Proppa Updates··5 min read
Why We Built Proppa: The Block Management Platform Small Leaseholders Actually Need
Proppa is the block management platform for self-managing leaseholders in small residential blocks. 2.9m UK leaseholders. £3B in service charges. No platform built for them — until now.
A couple of years ago, Cassie — our co-founder and COO — moved into a leasehold flat and somehow ended up responsible for helping manage a small block of five units.
What followed was eighteen months of WhatsApp arguments about whose turn it was to book in a fire risk assessment, 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 forty minutes were spent trying to find the minutes from the last one.
This wasn't unusual. This was just what managing a small residential leasehold block looks like in the UK today.
The problem no one has solved for small blocks
Ben — our co-founder and CEO — 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 fall through the cracks constantly.
The professional block management 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 built for someone else, or they go it alone with WhatsApp and hope for the best.
When we compared notes, the picture was clear.
The gap in the leasehold market
There are 2.9 million leasehold flats in small residential blocks across England and Wales.
They collectively pay £3 billion in annual service charges.
And there is not a single block management platform built specifically for them.
There are enterprise tools built for large professional management companies. There are basic document portals. There are WhatsApp groups. That's essentially the market.
No platform that handles maintenance tasks, service charge finances, building documents, compliance, community votes and neighbour communication in one place — designed for self-managing leaseholders rather than property professionals, and priced for a small block rather than a corporate portfolio.
We looked hard. The gap is real. So we decided to fill it.
Introducing Proppa
Proppa is the block management platform built for self-managing leaseholders in small residential blocks.
One platform for everything your building needs:
- Tasks & maintenance — track repairs, assign jobs, manage contractors
- Finance & service charge — budget visibility, expenditure tracking, service charge management
- Documents & compliance — leases, insurance, inspection reports stored and searchable
- Community & votes — announcements, AGM votes, resident communication
- Neighbours — profiles, contact details, building directory
The goal is simple: replace the WhatsApp group, the shared spreadsheet, the filing cabinet and the email chain with something that actually works for small leasehold blocks.
Where Proppa is today
We built the first version ourselves and launched into a private pilot earlier this year. Here is where we are:
- 5 live blocks with 30 active users using the platform daily
- Managing agents reaching out to us wanting to offer Proppa to their smaller buildings
- SEIS/EIS advance assurance awarded
- One of our pilot users told us he "can't imagine life before Proppa" — which is everything
We are now raising a pre-seed round to rebuild the platform with full AI integration and open banking for service charge collection — making Proppa even more powerful for self-managing leaseholders across England and Wales.
Try Proppa free for 1 month
If you own a leasehold flat in a small block and you are tired of managing your building through WhatsApp and spreadsheets — Proppa was built for you.
Book a demo. First month free for founding blocks at launch.
Cassie & Ben — Co-founders, Proppa · proppa.io