Property search should be exciting. The admin around it shouldn’t be.

Where Kotta came from

Kotta was created by the team behind Longrad, a London property advisory firm working with clients across prime and super-prime residential property.

The idea grew out of something the Longrad directors and team had experienced again and again while running property searches for clients.

Finding the properties was rarely the problem.

Presenting them properly was.

The same problem, every search

A client might be considering apartments in Mayfair, houses in Hampstead, villas in Ibiza and waterfront homes in Cap Ferrat — sometimes across several countries, several trips and several months.

And the information arrives from everywhere:

• PDF brochures and particulars by email
• photographs and videos on WhatsApp
• listing links in separate messages
• floorplans somewhere else again
• viewing schedules in spreadsheets
• notes, comments and voice messages scattered across different conversations

Before long, the search becomes harder to manage than it should be.

Brochures are forwarded and re-forwarded. The same property appears in several places. Clients struggle to remember which house was which. Feedback gets buried in WhatsApp. Viewing schedules sit separately from the properties they refer to.

And advisers spend far too much time assembling presentations, finding files and repeating information instead of actually advising their clients.

Why the existing tools didn’t solve it

There is plenty of software in real estate, but most of it solves a different problem.

A CRM manages relationships and transactions.

A property portal helps the public search through thousands of listings.

A presentation tool can create a beautiful deck — but the moment that deck is sent, it is already becoming out of date.

A real property search is constantly evolving.

New properties appear. Others disappear. A client changes their mind. Another neighbourhood enters the search. A viewing is moved. A new trip is organised.

What was missing was the client-facing layer: one simple place where an adviser could curate a search and a client could actually see, understand and respond to what had been selected for them.

So we built it

Kotta began as a tool the Longrad team wanted for its own clients.

The principle was deliberately simple:

• Upload the property information you already receive — PDFs, photographs, floorplans and particulars — and turn it into a clear, consistent selection.
• Organise properties by location, search, trip or viewing day.
• Give the client one private link.
• Add new properties as the search develops rather than rebuilding another presentation.
• Keep the viewing schedule beside the properties being viewed.
• Keep the client’s comments and reactions with the property they actually refer to.

Less forwarding. Less formatting. Less searching through old messages.

More time finding the right property.

That became Kotta.

Kotta continues to be developed by the Longrad team, led by its directors, including Longrad’s founder, Roman Grigoriev, combining years of hands-on property advisory experience with a long-standing interest in building technology that removes unnecessary complexity.

Why the name

The name also has a connection to the team’s Estonian roots.

Koda is an old Estonian word historically associated with a dwelling or house, and the root from which kodu — the modern Estonian word for home — developed.

It also survives in modern Estonian words describing the spaces through which we enter a building, including trepikoda, a stairwell.

Kotta is the directional form of koda: into the dwelling.

That felt appropriate for what the product is designed to do.

A list becomes a selection.
A selection becomes a viewing.
A viewing becomes a decision.
And eventually, one property becomes home.