Well, your last statements still hold for properties syntax too. Another reason I like properties syntax in such cases is that I can do something like:

operator fun TextView.setValue(obj: Any?, property: Any?, arg: CharSequence) { text = arg }
operator fun TextView.getValue(obj: Any?, property: Any?): String = text.toString()

And then:

class AndroUserDetailsView(layout: View) : UserDetailsView {
  var name by layout.some_edit_text
  var email by layout.some_other_edit_text
  ...
}