Land Services SA has been building on its services since the privatisation of the Land Titles Office in 2017.

It continues to manage the Land Registry and Valuation Roll on behalf of the South Australian Government.

However, their Grenfell Street offices are now also home to an in-house team of software developers, business analysts, digital architects and cyber security experts.

The team is collaborating with the local property industry to build digital solutions to better serve their needs.

Land Services SA CEO Brenton Pike said the company is motivated to unlock all the datasets to provide the most timely, reliable and useful insights – and to provide greater functionality and a highly competitive alternative to existing platforms.

Some of the data is unique to Land Services SA.

“Stamped value for instance, that’s not available anywhere else. So, that’s one of those data sets that no one else would have that is available through this platform,” said Pike.

Property Edge includes thirty search filters that allow users to quickly identify similar properties, to provide more accurate reports and appraisals to their customers.

Pike said unlocking these “true values” could help to increase transparency and assist the industry, which has previously come under fire for underquoting of prices.

Giving the example of releasing new titles and subdivisions data within 24 hours, Pike said the value to real estate agents and buyers agents was in understanding the amount of activity occurring in a geographical area or local council area.

“You can see that new parcels are coming on and there’s growth happening. Also, if you’re looking to buy vacant land, you can filter that and get an instant response to say where the vacant parcels are,” he said.

Property Edge also includes the ability to search for and order a certificate of title, delivering a “more integrated offering”.

“We will continue to enhance and add features. That’s why we’re very interested in user feedback.

“Once it’s rolled out and people are using it, I strongly encourage them to contact us because this platform is the new way of us delivering products and data out to industry.

“It’s really important for us that we continue to meet the industry needs, and whatever those needs are, we’d love to hear from people about their requirements”.

The first iteration of Property Edge was trialled and then launched early this year, with features requested by the property valuation industry and commercial real estate companies.

The three-month trial proved successful with around 80 per cent of firms involved choosing to continue and pay for the service.

Said Pike, “There’s no cap on number of searches per month. It’s purely a subscription-based model based on the number of users per organisation.”

South Australia’s property valuation industry approached Land Services SA to create Property Edge two years ago.

MRS Property senior consultant – advisory Michelle Groves is one of the early users and is enthusiastic about Land Services SA’s engagement with the industry and Property Edge.

“Property Edge has been designed because Land Services SA listened to the industry – they listened to commercial people and understood what we needed versus what we had.

“It’s more efficient, because it has more data, and it has better accessibility to manipulate it.

“You can refine your search right at the front; you don’t have to do this massive search. You can drill down in all your filters before you do the search.

“So, it spits out content that’s really valuable.”