Inside Lettings: From Rightmove to Goodlord with Costas Frangeskou

In this episode of The Viking Chats, Kristjan Byfield sits down with Costas Frangeskou, Director of Growth at Goodlord, to explore a career that’s taken him from one of the UK’s most recognisable portals to the heart of lettings technology - and the insights he’s gained along the way.

From early agency days through to his tenure at Rightmove, and now shaping the future of digital lettings at Goodlord, Costas has seen the industry from every angle. But what makes this conversation special isn’t just his CV - it’s his honest, thoughtful take on the real challenges facing agents today, and what meaningful progress looks like for an industry in flux.

Whether you’re a letting agent, PropTech supplier, landlord, or anyone trying to navigate the evolving landscape of residential rentals, this episode offers clear-eyed reflection, practical strategy, and a glimpse into what tomorrow’s lettings journey could - and should - look like.

🧠 What You’ll Learn in This Episode

✅ How Costas went from agency floor to digital boardroom
We trace Costas’s journey from frontline agency work into high-growth roles at Rightmove and Goodlord. Along the way, he shares how each chapter has shaped his understanding of what agents need - and what tech needs to do to be truly useful.

✅ The unique pressures facing agents in today’s market
Costas unpacks how lettings teams are being squeezed from both sides: landlords expecting more service for less, and tenants demanding faster, clearer communication and higher standards. Tech can help - but only when it’s deployed with empathy and purpose.

✅ Why good lettings is still about people, not just platforms
One of the strongest themes in the episode is this: you can automate process, but not care. Costas is a champion of tools that make space for great service - not replace it. He talks candidly about how agencies can stay human while staying competitive.

✅ Lessons from Rightmove that still apply today
Costas shares what it was like to work at the UK’s biggest portal - what they got right, where they struggled, and how those experiences helped shape his approach at Goodlord. It’s a rare inside look at how the industry’s biggest players operate.

✅ What true partnership between agents and PropTech looks like
Too often, suppliers talk at agents. Costas advocates for something different: listening, iterating, and building with the people who use your product. That mindset underpins how Goodlord has evolved - and why they’re doubling down on agent feedback.

🔍 Why This Conversation Matters

Lettings isn’t getting simpler. But the agents who thrive will be the ones who think smarter - about people, process and partnerships.

Costas brings a grounded, deeply experienced perspective to questions many are afraid to ask:

• What role should tech really play in an agency?
• How do we rebuild trust with landlords and tenants?
• Can PropTech move beyond buzzwords to deliver real value?
• And how can agents keep their edge in a market defined by change?

He doesn’t pretend to have all the answers - but he does offer something better: clarity, honesty and practical steps forward.

🎧 Who Should Listen

• Letting agents navigating growth or restructuring
• Property managers looking for smarter ways to scale
• Suppliers and PropTech founders trying to serve the industry better
• Landlords curious about the operational shifts happening in modern agencies
• Anyone in the PRS or BTR space focused on service, systems and sustainability

