Letting agents 'must offer choice'
News Category: Industry News
Published: 03-Dec-2008
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Estate agents setting up letting outlets need to use residential lettings software to meet consumer demand, it has been suggested.
According to James Davis, founder and chief executive of upad, letting agents need to tailor their services better to the needs of Britons.
"Society is more interested in choice...and businesses, especially those online, need to react to this and offer what people are after," Mr Davis said.
The residential lettings expert commented that on the high street, buy-to-let mortgage holders can gain access to online portals, which let property from estate agents.
However, he suggested that a barrier to entry can be created by the high costs to landlords of using an agent to source tenants on their behalf.
Free-to-use listing sites meanwhile, can be problematic because renters sometimes cannot enter all the information that they need to about their properties, meaning that a number of tenants request viewings only to find that the home does not meet their criteria, Mr Davis added.
According to October's Rugg Review, some 60 per cent of private landlords used estate agents in 2006 compared to 47 per cent in 2003.
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