The 5 tasks lettings agents won’t trust to AI
AI must make lettings more human, not less, and that requires real rental intelligence.
The latest research from Propoly has found that letting industry professionals see a clear role for AI in property management, but are reluctant to let it operate without human oversight, particularly when decisions involve people, complex circumstances or potentially significant consequences.
Propoly commissioned a survey of UK lettings industry professionals* to explore where agents believe AI could provide the greatest assistance, as well as the areas they do not trust the technology to handle.
Agents agree that AI has its uses…
Compliance administration was ranked the area where respondents believe AI could help the most, followed by processing and reviewing documents, fraud detection, and summarising lengthy email or message chains.
This suggests agents see AI as particularly useful for processing information and reducing the administrative workload involved in running a property business.
However, that willingness to use AI does not extend equally to every part of the role. When asked which areas they believe AI is least suited to, respondents identified five distinctly human aspects of property management.
The five things letting agents don’t want AI to replace
1. Building relationships with landlords
2. Handling difficult conversations or disputes
3. Dealing with sensitive tenant circumstances
4. Assessing situations where there is no clear-cut answer
5. Building relationships with tenants
These results show that the boundary agents are drawing around AI is not simply about particular tasks. Instead, it is about situations where context, judgement, communication and human understanding are central to the outcome.
Moreover, in these relatively early days of AI in property, agents don’t yet trust the technology to work independently and without oversight. That even applies to basic administrative tasks where there is broad agreement that AI does have a valuable part to play. Just 19% would be comfortable allowing AI to draft a routine email without checking its work, while 14% would trust it to effectively review a document for missing information. Only 12% would trust it to independently produce a property description, and the same applies to flagging potential issues in a tenant application.
Beyond the top five things that agents don’t trust AI to do, other areas mentioned include resolving complaints, advising landlords on pricing and strategy, and making the final decision on who should rent a property.
AI, it seems, is seen largely as a time-saving tool for. Agents are not looking for ways to reduce interaction with customers, rather time spent looking at a computer screen.
If AI could remove five hours of administrative work from their working week, 21% said they would take the opportunity to correct their work/life balance; 14% said they would spend the additional time speaking to tenants; and another 14% would use the extra time to focus more closely on solving complex problems. A further 12% would focus on winning new business.
The findings point towards an approach where AI is used to support agents rather than replace them, taking on repetitive administration and helping professionals process information, while leaving people in control of decisions that require context, experience and an understanding of individual circumstances.
Sim Sekhon, Group CEO at Propoly, commented:
“AI has the potential to remove a huge amount of friction from property management, particularly when it comes to repetitive administration and processing information. But the purpose of that technology should be to give agents more time to do the things that technology cannot replicate as effectively. Everything needs to be designed and executed with one thing in mind: rental intelligence.
Lettings is ultimately about people. A difficult conversation, a sensitive tenant situation or a decision where there isn’t an obvious right answer cannot always be reduced to a set of instructions. These situations require context, experience and sometimes compassion.
The most useful AI isn’t necessarily the AI that does everything. It is the AI with the intelligence to know where it can and cannot add value, designed as a sidekick to experienced human agents. The goal of AI in lettings should be to make the sector more human, not less. And removing routine admin burdens to free up agents to focus more on using genuine brain power and providing a personal touch is the best way of doing it.”
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