Transcript

Hello everybody and welcome to the latest episode of the Viking chats and I'm delighted to be joined today by Costas of Goodlord Costas thank you. Thanks for joining us today. I'm delighted to be here, too so You are very much known as One of the key people at good Lord. I think the last few years But before we dive into a little bit more about your time there For those of you those out there that don't know you and even those who do What what led you to good Lord? What was what was life before good Lord? Yeah, so well I've sold practically everything in my life Everything from well, yeah, in terms of the industry wise. I was a mortgage broker for a while. Yeah, which is very interesting Is that so that's kind of where you started in property? That was my first leap into property Although I was a mortgage broker for a double glazing firm So, you know, if you want your windows for a pound, I was your man. Listen, one of our biggest landlords started kind of carved his path as a double-gazing salesman. You can be like 70s, 80s. Absolutely, absolutely. We were there to get off for a service and it was a good one. So, yes, I got there. After that, I went into advertising, yellow pages and so on. And then an opportunity came up. Not the first time I've heard that. You quite often get people selling advertising space, being like... Can I tell something a bit bigger? Yeah, what can we do next? And obviously Yellow Pages was going online, therefore that business was sort of stepping backwards at the time. And then, yeah, an opportunity came up, that right move. Never heard of them. Never heard of them. It's an itty-bitty company. Did they make any money? I've done, you know, it's got to be hard, isn't it? They struggled. Oh, you guys. But yeah, no, it obviously came up. They were launching their Lethance division and then we're looking for people to come in and help that launch. So back in 2005. I was going to say when was that yeah it must have been yeah shortly after we launched base. Yeah so literally yeah yeah obviously they were huge on sales on the sales side of the business but from a Lethance perspective for you to be able to see Lethance properties you had to go in do a sales search go through to click on the agent then go to the agents page then click on this little button that said Lethance. Sounds really sexy and fluid and Yeah, gorgeous digital journey. Absolutely, it was fantastic. And then I had to go out and sell the reality of how many leads you were going to get from the agents that were able to network with the landlords and tenants, they were able to navigate their way through that maze. I remember that was back in the days when RightMove stipulated you had to have a proper shop. Yes. Because I remember we set up base in 2004 and I remember initially, because it was before like hot desking and remote working and things like we work really around and we were like we could probably start this from a business center or like a home office. And then when we were at them at the time we wanted to slash needed to be on right move. We reached out and they were like no shop no contract. Sorry about that. Oh yeah. His way is I think I I think I got my own back right. (laughing) Later on in life anyway. Thanks for waiting for me to leave though. But yeah, so yeah, so right with why, starting with the Latins division, that took off really well. I'm doing it in a year. We merged that into the main business and then walked into regional director for the East Anglia area, which one of our strongest areas in the country. - So you were right move all the way up to Good Lord. - So I was at right move for 12 years. - So pretty much. - Yeah, all the hell. So when I left, I was group operations director and before that I held the position of national sales director as well. So overall 12 years, 12 good years, 12 good years helping tens of thousands of agents. - I mean, to me that must have been a really exciting time to be there 'cause like the rise of the portals, like you said, that whole transference of like the digital journey, you know, that migration of moving people away from strolling into an office and asking for a printed list. Yeah, but I think, you know, the bits I think people don't understand also very easily. What I witnessed was the ability for agents to broaden their catchment area, you know, compete with, you know, the really big corporate agencies that could spend hundreds of thousands of marketing. You couldn't compete. And look, let's not forget, right moving all the portal fees back then were not what they are now. You know, okay, rents, sale figures were lower, but you know, it was, it was pre 25% year on year bumps. But, but yeah, I mean, look, many still argue, and I think interestingly, like it's interesting bringing up right move, and it's quite funny, your comment about, Oh, I think we're going to see things differently. Because, yes, as, as that a photo of my face might still be on some dart wards somewhere in the building. But interestingly, look, they are clearly a company of value. They have their marketplace and that's been proven year and year again. No business gets to where they've got to in terms of revenue and profit margin without delivering value. And I think it was really interesting today, the latest update on that attempt of a seems like an ambulance chasing class action about possibly a monopolization everything else. They've signed up a whopping 170 agents and developers. I mean, you've got to think what there's over 12,000 agents, I would estimate at least 9,000 of those use right move and I would probably wager it's more like 10 to 11,000. But I think I did the figures today. I think if we call it 9000, they captured about 1.9%. 