Residential property management specialist urbanbubble and mobile app developer Padoq have developed an interactive app to keep residents connected and engaged while living under COVID-19 lockdown. Designed to motivate and engage residents of apartments across Manchester managed by urbanbubble, the app provides a ‘cyber community’ tailored to the needs of people in specific residential developments. Described as a ‘place to connect with your community’, the app gives residents access to a wide range of lifestyle and work-related events and features including a weekly programme of events, with a positive message of: “Together, we have got this. We’re doing our utmost to make those long days and nights easier by creating virtual communities and hosting events.” The events include a virtual pub quiz, cooking classes, book club, family fun quiz and origami and other events for children. The app is available to residents living in 5,500 homes across Manchester where urbanbubble acts as block manager, including up to 80% Buy-to-Let properties where the firm doesn’t manage lettings but still engages with occupiers about important building related matters. It is also available to residents living in Private Rented Sector schemes managed by urbanbubble, including Local Blackfriars, Salford, developed by Salboy, and other developments delivered by Capital & Centric and Mulbury. This move to digitalise residential property management was created for urbanbubble by fellow Manchester-based business, mobile app development platform Padoq. Michael Howard, founder and managing director of urbanbubble, said: “In these unprecedented and testing times of people adapting to life under lockdown, the need to maintain a sense of being together and communication with your community is of paramount importance. “We’ve always been big on community building for our residents and now more than ever, so we built an app with Padoq allowing them to chat with neighbours, join virtual events, view key documents and much more.” Mike Anderson, CEO of Padoq, said: “It’s great seeing communities of residents come to life in the urbanbubble app. We built Padoq to give companies the tools to maximise their communities online and have found the property sector a perfect fit for our technology. “We’re excited to continue to evolve the platform with market leaders like urbanbubble, delivering world class online experiences to their residents.” Conscious of the need to also maintain and enhance its relationship with its landlord investors, UrbInfo Manchester, the data division of urbanbubble, is providing a weekly Covid-19 property market tracker newsletter including real time data on market activity and trends during the pandemic.