The online estate agency Settled appears to have ceased trading with its customers refunded.

It was launched in 2014 by former Google executive Gemma Young and her brother Richard.  In 2017 it secured £1.2m in funding in a new investment fund-raise.

But a statement on the website today says: “In light of Coronavirus, we’re rapidly living in a very different world. With that in mind, we’ve made the hard decision to hibernate Settled. We’ve refunded all of our customers who were yet to have an offer on their home and we’re helping those in the process of selling to get to completion.

“We’ve also reflected and decided, we don’t want to go back to the way things were.

“It’s time for us as a business to examine both the problems of these present times and to also look deeply at the issues that have impacted the property market (including Settled) for many years.

“It’s time we stopped to take a look at how we build our business for the future, so that, as the market begins to recover, we can launch a vastly improved way of buying and selling homes, which, in turn will help to stabilise the country’s economy.

“It’s time to connect with advancements in technology and the opportunities this offers for the property sector.”

The people behind the agency say they now want to establish a PropTech platform working with government, local authorities, banks, lawyers, estate agents, surveyors, insurers and consumers.