1.9% of right-move client base are potentially interested in the class section. Doesn't really scream monopolization and price gouging, does that? - No, I think there are challenges there, obviously. Agents do have choice. - They obviously do have choice. And that was absolutely what my spat was in 2020, or rather that wasn't what my spat was about. My spat was about the egregious price increases, but my open letter, as much as everyone remembers the first 80% of it, which was me being very pissed off, the last 20% was me being like, "This is the right decision for our business, "because return on investment, et cetera, et cetera." - Yeah, okay, anyway, right now he's now a competitor of Good Lord's, So I have no allegiances to right move. - Yeah, yeah. - But the reality is if you are running a, you're running a good estate business, you will have a return on investment. It's whether or not that money can be used better or elsewhere is really the key from that perspective. But it's still, it's a great product. It's value there. Could they treat customers slightly differently? I think that's the, yeah, I would definitely support that direction in terms of what else they could be doing. but at the same time, it's still available. - I mean, that's an interesting point, although, I mean, what I hear a lot of right move advocates say, and I do think it's fair, you know, they do do quite a lot. They back a lot of the industry charity events. They're a huge supporter of women in a state agency and the training program that sits behind that. Yeah, you know, they do do stuff. I think my, they offer a lot of training and support modules and they do lots of webinars, like you guys do now, but lots of webinars and stuff that are available to their members and unique content. And again, it's about how you use it and leverage it right. And I think, I think that that is a challenge for every software company. You will very much reconcile with that with good Lord over the years. I know we, we see it with depository and we see it in base with products that we use, you know, the ones that we get the best value out of other ones that we put the time back into to configure and explore and go, oh, hold on, we don't use this bit. What does that bit do? The interesting bit is when I was natural sales director, especially around the time of on-market launching, because that was quite a tough time. I should say we had some steam meetings back then but I used to ask the question of agents of okay if we weren't making 70% profit and we were making 20% profit still charged you the same would you would you view us differently and every time it'll be absolutely if you were making 20% I wouldn't have a problem with what you charged me yeah so so the problem wasn't the value for money the problem wasn't the fact that it was still the same cost as the newspapers were 10 years earlier yeah the problem was the profit margin. - Yeah. - And that's the bit that, you know. - And that shouldn't really matter, fundamentally. - If the price is valued, the price is valued at $20,000. - A very fucking good business. - Yeah, exactly. That's what SaaS businesses do. That's typical of a good SaaS business. It's not unknown. - No. - If you enter the world of software, those are the kind of margins that you have. - Yeah. - But it was interesting. I think I had had, you know, I've asked that question 50 times during that period. I never had one agent that said to me, no, I would still have a problem. - No, and I think, you know, interestingly, you know, I very quickly, I mean, like I said, again, post my very public right move divorce, you know, I became the kind of darling of every right move resenting agent in the country and every event I would get, you know, hoodwinked by someone who was venting at their latest right move bill. But the pattern I saw develop very quickly, A, a lot of the agents that I love and respect, particularly in the sales space. And, you know, one of our big things, the right move, I know right move, you said you grew Lettings, but we were always a Lettings first business. - Yeah. - So sales wasn't important for us, but I know on the few sales we did, right move outperformed our other marketing, you know, kind of 10 to one. So if we'd been a sales agent, I don't think we would have ever gone anywhere. But the thing that I very quickly became quite cynical about, like I said, a lot of the events in the year or two after we very vocally left was, oh, well done for standing up, aren't they shit? And it would be like, well, okay, cool. But I did that a year or two years ago, are you still on? Yeah, okay, why are you still on if they're so shit? Well, you gotta be. And it's like, okay, what are the figures? What is your ROI? What does it spend? What does it generate? I don't think I could even count on one hand the people who could give me those figures even close. Most of them didn't even try to make it up. It's like, you know, the flat response was like, "Oh, I don't know." You know, and again, like you said, with the whole profit margin thing, it's like, we all like to have a bit of a winch now and then. And that's fine. But right move, and I think because of their, very blunt approach to contract renewals. Let's phrase it that way. But also the way that our industry is structured, right? Agency is quite a unique structure in that your typical makeup in most industries is 80% corporate, 20% independent. And yet in agency, it's the complete opposite. And that is very, very, very unusual that you have the small businesses being the lion's share of the market. And I think that's where right move comes up against it, is you've got so many small businesses. I mean, you look at like, it's about 85% of that 80% is one to three branches, proper small ones, like base, we're a one branch office. And I think that's kind of one of right biggest challenges, is that they have this massively disseminated marketplace. And so you get these very individual voices. And