Renters’ Rights Act could boost how agents help landlords

Landlords could be offered more compliance support and a wider choice of paid services as letting agents respond to the Renters’ Rights Act, one leading expert says.

Sally Lawson of training outfit Agent Rainmaker, says agents must rebuild managed stock after losses across the sector, with acquisitions, lead generation and new services pursued together.

She argues agencies have spent much of the past year concentrating on surviving the changes, leaving other parts of their businesses with less attention.

Her proposed response is a three-part strategy, which she calls pillars, aimed at replacing lost instructions and giving landlords more reasons to use an agent.

Landlord trust challenge

Ms Lawson said: “Landlords haven’t stopped needing agents, they’ve just stopped trusting the ones who can’t explain why using an agent now matters more than it did two years ago.

“That’s an agent problem, not a landlord one.”

She added: “So use all of your compliance knowledge to help them, develop services that they might need, and market to them properly.

“Agents who are proactively going out and making the case for compliance are the ones filling the gap left by the ones who aren’t.”

Agency acquisitions

Ms Lawson identifies acquisitions as the first pillar, arguing that firms with weak instruction pipelines should consider buying another agency’s managed book.

She says purchasing an established portfolio provides a more controllable route to growth when new instructions are harder to secure naturally.

Preparation matters, however, with systems and processes needing to be ready before an acquisition is completed.

Deals are most likely to fail, she argues, when agents enter the first 90 days without an integration plan.

New compliance services

Lead generation forms the second pillar, with agents encouraged to explain how their compliance knowledge can help landlords meet new obligations.

The third involves creating paid services for work that firms may previously have included within their standard management offer.

Ms Lawson says some agents now provide as many as 16 services, supported by 53 separate charging points from which landlords can choose.

She argues acquisitions, marketing and new services must operate together if firms are to rebuild their managed portfolios.