Agents prefer PropTech to extra staff to ease workload

PropTech - not more staff - can make letting agencies more productive and reduce costs.

A new rental confidence survey of lettings agents shows that, when asked what they invest in to help their business, 68.5% says automation is more productive than extra staff (up from 64.6% in 2022) and 70.2% feel PropTech is cheaper (65.1%).

The survey also revealed an increase in the number willing to invest in PropTech, with 85.5% agreeing it is a worthwhile investment compared to 80.7% in 2022.

Top buying considerations included brand reputation (54%), support (37.9%), cost (37.9%) and ease of use (31.5%), with integration (30.6%) and system security (23.4%) following close behind.

In a shift from the 2022 findings, safety of client funds fell in priority from 80.2% to 11.3% as did system security (from 60% in 2022 to 23.4%), which may indicate a growing trust in existing safeguards or a heightened focus on other aspects of technology adoption.

In the survey a year ago a big majority (68.4%) were positive about the ongoing impact of automation on their jobs over the next five years. The most recent data shows 66.9% still had a positive view but those with negative views increased to 6.4%.

The survey was conducted by Reapit | PayProp.

The firm’s commercial director, Neil Cobbold, says: “We saw ‘integration’ rise significantly in priority from 5.2% to 30.6%, which indicates a strong desire for PropTech tools to work seamlessly together – helping them perform more efficiently without the need for logging in and out of several individual systems. 

“… We also posed a follow up question to which 67.7% of respondents said they preferred end-to-end solutions rather than specialist platforms. All of these results point to a desire to see slicker operational impact from PropTech tools that boost productivity and unlock additional capacity in teams across the country to focus on building the key relationships that make the property industry.”