Anthony Kyriacou
By Anthony Kyriacou, CEO & Founder of krispyhouse.
In 2024, renting a flat or house in the UK can be a fraught experience. The market is tight, supply is limited, and demand is growing. Demand for rental accommodation has surged to 33% higher than the recorded five-year average. The market will also have to reckon with the impact of the Renters Reform Bill, which may cause landlords to leave the market by raising costs.
There is a clear need, then, for a drive for efficiency in the rental market to help all parties navigate these challenges. One key area of focus in this regard will be PropTech (‘Property Technology’), particularly tools – such as krispyhouse – which simplify and streamline communications between prospective tenants and estate agents.
An unbalanced UK rental market
The UK’s stock of rental accommodation remains limited, with each rental property now receiving over 25 viewing requests on average. Indeed, viewing numbers have tripled since 2019; traditional rental platforms such as Rightmove have recorded some their busiest periods ever last year. These trends are only set to continue. Some sector experts even suggest the UK property market will be made up primarily of renters within the next 20 years.
The supply of rental accommodation is simply not growing fast enough to service this new demand. Construction of new units remains 18% below the five-year average.
As a result, rental prices will continue to rise. Rents are still predicted to grow in 2024 despite uncertainty in the housing market, with London and the country at large projected to experience increases of around 2% and 5%, respectively.
An administrative burden
One often-overlooked aspect of this problem is the growing administrative task for estate agents as demand grows and supply remains mostly fixed. The huge increase in viewings has overwhelmed the market, with the sheer volume of communications proving very difficult for estate agents to manage.
A big part of the problem is current PropTech, which has not kept pace with trends in rental communications.
Even in 2024, the main two ways of connecting with an estate agent would be either to make a call or send an email. But this is patently outmoded: 72% of prospective tenants, when surveyed, prefer texting over calls. Millennials (aged 20 to 40) are the core consumers in the UK rental market. In their social lives, they rely on platforms like WhatsApp, Tinder and Bumble – known for their quick and convenient methods of communication. In their professional lives, they rely on LinkedIn, which also provides instantaneous communication.
It is, then, simply a strange anomaly that the rental sector has no platform that offers the same communication services – and it’s an irregularity that is causing serious market inefficiencies. Fragmented communications raise costs for estate agents, place a bottleneck on the pipeline of transactions, and, ultimately, causes fewer tenants to get the rental accommodation they need.
PropTech needs to go back to basics
PropTech is reaching every other facet of the rental market, automating and streamlining what has traditionally been an admin-heavy sector. PropTechs such as RentProfile and Fixfloa have made great improvements to onboarding and maintenance in the sector, and others like DemandLogic have helped reduce energy costs.
What is now needed is PropTech that solves the communications issue: a more elementary problem, but one whose resolution is – as we have seen – critical to the future of the market.
Platforms such as krispyhouse, offers a quick “dating style” service to the rental sector with its core features. krispyhouse’s new app offers WhatsApp style communication via instant, direct messaging and video calls for tenants and their intermediaries on the platform, and by notifying them of newly available properties based on their specific requirements. This avoids the administrative problems created by parties in the market having to juggle various disconnected channels of communication. In addition, the platform further drives efficiency by offering letting agents an integrated CRM system, instant communication, a prospecting tool, and unlimited advertising.
Approaches such as these streamlines and clarifies rental communications for tenants, estate agents and landlords. Addressing logistical problems that have troubled the rental market for years will improve the experience for all.
As we enter 2024, the rental sector needs to be modernised in order to manage growing demand. The adoption of PropTech innovations will ensure that renting is as seamless an experience as possible. PropTech cannot, of course, solve the perennial problem of supply in the market. What it can do is make the market efficient as possible, alleviating pressure on landlords, estate agents, and tenants while legislative changes to increase supply are introduced.
