Prime Tenancy

In Founder Focus we introduce entrepreneurs and change-makers working on innovative startups, social enterprises and SME’s around Aotearoa New Zealand.

At a glance

Founders: Tim Calder and Steven Mathews

Business: Prime Tenancy

Founded: 2016

HQ: Auckland

Can you tell us a bit about your business?

Prime Tenancy automates the management of student property portfolios by intelligently connecting vast networks of resources to provide immediate and impactful solutions for student tenants and portfolio managers. The result marries financial profit to social responsibility by enhancing the efficiency and sustainability of student property portfolios while supporting our tenants to thrive.

Our unique features are:

Smart tenancy services: From flat listing through to the tenant’s move-in, we provide an end-to-end solution to ensure a seamless experience for student tenants settling into their first home away from home.
Intuitive issue processing: Our issue reporting feature empowers our entire supply chain to actively solve a wide range of problems efficiently by leveraging years of experience captured in data.
Dynamic asset management: We break down each property into thousands of individual components and cross-correlate related events to make pre-emptive decisions to minimise long term repair and maintenance.

Why we do it:

We love working with young digitally native tenants to create meaningful support for problems they face with their flatting experience while at the same time trying to juggle their student workload. We remember the challenges first hand and believe that if these problems are solved we can support greater flows of more talented young professionals into the economy – boosting the standard of living for all of us.

What’s the backstory for your business idea?

Steve and myself (Tim) met at high school, and went on to flat together while studying at the University of Otago in the flat that I purchased in 2002. Over the following decade we deepened our knowledge in our respective fields – myself in student property investment, and Steve’s in software development.

In 2016, we came together to combine our skills to create software that automated the countless mundane tasks of student property managers. The result frees up landlords’ cash flow, so that they can reinvest more to improve the quality of their property, and time, so they can provide greater support to their student tenants.

The successful development of Prime Tenancy enabled the creation of New Zealand’s first student property fund, Prime Campus, which we are both actively involved in.