The Landscape
An estate agency runs on a CRM at its centre, something like Reapit, Alto, Street.co.uk, Jupix or agentOS, holding the properties, the applicants and the pipeline. Around it sit the portals that carry listings to buyers, Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket, a website with a live property feed, and, on the lettings side, the tenancy records, deposit schemes and safety-certificate dates. The CRM feeds the portals well enough, but the rest of the business still moves by hand. Vendors get updated by phone, viewing feedback sits in inboxes, and the progress of a sale from offer to completion lives mostly in a negotiator’s head.
The pressure is quiet but real. A sale agreed is not a sale banked, and a large share fall through in the weeks of sales progression where nobody has a clear view of the chain. On lettings, a missed gas or deposit-protection deadline is not an abstract risk. And the numbers that tell an owner how the agency is actually doing, instructions, agreed sales, fall-throughs and the fee pipeline, only appear once someone sits down to reconcile them.
Common Challenges
- Vendors and landlords updated by phone and email, with no portal where they see their viewings, the feedback, the offers, and where the sale has got to
- Sales progression tracked in a negotiator’s head or a spreadsheet, so a stalling chain surfaces late and a fall-through comes as a surprise
- The CRM, the portals, the website and the accounting each holding a version of the same property and contact, rekeyed by hand
- Lettings compliance dates, gas safety, EICR, EPC and deposit protection, split between the CRM diary and someone’s reminders
- Applicant matching and viewing feedback lost in inboxes rather than logged against the property and the buyer
- Pipeline and fees invisible until month-end, so an owner cannot see the health of the business on a Tuesday
What We Build for Estate Agencies
Most of what an agency needs is not a new CRM. It is the connective layer around the one it already runs. We build vendor and applicant portals where a seller or landlord tracks their viewings, feedback, offers and progress, and where buyers register and see matched properties, so the update stops being a phone call. We build the integrations that keep the CRM, the portals, the website and the accounting carrying the same record, so a property entered once is not rekeyed into the next system.
On top of that sits visibility. A reporting dashboard covering instructions, agreed sales, fall-throughs, completions and the fee pipeline turns a month-end reconstruction into something an owner can check any morning. Where a sale moves from offer to completion, we build the sales-progression and chain tracking that holds every milestone date and flags what is stuck, so a deal drifting toward a fall-through is caught early rather than at the point of collapse. For a lettings book, we build the compliance-date tracking that surfaces a gas or deposit deadline before it is missed.
We hold a firm line on scope. We build the software; the agency work stays with you. Valuations, negotiation, and the regulated obligations, your redress scheme, client money protection, anti-money-laundering checks and the material-information rules, are yours, not ours, and nothing we build makes those calls for you. What we take away is the manual glue between systems, and the blind spots in sales progression, that cost you deals and time.
How We Work With Estate Agencies
Agencies hold sensitive personal and financial data, from a seller’s circumstances to a tenant’s references, and we build to match: access controls, a clear record of who can see what, and portals that hold documents securely rather than scattering them across email. A project usually starts with the single portal or the sales-progression view causing the most manual work, proves itself there, then extends. Because agency CRMs and the portals expose feeds and APIs, we can generally connect to what you already run rather than ask you to replace it.
We are not the right team for an agency that wants an off-the-shelf CRM. If Reapit or Alto already runs your properties and pipeline, keep it. We come in where the standard tools stop and the manual workarounds begin. If you manage a lettings portfolio more than you sell, the property page covers that side, and if you are a brand-new agency rather than a scaled one, our free Estate Agency Launch Programme walks you through the first ninety days.
Talk to Us About Your Agency
If your team spends more time moving data between systems, or chasing a chain in the dark, than winning and closing instructions, that gap is what we close. Get in touch to talk through the one workflow costing you the most, and what building it properly would look like.
