A chain moves at the speed of its slowest email.
Obtainr chases the buyers, sellers, tenants and solicitors your pipeline is waiting on — from your own mailbox, in your name — and reads every reply against what you actually asked for before it tells you a file is clear.
14 days free · no card · cancel any time
What you're actually waiting on
Sales progression is not a legal job and it isn't a sales job. It's a chasing job. Somebody in your office spends their week finding out which of eleven parties hasn't sent the thing they said they'd send on Friday:
- Photo ID and proof of address for AML, from buyers who send a photo of a photo
- Proof and source of funds — a mortgage in principle, a bank statement, a gift letter from a parent nobody has spoken to
- The EPC for a listing that's already live
- Tenant referencing: employer confirmation, previous landlord reference, right-to-rent documents
- Guarantor forms, signed, by someone who lives two hundred miles away
- Memorandum of sale details the solicitors both claim they're waiting on from each other
- Signed terms of business, before you can invoice anyone for anything
None of it is hard. All of it needs somebody to notice what hasn't arrived, work out whether what did arrive is any good, and write another polite email to a person who is buying the most expensive thing they'll ever own and is already stressed about it.
The people holding up a chain don't work for you
Every progression tool in this market gives you a portal and gives your vendor a login. That works on your own client, on a good day. It does nothing about the four other parties who are actually holding the chain up — and you have no authority to make any of them register for anything.
The other side's solicitor
Will not create an account on your system. Will reply to an email from a named person at your agency, because that's how they've worked for thirty years.
The buyer's mortgage broker
Has their own systems, their own client and no reason to adopt yours. But they'll answer an email that names the document and the deadline.
A guarantor or a gifting parent
Involved in exactly one transaction, ever. Asking them to set a password is asking them to give up.
The landlord or the freeholder
Answers on their own timetable, through whatever channel they already use. Usually email, often slowly.
Obtainr sends an ordinary email from your ordinary mailbox. It works on anyone with an email address, whether or not they've ever heard of us. There is nothing for them to join.
How it runs on your work
Describe the chase the way you'd brief a junior
“Get photo ID, proof of address and proof of deposit from the buyers on 14 Elm Road.” Obtainr asks the questions back — which buyer, whether a scan is enough, how recent the statement has to be — until the requirements are unambiguous. That list is the standard every reply gets held to.
It goes out from your mailbox
Gmail or Outlook, connected once with OAuth. Your address, your signature, your existing thread. Replies land in your inbox where you'd expect them. Nothing is relayed through a third-party sending domain, and there's no "sent on behalf of" header.
They get a link and a QR code
Every chase carries a secure upload link and a QR code opening the same page. No account, no password, no app. First-time buyers photograph the QR code and send their ID from their phone in about forty seconds, which is the only workflow they will reliably complete. The link expires when the chase completes or after 30 days.
The reply comes back, and gets read
If the buyer sends a driving licence when you asked for a passport and a utility bill, Obtainr says so and drafts the next chase asking for the rest — same thread, same tone. You find out the file is clear, not just that an email arrived.
A case, end to end
A buyer on a four-property chain has sent “ID attached” with a photo of a provisional licence, cropped. Your negotiator is on viewings until six.
Obtainr reads the reply against the requirements — photo ID plus proof of address dated within three months — sees that one of two items is present and the other is missing, and sends the buyer a short email from your negotiator's address saying which document is still needed and why the licence on its own doesn't cover the address check. The QR code is in the email. The buyer sends a bank statement that evening.
Nobody in your office opened the attachment, decided it wasn't good enough, or drafted a tactful email about it. The next morning the file shows both items satisfied.
Where it stops, plainly
Where it stops, plainly. Obtainr is reply-driven. When a reply arrives it reads it and, if your requirements aren't met, sends the next chase. It does not yet follow up on a timer against total silence — if someone never responds at all, the chase waits and you make the call. That's a real limitation and it's on the roadmap. Everything else it doesn't do.
For a chain, that limitation matters less than you'd think. The parties who go completely silent usually need a phone call from a human anyway — and that's a call your team is better at than any software. What eats your week is the reply that arrived, looked like progress, and turned out to be half of what you asked for.
Questions estate agents ask
Can Obtainr chase the other side's solicitor?
Yes, and this is the main reason agents use it. Obtainr sends an ordinary email from your address to any email address you give it — the other side's solicitor, the buyer's broker, a managing agent. None of them need an account, a login or any awareness that you're using software. If they reply, Obtainr reads the reply against your requirements and follows up if it falls short.
Does it work for lettings as well as sales?
Yes. Referencing is the same shape of problem: several documents, from several parties, where a partial reply looks like a complete one. Employer references, previous landlord references, right-to-rent documents and guarantor forms are all chases with a requirements list attached, and Obtainr checks what comes back against it.
Will the vendor know it's automated?
There's nothing to notice. The email comes from your negotiator's own Gmail or Outlook, on the existing thread, with their signature and no branding from us. It reads like a short email from the person they've been dealing with — because it is sent from that person's mailbox. If you'd rather approve every message before it goes, run it in approval mode.
We already pay for a sales progression platform. Why this too?
Because a progression platform tracks the chain and tells you what's outstanding; it doesn't write the email, read the reply, or decide the reply wasn't good enough. Obtainr is the chasing itself rather than the dashboard about the chasing. Several people run both, using Obtainr for the parties who'll never appear inside their platform.
Honest numbers
Small numbers, and real ones. There are no client logos on this page because we haven't earned any yet — here's the full data set.
Obtainr is used for the same problem elsewhere
The document changes. The shape doesn't: you need something from a person who doesn't work for you, and no portal will make them log in.
Conveyancers
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Accountants
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Mortgage brokers & IFAs
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Bookkeepers
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Recruiters & HR
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Insurance brokers
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Construction
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Start with the file that's been stuck since last Tuesday
14 days free, no card. Connect a mailbox, run one chase on one stalled sale, and see what comes back.
£49 per user per month, with 100 chases included. Billed to the agency.
14 days free · no card · cancel any time