Hold the next instruction back from the portals for a week.
Send a new instruction to your own applicants for a week or two before it goes public, and what to tell the landlord or vendor.
Plenty of people looking to buy or rent never register with an agency, and there is no reason they would when Rightmove and Zoopla show them everything. So the instruction comes in, your system pushes it to every portal at once, and you get a flood of enquiries from people you have never dealt with. You qualify every one of them, then go back to all of them to say it has gone. That is most of a week of admin for one let.
The other half is price. You can suggest one and assume it is achievable, but you only find out once it is live. If the response is not there you reduce it, and the reduction is flagged on the listing for everyone to see.
Watch it
Five minutes, including the words to use with a landlord or vendor, because that conversation is what stops most people trying it.
What you get
A reason to register with you. Applicants who see new instructions before the portals do have a reason to be on your list at all.
Pre-vetted interest. Everyone who comes back already knows you and has already been through your registration.
A price tested in private. You see the response before anybody public does, and if it does go to the portals afterwards it has not sat there going stale. For a let, the test only works one way: the rent you send is the most you can take.
Keep it legal
- Lettings, the rent. The email or text to your applicants is a written advert or offer, so it states one fixed rent. Nobody is invited to offer more, in writing or on the phone, and you cannot accept more than that rent (Renters’ Rights Act 2025, s.56). The rent you sent still counts after the window, so do not list it higher on the portals and take the difference.
- Lettings, who gets it. Match on budget and bedrooms; taking income into account is allowed (s.41). Leaving people out because they have children or claim benefits is not, and that includes old “No DSS” or “professionals only” tags in your system (s.33 and s.34).
- Lettings, holding deposits. One at a time per property, no more than a week’s rent, and the tenancy agreed within 15 days unless you agree a different date in writing. Otherwise it goes back within 7 days (Tenant Fees Act 2019, Schedules 1 and 2).
- Authority first. Landlord or vendor permission, signed terms and a valid EPC before anything goes out. A let also needs an EPC rating of E or above, or a registered exemption (Energy Efficiency (Private Rented Property) (England and Wales) Regulations 2015, reg 23).
- Same facts as the portal listing. A message with the property and its price carries what the listing would, including your agency’s name and address, or a link to them (Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, s.230).
- Sales: every offer is still passed on promptly and in writing until exchange.
- Your registration wording has to cover sending property emails, or the send has no consent behind it.
- Coming: once the private rented sector database reaches your area, every written advert for a let will also need the landlord’s and the property’s database numbers (Renters’ Rights Act 2025, s.82, not yet in force).
Try it on one instruction this week.
From Easier To Run, lesson four. See the post on LinkedIn ↗