Run the Extremes Test on one thing in your business.
Look at both ends of how something runs and the answer is usually between them. Five steps, with rent arrears worked through.
Look across sales and letting agencies and most sit at one end or the other on something. The senior person gets all the hard work while the newest never sees any of it. Targets are all team or all individual. Nobody asks clients what they think, or every complaint gets chased until the team is tied up and getting nowhere. Each end causes its own problems, and the answer is usually somewhere between them.
It shows up in the numbers. Six in ten estate and letting professionals report burnout in their teams (Alto, 2026), and 94% of the 6,589 agency reviews in our panel are one star or five stars, with next to nothing in between.
Watch it
Under five minutes. It goes through how busy your team should be, who gets the hardest work, targets, reviews and what clients expect, then works one example through from start to finish.
The five steps
- Start with the reality. Where are you now? Note things as they are, not people’s opinions of them.
- Look at both extremes. Write down what happens if you go all the way one way, and all the way the other.
- Find the happy medium. The answer is usually somewhere between the two.
- Work out the next steps. Does it create more work or less? If it creates more, look at what your systems can take off the team.
- Measure and review. Set the number before you change anything, then check it over a set period. It is all good, it needs a tweak, it needs reviewing for longer, or you drop it and try something else.
Worked example: rent arrears
Say you have 200 properties and 30 are in arrears each month. Someone rings every one, at about 10 minutes a call, so around 5 hours a month.
One extreme is chasing nobody until the rent is a month late. The other is ringing everyone the day after it is due. The middle is to automate the first nudge and keep people for the ones who need them. On day one late, a friendly text goes out automatically, and most people pay from that. Still unpaid on day three, the system checks their history: a first-time late payer gets a second text, and a repeat late payer is flagged for a personal call. Either way, the landlord hears on day three, before they have to ask, with what is late, what has been done and what happens next.
On those example figures, calls drop from 30 a month to 8, and team time from 5 hours to 1 hour 20. That is the number you set in step five and check over the next three months.
Keep it legal
- No threats in the texts. Leave out eviction, court and fees. Ground 8 now needs at least three months’ rent unpaid (Housing Act 1988, Schedule 2, Ground 8, as amended by the Renters’ Rights Act 2025), so anything that reads as “pay now or lose your home” on day one or day three is misleading.
- Universal Credit. Rent that is late only because a Universal Credit payment has not arrived yet does not count towards Ground 8 arrears. Time the reminder to the day the payment lands, so those tenants are never flagged as repeat late payers.
- It is a service message. A rent reminder is part of running the tenancy, not marketing, so keep anything promotional out of it.
- Rent guarantee insurance. If the landlord has a policy, check its deadline for reporting arrears and build it into the day-three step.
Try it on one thing this week.
From Easier To Run, lesson five.