Property due diligence platform Homesnoop has been named the winner of the 2026 Top of the Props pitch event, hosted by REACH Australia and New Zealand.
The live event saw six finalists present their businesses to an audience of property and technology professionals, with each founder given four minutes to pitch before facing questions from the judging panel.
Hosted by Hermione Gardiner, the evening mixed serious business scrutiny with a fair amount of humour, as the founders were pressed on market size, revenue models, customer adoption and future growth.
Homesnoop founder Tim Castle took home the $10,000 main prize after presenting a platform designed to help property buyers complete their research with greater confidence.
Bringing property research into one report
The idea for Homesnoop came from Mr Castle’s own experience buying a home with his wife.
Like many buyers, they often had only a few hours between inspecting a property and deciding whether to make an offer.
During that time, they were trying to make sense of flood maps, planning overlays, flight paths, development applications, utility information and other data spread across a long list of government and council websites.
“It impeded our confidence in going to make the offer because we didn’t really know if we’d done everything that we needed to move forward with confidence,” Mr Castle told the audience.
Homesnoop brings that information together in a single property report, supported by a mapping platform that allows users to check individual properties and broader suburb data.
The business draws from more than 1000 datasets across 100 sources, including local councils, state governments, utilities, police organisations and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Rather than simply displaying the raw information, Homesnoop also explains what each data point may mean for a buyer.
The platform can help answer questions about flood history, planning controls, nearby developments and whether easements or underground services may affect future plans for the property.
Mr Castle said the company had initially focused on buyers’ agents, who regularly deal with fragmented research processes on behalf of their clients.
After launching its report around 18 months ago, Homesnoop has grown to more than 100 buyers’ agencies and now carries out due diligence checks on more than 15,000 properties each month through its own platform and integration partners.
The company operates on a subscription model, generating about $110 in monthly recurring revenue per customer.
Homesnoop is now working on further uses for its property dataset, including a development-site finder and more advanced listing search tools.
Judges back a clear problem and broad market
The judging panel praised Homesnoop for clearly explaining the problem it was solving and showing how the business could grow through property professionals before moving closer to consumers.
The judges said the result was close, but Homesnoop stood out for its technical foundations, its use of buyers’ agents and the number of possible customer groups for the product.
One judge noted that the platform had the potential to serve buyers, buyers’ agents, conveyancers and selling agents.
Mr Castle said the win was the first major industry recognition Homesnoop had received after several years of building the business.
“We’ve been chugging hard for a couple of years now,” he said.
“It’s the first actual recognition we’ve had from the industry, and that’s fantastic to receive.
“It was daunting, but it was fun to do. If you’re in the crowd thinking about doing it next year, give it a go.”
Crayons CRM takes the crowd’s vote
Crayons CRM received the People’s Choice Award, decided by audience voting on the night.
Its pitch focused on the rental enquiry experience and the volume of repetitive calls property management teams receive from prospective tenants.
Drawing on 20 years in property management, presenter Russell described the current process as a “reverse pager”, where tenants receive automated messages and booking links but are often unable to ask simple questions about a property.
Crayons CRM allows prospective tenants to reply by text and receive answers to common questions before deciding whether to attend an inspection.
The platform also asks attendees for feedback on both the property and the property manager after an open home.
Russell said this helped agencies qualify tenants, lease properties sooner and improve the inspection experience.
While he was cautious about claiming technology could give property managers hours of their lives back, he said it could return smaller but meaningful moments.
“The moments when you’re meant to be having dinner with your family and your phone rings from a prospective tenant,” he said.
“When you’re at a football game and your phone rings and you miss something because you’re talking about the property they want to rent.”
Six businesses take the stage
The other 2026 finalists were:
- RecruitRE, a real estate employment platform offering job advertisements, candidate matching and pre-screening tools.
- Dweller, an AI-supported platform intended to guide buyers through the home-building process and help mortgage brokers coordinate construction loans.
- RealZilla, a document and compliance management platform for real estate agencies.
- ParkBooker, a booking marketplace created specifically for caravan parks, campgrounds and holiday parks.
Across the six pitches, the judges repeatedly returned to the same questions: who pays, how large is the market, how will customers be brought onto the platform and what happens after the first sale?
They praised the finalists for identifying genuine property industry problems, while encouraging several founders to explain their adoption plans and long-term revenue opportunities in more detail.
Top of the Props is organised and funded by the REACH Australia and New Zealand team, including Peter Schravemade, Ebonnie Schravemade and Tom Ellis.
The annual event gives emerging property technology businesses the opportunity to present their work directly to industry leaders, potential customers and investors.
For the founders, four minutes on stage may feel painfully short.
For the audience, it was long enough to see six very different answers to a familiar property industry question: surely there has to be a better way.