- Published date:
- 29 September 2026
In our latest Spotlight Interview, we spoke to Edward Hamilton, CEO, Smart Point. Edward shares how Smart Point is connecting residents, landlords, local businesses and services through a single platform, and how the company is expanding its offering across the UK and Europe."The number one metric is ancillary revenue. That's the whole point of what we do: unlocking economic value that was sitting dormant in the community. It isn't just an owner metric, though. It matters just as much to residents, because a good share of that value comes back to them as convenience, savings and better deals."
Q1. Smart Point has grown significantly across the UK and Europe in recent years. What inspired the creation of Smart Point and was there a specific gap you were looking to address?
Smart Point started with a simple observation: every residential building is already a community. Hundreds of people live side by side, with shared needs and routines and real economic value between them. Landlords and developers had invested brilliantly in making those buildings great places to live. We saw the chance to take that further by connecting the community inside the building to the services, partners and amenities around it.
That was the gap: connectivity. Smart Point is the connectivity layer for the real estate sector. Any partner, service or amenity can plug into our platform easily, and any building can join just as easily, whether it's one site or a portfolio of a thousand. We fit into the community without adding operational load. Landlords can offer residents more from day one, and residents get a building that opens onto everything good in the neighbourhood.
The community was already there. We built the door that connects it to the world outside.
Q2. Your platform combines parcel management, amenities, analytics and tenant engagement in one ecosystem. What was the thinking behind bringing these capabilities together?
None of it was a masterplan on day one; it was sequencing. We started with parcel reception lockers because that's the everyday touchpoint that gets residents interacting with something physical in the building. Once that habit exists, you have a reason to build the next layer: an interactive digital portal, so residents actually hear from the building and from each other, not just collect a parcel.
Then we built our own standalone app for buildings that had nothing at all, so no building had a reason to sit outside the network. Now we've gone a step further. We integrate directly into a building's existing resident app and sit inside it as if we're part of it, rather than asking residents to download one more thing.
Every layer exists to do one job: create enough genuine interaction that the community becomes worth something, both to residents and to the owner. Parcel, portal, app, integration: they're all different doors into the same platform.
Q3. How does the platform help landlords tailor services to the specific needs of different buildings or occupier groups?
It's a platform, so tailoring is automatic rather than bespoke. We onboard amenities, partners and enablement features across the verticals we serve (office, resi and PBSA, with hospitality coming soon). The moment a new community joins, it's automatically assigned every amenity and service that's already live in that area and suited to that property type. The building manager doesn't build anything from scratch. They just toggle on what they want and toggle off what they don't.
We also give residents a channel to request the services and local businesses they already use and like, and we onboard those directly as a perk for that specific building. Building managers who want more control can upload or create their own amenities. That's a strong feature for them too, because it puts everything in one place and they still get the data and the commission.
So the tailoring happens at three levels: automatic by location and property type, resident-driven through requests, and owner-driven through their own additions. It's all the same platform, with the same data layer underneath.
Q4. Your Data Dashboard provides real-time operational insights. What are the key metrics that clients find most valuable?
The number one metric is ancillary revenue. That's the whole point of what we do: unlocking economic value that was sitting dormant in the community. It isn't just an owner metric, though. It matters just as much to residents, because a good share of that value comes back to them as convenience, savings and better deals.
Right behind it are resident satisfaction, usage and interests. Every interaction builds a profile of what residents actually want, and that's what lets us secure the right partnerships for each building rather than offering a generic list of amenities. Revenue tells you the platform is working. The resident profile tells you why, and where to take it next.
Q5. Looking ahead, as you expand into the UK market, what's next for Smart Point and what would you advise other technology companies moving into new markets?
We'll keep onboarding stellar partners and services to give residents more. We also plan to keep expanding into more living verticals in the UK, growing through partnerships rather than building out every market ourselves.
My advice: it takes a lot longer than you think. Real estate thinks in years, not months, so you need patience built into how you plan and how you fund the business. Keep investing in your brand and in coming across as a mature business, because credibility is what gets you in the room. And resist the urge to make innovation your main pitch. The bigger job is de-risking things for the client. They're the ones putting their reputation and their residents' experience on the line by bringing you in, so your job is to remove their risk, not add to their to-do list.
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