EXCLUSIVE: SpareRoom suspends HMO agents over automation tool use

Letting agents handling thousands of HMO rooms on behalf of landlords across the country were abruptly locked out of SpareRoom last week after the platform suspended dozens of professional accounts without warning.

The platform said their use of automation tools is a breach of its terms.

Emails sent to affected users said accounts would remain suspended for up to four days unless agents confirmed they had removed the third-party tools.

Between them, the suspended accounts covered thousands of rooms listed on the site.

For many agents, SpareRoom is the main route to market, leaving little room to manoeuvre when access is removed.

Activities stopped immediately

Lee Dumbarton, founder of UrbanShare, which operates across London, Surrey and the home counties, said routine activity stopped almost immediately.

He told Property118: “We weren’t trying to gain anything. We were trying to respond to people faster, which is better for tenants, too.

“To have the account suspended without any warning was a real shock.”

Because enquiries are handled through SpareRoom’s internal messaging system, agents found themselves unable to contact prospective tenants.

Viewings already booked for the weekend could not be confirmed or moved.

One agent told us that access was briefly restored after contacting the company and pointing to appointments already in the diary.

No other HMO platform

Other letting agents reported the same disruption, although most declined to be named.

One said: “If this were any other platform, we’d just move on. But you can’t. There’s nowhere else to go. So you just keep your head down and hope it’s not you next time.”

The issue centres on the platform’s prohibition on automated activity.

Its terms allow accounts to be suspended or terminated at its discretion and, at the same time, rule out tools designed to streamline responses or manage enquiries.

RRA impact for agents

In practice, agents say those tools are now part of daily operations, particularly with administrative pressure increasing ahead of the Renters’ Rights Act.

Larger operators, especially those with multiple staff, rely on them to schedule replies and organise viewings at scale.

The tool referenced in the suspensions is Nestflo, used by HMO agents to handle enquiries and bookings.

Its founder, Roland Tao, said the move came as a surprise.

He told Property118: “We built Nestflo to help agents work more efficiently. Faster responses to applicants, viewings booked sooner, fewer people left waiting to hear back.

“The tool operates across a number of platforms, and we have never had an issue of this kind before. We thought we were being careful.”

Issue over demand claim

He also questioned the figures included in SpareRoom’s emails, which stated that Nestflo had generated more than 300,000 requests within a 24-hour period.

He said: “We’re a much smaller company than SpareRoom. I’d expect our infrastructure to be significantly smaller than theirs.

“Handling that volume of requests would have caused us serious problems of our own.

“We’ve reviewed our logs and we have not experienced any issues of that kind.”

Some agents said they had not realised the full extent of the platform’s restrictions.

Others pointed to similar episodes in previous years, where accounts were suspended over tools that had been in routine use.

For agents managing large portfolios, even a short suspension feeds directly into pipeline delays and landlord relationships.

Site infrastructure under strain

SpareRoom said it acted to protect performance across the site and a statement, it told us: “We understand the need for automation but, in this case, a small group of users were using a particular bit of third party software that put a huge strain on site infrastructure.

“Had it continued, it could have resulted in site-wide performance issues for all SpareRoom users.

“We therefore took action to suspend the accounts responsible in order to protect the site.

“Now the situation has been resolved, all the accounts have been reactivated.”

SpareRoom access restored

While access may have been restored, agents say they have removed automation tools and returned to manual processes.

An industry insider said: “Whilst accounts may have been activated, we still have zero allowance of using any tools to help automate the business, and we are struggling now with a load of manual work that we previously had automated.

“Things like replying to tenants asking, ‘Is this still available?’, to let them know it is, and provide information on how to arrange a viewing now take much more time.

“There have been discussions as to whether developing in-house tools could help with automation, but the risk that SpareRoom will ban the account now without question has made this a risk.

“Whilst SpareRoom says ‘a small number’, it’s understood the number is 50+ of some of the biggest professional agencies.

“Arguably, that’s one or two per large city. If they have 500 rooms, that’s at least 25,000 rooms affected.”