Software series Part 2
The right tools Andrea Kirkby reviews innovation in lettings software. L
ettings software has sometimes seemed the younger brother of estate agency software, it gets less publicity and it’s markedly less sexy. But that has changed as so many agents moved from sales agency into lettings to cope
with the chilly economic climate. Glyn Trott of LetMC says, “From our
own experience, there are three times more letting agents now compared to the number in 2007, and a lot of these were born from established estate agents seeing the appeal of the rental market in the current financial climate.” That has vastly increased the market for lettings software as agents realise the potential of creating a recurring revenue stream. Nigel Stanley, MD of Estates IT, says the
nature of lettings agents has also changed. Many agents who focused purely on lettings are now moving towards higher
margin property management activities, and agents are asking for sophisticated property management functionality. “Property management is a good way of
glynn trott let mc
‘Competition has focused agents on thinking around the box when it comes to working out their unique selling points!’
tying the landlord into the agent,” he says, “and that has various benefits; you’re talking to the landlord and the tenant all the time, so sometimes you can already be marketing a property before anyone else knows it’s available.” Estates IT has now included a function in the software that allows agents to search for property that will shortly become available, instead of waiting until it is available to market it. Management capability is crucial, says
Trevor Youens, at Aspasia, “There are any number of products in the market which match prospective tenants to available properties and set up a simple tenancy; but how many of them extend to providing the full suite of property management and accounting functionality? A new agent
PROPERTYdrum JULY 2011 53
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68