for self-managing leaseholders. One place for everything: maintenance tasks, service charge finances, building documents, compliance, community voting and neighbour profiles.

The pitch is simple: replace the WhatsApp group, the shared spreadsheet, the filing cabinet and the email chain with something that actually works.

We built the first version ourselves - I handled the product, tech and operations side, Ben handled legal, compliance and the domain expertise. We launched into a private pilot earlier this year.

Where we are right now:

• 5 live blocks with 30 active users

• Real leaseholders using it daily

• Managing agents reaching out to us wanting to offer it to their smaller buildings

• SEIS/EIS advance assurance awarded

• One user told us she "can't imagine life before Proppa" - which is the best thing anyone has ever said to us

We're now raising a pre-seed round to rebuild with full AI integration, open banking for service charge collection, and the sales motion to scale.

What I'm trying to figure out

The part I find genuinely hard is reaching leaseholders who don't know they need this yet. They're not searching for "block management software" - they're searching for "how do I get my neighbour to pay the service charge" or "what do I do about a leaking roof in a leasehold flat."

We're building out SEO and educational content to meet them there, but it's slow. The people who find us tend to love it - the challenge is getting found.

If you've ever tackled a market where the customer doesn't know they have a problem (or doesn't know a solution exists), I'd love to hear how you approached it. And if you happen to own a leasehold flat or know someone who does - we'd love for you to check out Proppa.

Building in London. Open to questions, feedback, or commiserating about leasehold law.