Poor communication becomes expensive at scale

Article by Adam Hills, client services director, LRG Living Markets

A landlord asks for an update on a repair. The property manager asks the contractor, who is waiting for access from the tenant. Meanwhile, the accounts team has received an invoice but cannot tell whether the work is complete.

Each person may have done their job but it’s up to the landlord to piece together what happened.

Even when everything progresses smoothly, this chain of events can take considerable time and trouble. Although an unanswered question might only take minutes to chase, across a large portfolio, repeated chases, duplicated explanations and decisions made with incomplete information can consume a substantial amount of an owner’s time.

They can also delay a repair or leave a home empty for longer than necessary. The cost of communication itself is difficult to isolate.

The scale is material. MHCLG’s 2024 English Private Landlord Survey found that landlords with five or more properties made up just 17% of landlords, yet owned the homes associated with almost half (49%) of private tenancies.

Its estimates of agent use also rose with portfolio size: 63% of landlords with at least five properties used an agent for letting services, against 30% of single-property landlords. The latter measure covers letting rather than management and may understate agent use.

The economies of scale (or not)

Fragmentation is rarely cited as a major cause of loss of profitability. But its effects are easy to recognise when an inspection report arrives without a recommendation, a repair quotation gives no basis for choosing between options or a tenant’s concern is passed between teams without anyone taking charge.

In each of these cases, the landlord then has to establish what needs doing, who can approve it and when it will happen.

The impact is felt by residents as well as owners. The MHCLG Private rented sector tenants: research report, which surveyed 1,517 private renters in England, found that 77% reported at least one issue with their current property and satisfaction with how issues were resolved was generally low. These reports do not establish the cause but a repair cannot be judged solely by whether a contractor was instructed.

Furthermore, the Property Ombudsman’s 2025 annual review offers another warning. It recorded 23,987 calls and email enquiries and 7,681 resolved disputes across its work, and the Ombudsman said that poor communication was the most common underlying reason for disputes and that failures to provide clear information or respond promptly often caused them to escalate unnecessarily.

Issues need owners

Responsiveness is useful, but speed of reply is a poor substitute for ownership. If I tell a landlord that a message has been forwarded, I have answered the email without advancing the issue. A useful update says what is known, what is still being checked, who is responsible for the next action and when the landlord will hear more. Where a deadline slips, the owner should hear before they have to chase.

The best approach is to start with a clear route for routine decisions and exceptions. A managing team needs agreed spending thresholds and a record of approvals, alongside rules for escalating urgent repairs, recurring arrears, complaints and potential compliance concerns.

These rules cannot remove judgement: a minor repair in an occupied flat and a recurring leak affecting several homes require different attention. They can, however, prevent a case from sitting between teams because nobody is sure who must act.

It goes without saying that handovers deserve the same discipline. When a colleague is away or a tenancy moves from lettings to management, the next person should be able to see the history, commitments, documents and open actions without asking the landlord to explain everything again.

A shared action log is only useful if somebody keeps it current and closes the loop, and more software alone will not make that happen.

Report outcomes, not just activity

Owners need a different view of their portfolio from the one that a stream of property-by-property messages provides. A monthly account of outstanding repairs, voids, arrears and approaching deadlines should identify the exceptions, their financial or operational consequence and the decision required.

A regular review can then ask whether repeat repairs point to planned investment, whether avoidable delays are extending voids and whether an approval process is slowing work down.

What matters most in property management is supplying the data which enables the owner to take a more considered, strategic approach, across the entire portfolio.

Of course, no agent can promise that boilers will not fail or contractors will never miss an appointment, but what a management service can reasonably promise is that issues will have an owner, information will travel with the case and the landlord will know when a decision is needed.

For a landlord paying for professional management, that is the difference between receiving updates and being relieved of work.

Adam Hills is the client services director within Living Markets, the build-to-rent division of Leaders Romans Group (LRG)