yes, you get a lot of people who like to have a bit of a whinge for whatever reason, the business is having a tough time or you know, whatever it is. And we've had a lot thrown out as agents the last few years. But when you really dig down into it, there's a very small list of agents who have really got the facts and the data to back it up. And the reason being, because if they do have the facts and data to back it up, they've typically done something about it. And whether that is stripped back the bolt on's or going do you know what we're just gonna do sales with right move or or maybe they've dropped another portal maybe they've gone do you know what actually when we looked at it yeah yeah we do one or two other portals and they're much cheaper but we weren't really generating anything out of that You know, it's yeah, it's few and far between where you talk to Yeah, someone who's resentful of writing his position and it really fascinating that you brought it into the into the profit thing because like you said You know, it shouldn't really matter to anyone What profit a company makes and what margin they makes? It's just about whether you think you're getting value for money and return on investment Yeah, and that fundamentally is is is the be all and end all and there are lots of agents out there Including us who have successfully stepped away there of some who've tried it and gone oops. Yeah I'm back and again nothing wrong with that. No, you know, I am I am astonished at agents reluctance to at least try it I that the number one fear. You talk to any agent who's remotely contemplating it. And if you ask them what's the number one thing stopping for you, it is categorically always the fact that they're worried their competing agents are gonna leverage it against them. - Oh, look, we saw it when I was there, we saw it all the time. The minute an agent left, all their competitors will be part. He's like, "Yeah, you leave first, I'm gonna follow you, follow you." The minute you leave, they're on the phone to your members. Let them know you're no longer on right move, but you had your start listing with us But you also the staff as well, you know the amount of times where you know someone had Say positively told me that they were leaving and then literally within a couple of days My staff are about to walk out the phones are stop ringing even though that you know phones are ringing and You know, let's say, you know, maybe one in 20 were a buyer But the reality is because it's been so silent they were worried about that's how they get paid obviously they're on a lot of commission. So even their staff would pull in them back. Which is hilarious because as a manager wouldn't you be like why are you waiting for the phone to ring? But I think the Mark Varts again you're going back to agents not knowing what their numbers are within their own businesses. They've also become very lazy in terms of you know the phone ringing. Meanwhile as we know we've got that stat that gets rolled out pretty much every industry conference every year and much that I think our industry's shame it never really changes that 50% of unanswered leads. So back then we did an exercise for one of the larger agencies where we listened to 1500 calls. The reason why we listened to 1500 calls was because they had built a central division and the reason they built it is because their negotiators kept forgetting to ask And do you also have property to sell? (laughing) And do you have a mortgage? (laughing) - I would imagine it was probably the thing they were most interested in. - Exactly, so the central team were literally trained, targeted, commissioned, everything to ask that question. 50, no, it was something like 1600 course, but say 1500 course, 72% of the time they never asked the question. - And yet that team was there specifically to that purpose. - Yeah, that was exactly good. It is bad. And then we're answering the course, they're having the conversation. 72% No, we're going back. We're going back. Yeah, 10 years, but it's just madness It's just you know, knowing what happens in your business and it amazed me every time that it's like, oh, no my team Don't do that. Are you saying that or do you know that? No, no, I know. How do you know? I just know they've been with me for years. Okay, but have you missed reshop yourself? Have you you know, have you got some friends just to test you out? You know, how have you been in the last six months your calls are recording how many valuation? Have been generated out of the buying inquiry, you know, I mean that will tell you right because if the answer is zero Yeah, in six months every probably you know your team aren't doing it. Yeah one of the best agents that I've ever had the opportunity to speak with Heat the download He's a download an hours worth of phone calls. They name them name them. Who are they? Richard half-ream Yeah, what a best agents on the planet But he's downloaded. You have to pick somebody flipping retire But he's he's to listen to he's to listen to those calls on his way into work because he's sitting in the car Yeah sitting in traffic. Yeah use that time effectively Well, and he say you say you are listen to the calls and but I get into the office I would have identified two or three opportunities. We've missed. Yeah and win that opportunity, I would understand what training was required, how the team were doing, even reward people or give them a handshake and thank them for it. Give a couple of people a pat on the back, a couple of people to pull up your bootstraps. So he fit that into his travel time. Yeah, that's possible. And we're all rather on trains or in cars. So there's no excuse really to know what's going on within your business. The details, isn't there? Yeah, absolutely. So, but yeah, it's one of those. So 12 years at RightMove. Yes. I mean that's a long