Letting agents
Property compliance software for letting agents.
You carry the duty for properties you do not own, for landlords who each think theirs is the only one.
14 days free access · no card needed
A letting agent holds the hardest version of this problem. The obligations attach to properties belonging to other people, the work is done by contractors you do not employ, and the evidence has to satisfy a landlord, a tenant, a local authority and a redress scheme — each asking different questions about the same property.
Scale makes it worse rather than easier. A hundred managed properties is several hundred certificates on independent renewal dates, and nothing about a property changes on the day its gas safety record expires. The failure is silent until somebody asks, and the person who asks is usually a tenant with a complaint or a council with a notice.
The commercial exposure is specific too. Where an agent is responsible for a lapse, it is the agent who answers for it — to the landlord whose property it was, and to the scheme the agent is a member of.
The records
What letting agents have to keep
- Gas safety records, with the date each one runs out
- [EICR](/glossary/eicr) and electrical safety evidence
- [EPC](/glossary/epc), and the rating the property holds
- [Right to Rent](/glossary/right-to-rent) checks, and any follow-up date
- Deposit protection and [prescribed information](/glossary/prescribed-information)
- Inspection reports, and the repairs they raise
PropertyOptix holds each of these against the property or tenancy it belongs to, with its own expiry.
The problem
What makes this hard for letting agents
Hundreds of dates, none of them yours
Every managed property carries its own certificates on its own cycle. The portfolio has no common renewal date, so a calendar only works if something is watching every property independently — which is precisely what a spreadsheet maintained by a busy person is not.
Answerable to a landlord who sees one property
Each landlord experiences your agency through their property alone and expects an immediate answer about it. Producing that from a system organised around your workload rather than around the property is slow, and slowness reads as not knowing.
Work done by people you do not employ
Contractors hold their own insurance and accreditation, attend when they can and report back in whatever form suits them. An agent is answerable for work they did not do, evidenced by documents somebody else holds.
Inspections that generate work nobody tracks
A property visit produces findings, and findings are repairs. Where the inspection lives in one place and the repair in another, the link between the two breaks — and the unresolved finding is what a disrepair claim is built on.
Two tenancies, one property, no continuity
Tenancies end and begin, deposits are protected and returned, documents are served. The property's compliance history has to survive that handover, and it is exactly the moment records get rebuilt from scratch.
The answer
How PropertyOptix helps
Hundreds of dates, none of them yours
Every certificate sits against the property it belongs to with its own expiry and an alert ahead of it, so a renewal is raised rather than noticed.
CertificatesAnswerable to a landlord who sees one property
The record is organised around the property, so the position for one landlord's house is a view rather than an exercise in assembling it from a workload.
PropertiesWork done by people you do not employ
Contractors sit on a register with their insurance and accreditation expiry tracked, so instructing somebody whose cover has lapsed is visible before the job rather than after a claim.
ContractorsInspections that generate work nobody tracks
Findings from an inspection are raised as repairs on the same record, so the link between what was seen and what was done survives.
InspectionsTwo tenancies, one property, no continuity
Tenancy records hold Right to Rent and deposit protection evidence against the tenancy, while the property keeps its own history across them.
Tenancies
Who it is for
The people doing this job
Property managers
Running a portfolio of managed properties and fielding whatever arrives that morning.
property inspectionLettings directors
Carrying the agency's exposure where a lapse on a managed property becomes the agency's problem.
client money protectionCompliance administrators
Chasing certificates and contractors, which is most of the job and all of the risk.
gas safety recordLandlords you act for
Seeing one property and expecting an answer about it immediately.
landlord gas safety dutyTenants
Reporting repairs and, increasingly, asking for the certificates they are entitled to.
disrepair
Questions
What letting agents ask
- Does PropertyOptix handle client accounting or rent collection?
- No. There is no rent collection, client accounting or landlord statements in it, and that is deliberate rather than a gap waiting to be filled. It sits alongside whatever you use for money and handles the compliance, the repairs and the records.
- Does it do tenant referencing?
- It records the outcome of a reference against the tenancy. It does not run the check — that stays with your referencing provider.
- Can landlords see their own property?
- Access is role-based, so what a given person sees can be scoped to the properties they are connected to rather than the whole portfolio. How you choose to expose that to landlords is your decision.
- Does it list properties on portals?
- No. There is no marketing, portal listing or applicant matching. It starts once there is a property to manage and a tenancy to keep compliant.
- Can we see the whole portfolio's compliance position at once?
- Yes. Portfolio-wide compliance reporting is one of the things it is built for — the point being to see what is about to lapse across every managed property rather than per property on request.
Keep reading
Every certificate, on the property it belongs to
Properties, tenancies, inspections and repairs on one record, for letting agents.
14 days free access · no card needed