Letting agents · diagnosis, not a client
Letting agents with paid tools for landlords, and a phone number for tenants
Eleven local letting agents, checked from the outside. Nine had no way for a tenant to report a repair online, and every one of those nine had paid for software to win new landlords.
These businesses are not clients. Everything here was seen on their own public websites, and nobody is named.
- Sector
- Letting agents, North West
- Checked
- Eleven agencies, September 2026
- Looked at
- Their own websites, as a tenant
- Named
- No
What I saw
On most of these sites the first thing on offer is an instant valuation, or a button to book one, and a few also have a login for landlords. Several of those tools come from paid platforms. Then I looked for what a tenant does when the boiler stops. On nine of the eleven sites there was no repair form, no tenant login and nowhere to send a photo. The only route was the office phone, including at agencies managing hundreds of homes.
What’s causing it
Nobody decided tenants should wait. Software gets bought to win new business, because that is where growth shows up, and repairs are simply something the office deals with. The cost never appears on an invoice. It shows up as a morning of phone calls, a fault described badly over the phone, a contractor who arrives not knowing what is broken, and a landlord asking why it took a week. Having good tools at the front made no difference to the tenant side.
What I’d do first
Not a portal, at least not yet. First I would count how repairs arrive for two weeks: how many calls, how many need a second call to get the details, how many go to the wrong contractor. If the number is small, the fix is a repair form on the website with a photo upload that lands in the right inbox. If it is large, it is worth tracking each job from reported to fixed, with a text to the tenant when a contractor is booked. The point is to know which one it is before anyone pays for the bigger version.
Find out what yours is.
The Business Health Check is this, done on your business from the inside rather than from a website. £195, a written report within 3 working days, and your money back if I find nothing.