The Invest Islands App will cater to both existing and prospective clients. For prospective clients, there will be plot listings, promotional deals, a financial simulator to estimate and customise potential revenue generation, and a localised news feed. It is the invite-only Client Hub, however, where Invest Islands’ innovation comes to the fore.

Whether it’s hailing a cab, booking a holiday, renting an apartment, or even finding a new lover, technology is undoubtedly making life easier. With just a smartphone in your hand, you can now complete tasks that previously would have been certainly time-consuming and possibly patience-testing.

“OWNERSHIP IN INDONESIA”

A quick click or a swipe and suddenly you have a room or a book or a date. Yet, naturally, there are some things that cannot — or should not — be decided solely on a few filtered photos. When it comes to foreign investors looking to purchase plots of lands or real estate overseas, not many people are willing to part with sizeable amounts of savings without having seen their purchase from all angles. Especially when that purchase is related to an emerging market.

Enter Invest Islands. The Indonesian real estate developer has long leaned on technology to improve the experience of its clients. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the award-winning company offered everything from drone footage of available plots of land to video conference calls to update clients on investment progress. Now, after much research and development into usability, the firm is readying to launch its own innovative smartphone app, promising to provide a 360-degree approach to real estate.

“The Invest Islands App is something we had planned even before the pandemic,” said Jack Brown, co-founder of Invest Islands, which is headquartered in Lombok and has physical offices in Hong Kong and Perth. “With COVID very quickly making it impossible for many of our international clients to visit their plots or properties, we took various steps to recalibrate the type of products and services we offer and ultimately decided to accelerate the app development in order to improve communication, transparency, and the overall client experience.”

The Invest Islands App will cater to both existing and prospective clients. For prospective clients, there will be plot listings, promotional deals, a financial simulator to estimate and customise potential revenue generation, and a localised news feed. It is the invite-only Client Hub, however, where Invest Islands’ innovation comes to the fore.

On logging in, clients will access a range of features that enable them to monitor their portfolio 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Whether it’s their account records and legal documents, a transparent timeline showing their deals passing through the Indonesian legal system, a direct line to their broker, or the rising resale value of their plots at any given moment, clients will find everything easy and accessible in one place.

If the client intends to develop a property rather than landbank, they can also select designs and follow live updates of construction progress from the moment the foundations are laid to the minute the doors officially open. Regular photos, videos and drone content of work being completed, as well as optional notifications related to milestones being passed, are also provided. Even interior decoration has been considered with users able to browse and select their furniture and such like with a touch of a button.

In time, should the client intend to enter the short-term rental market, the app will even offer access to various property management tools, such as their rental calendar, pricing options, occupancy rates, and provide online aggregation of guest reviews.

“Our objective with the app was to create a platform that removes the physical distance between the investor and their real estate investment,” added Brown from Invest Islands’ offices in southern Lombok. “Now our clients have instant access to everything and everyone related to their investment that they would find were they here in Indonesia visiting their plot. And as users of the app, they also qualify for a host of exclusive benefits ranging from meals for two and hotel stays to sailing trips and helicopter rides.”

The Invest Islands App will be available worldwide on iOS and Android from May.