time to be in any job. - Yes. - Just got the bit of an itch and felt like time for a change. - Yeah, so I think one of the things that helped me there was every two years, this was growing and I was doing well, so I've been promoted every two years. It was a new role, it was a new challenge. So from that perspective, it kept me excited and engaged. - It kept me engaged, didn't it? - And then, yeah, then sort of had two years in operations and being someone who's more sales, should we say, it wasn't quite me. And actually it was like-- - Which is, you know, it's good to understand that about yourself, right? - Yeah, absolutely. I enjoyed it, a great team. I loved doing it for, you know, first two years were great, but I just wanted to do it for another two years. And then it was like, actually, what I'd never done is had a startup. I moved into a business that was growing, but was reasonably well established. That was a new product. - So it was this good Lord, or this was an interim? - So this was, so it was an interim. So yeah, so I was the first thing that started up zero deposit. So joining John, John, I forgot you were involved. Yeah, there we go. Yeah. So right, right. Because obviously John, John and you guys rolled that out at the same time we were rolling out the depository. It was all kind of happening at the same kind of time. So that was exciting. That wasn't, you know, I've never, never did a new start on scratch, you know, even everything from finding the office to the phones, everything else. So yeah, I literally stepped out on a Friday, I think, from right when we started, well, planning was to have a break, 'cause 12 years was a long time, and there were long hours, but great hours. But then on Tuesday, I started at zero deposit. (laughing) Employee number one. - And knowing what the kind of money-backed start-up space is like, that would have been chaos and busy, but very exciting, very noisy. - It was a mixture, 'cause obviously, myself Simon Embley was our chairman and John we had a lot of connections in the marketplace which obviously was quite helpful you know in terms of startups for other people that they're talking about startups it was a little bit easier because the finances were there you know we didn't have to scrap around for any any any monies you know we had we had the backing that we needed to make it well you had Zulu I think with who took their investment back out fairly on but you had Zulu and then obviously you had buy-in for some really good stakeholders. Yeah, so a lot of the big agencies did buy into the product as well. So from all that, it was a great experience for me in how do you build a business from scratch. Although, KaviAt, I didn't have the financial concerns that many others, more successful people, had had in launching the business. But that was great. But I also realised that I, a regulated business at that time in my career, never worked in a regulated business before. Once again, didn't quite deliver the satisfaction I was looking for. Yeah, I think the the FCA route that they took, I totally get why they did it, because Anni differentiated them from other products in the marketplace, although kind of the others have shown is was it needed? You'd argue not. And yeah, I mean, yeah, anything FCA involved, I mean, you saw it hands on, I've never worked in FCA regulated business, but I know ones that have gone through getting approval and stuff and it's... Yeah, I'm a bit impatient. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, and I need to watch my P's and my Q's, it isn't quite me either. So yes, take me away from the creation touch. At the time, obviously, you know, from a good looking perspective, you know, I'm very... I'm amazing at my piece of news. I love the FBA. If Williams wants to, then there's nothing to play. So yeah, that was the decision. I started there, decided to leave just before launch. And then... So you were there like six months? - Oh, they're 10 months. - 10 months. - So yeah, the plan was always-- - Personally, so it was a year pre-launch. - Yeah, I get it. - I always felt like we spent a long time, 'cause we spent, what, three years building our products. Pre-launch, but we had no money behind us. (laughs) Money dictates very in tech very quickly how quickly you can do stuff. - Yeah, but no, no, yeah, so 10 months, and it was more of a, - It'd be better for me to leave rather than we launch and I leave. - Yeah. - So let's get the business ready to launch. - Clear run. - Once the business was up and running as well, there was a lot of crossover between two or three of us within the business that had been previous self directors and so was. There was a lot of crossover in terms of our talents as well. So we got the business to where we wanted it to be, market leader at launch and everything else, but I wanted to go off and find maybe something, something, a mixture of the two, something bigger Did you have your eye on good Lord or did someone kind of bring it to you or have that come about? So I thought I'm just gonna break. I need a break. It's been like yeah. Yeah I need the break. I should have taken as a break exactly so I took I took just under a year off. Oh wow Oh, you did take a break. Yes. Yes. I call I said I was doing consultant Look at that from one extreme to another from giving yourself one day off. Yeah, so yeah - Yeah, that's a good thing to do. - So I'm gonna be a consultant, but what that actually means is, I don't actually wanna work for probably three or four months, and then they just span that into a longer term. So I've got some consulting work, worked with a lot of different suppliers in the marketplace, but across sales, let-ins, across all kinds of-- - And what fun stuff did you get up to doing that? Yeah, I don't wanna hear about your consultant. - Oh, look, I worked in America, I worked in Australia. Obviously, I spent more time with the kids. Obviously, you know, going to-- - And how are your kids now? Oh, so I have two 18 year olds, a 20 year old and a 22 year old. - Wow, so yeah, seven, eight years ago. - Yeah. - So kind of early teens, like, - Yes. - 10 to 13. - Where they needed to go, I don't know, but also, - And a really nice time to be around. - Yeah. - Really nice time for your kids to becoming quite independent, but not quite teenagers yet. - So the time went really well for me. And also I got to see a lot of different businesses, a lot of different CEOs. and that helped me in terms of, okay, what do I want next? - Did you dance with the evening property? 'Cause I know quite a few people do kind of think about, oh, I might go for a bit of a change. And then they kind of find themselves being like, actually, I just quite like this space actually. - I think because of my background and the success at RightMove, my value was within the industry. - Yeah. - So if I've gone outside of the industry, I'd probably have to take a couple of steps back and then rebuild. Whereas, there was the opportunity there where doors were open. And so it was a wise move for me at a time to stay within the industry and look at what's there. But going through that consultancy side, obviously, good looking people can pick through anybody that has anything to do with lettings, which meant they kept coming up, they kept coming up as this business that was gonna go bust one day. But while they were, they were just getting everybody's feet and causing complications and so on. So I knew quite a lot about good looking call from them. And so was William already in a CEO when you started? That was post kind of... So William had joined six months previously, so he'd been in the business within six months. But I got a call from Tom Bundy, one of the founders, great guy, and met Tom, really enjoyed our conversation. Did he step down about a year ago? Yeah, so Tom's gone, yeah, lost the field business. He's moved on and he's doing something in medical science. He's just launched a new business in the last few weeks as well with his brother and a few others as well. I did see something, he was doing something and I was like, "That looks very clever." That's what he does exceptionally well. But no, he's still talking, he's still got a lot of love for the business as as well, but yeah, he's launching the next big thing. - But what a journey you've been on with Goodlord, I mean, like, you know, different, but similar to RightMove. You join RightMove as a relatively fledgling company. I mean, it was doing all right on the sell side, but it was nothing like the behemoth it is today. And you went on that exciting journey, and like you said, you know, when you join Goodlord, the general market expectation was really, you know. It was going backwards at the time, so the losing customers, it was far from being anywhere close to profitable. Well, a huge debt burden as well, because the early phase of leadership. And then big redundancies as well. So I came in, fortunately, unfortunately for those who are there, but I came in a couple of months after the redundancy, so I didn't have to be on that journey within the business. So yeah, so I was one of the hands on the people that brought in to see whether or not We could turn the business around under the leadership of William. And what was that like? I mean, I suppose you probably had this a bit, I think with the CEO, right? Me, because I don't think they were property background. But what was it like having, you know, I've got to know William quite well over the last few years and find him a fascinating guy. And obviously with his background of, you know, film for and everything else and doing various things with Alex. But what was it like working under a guy who really came into property as a kind of newbie? He didn't really know the space. Well, he'd been on the board for Zootla for a while. So he knew the industry. Because obviously, Ian Yonix just said he was doing very well. So he'd been on the Zootla board. So he had a good, some experience in terms of the industry itself. But I think what he does very well is he brings in specialists trusts to do the roles they're employed to do. And then somehow he has this magic bus and that gets everybody just to come together and actually you know and build something just amazing. He's done that very well and bringing us together as a senior leadership team and guiding us from there. Well you know as we were talking you know before we sat down to chat you know it's been it's been fascinating to watch Good Lord's journey because you know I remember Richard walking in our door when they kind of I think might have even been pre-launch. I remember him coming in and he was skipping his step. Yeah. Which was not the Richard I knew just before he left. But what I loved about, even when Richard came in early doors and it wasn't a product that we could get on board with where it was then. What I loved was the vision, the idea behind it. What Richard and Tom and... Was there three or four founders at the start? So, three. Three. Richard Tom and... Richard Tom and Phil. Phil. Phil. Phil. Phil. And although it took a while for Good Lord to find its feet and get that right, I think one of the things I really like, like I said from the get go, I remember the first time he showed me, I still to this day remember that first demo, and being very clever of, it was very branded, no one was really doing branding and sub-domains then. And I remember Rich doing our first demo and it was all, you know, the demo platform was all branded and it was like, this is nice. And for then it looked very clean and swish and beautiful. So, you know, it was, we got very much the idea behind Good Lord, it made total sense. And it's been really interesting to watch its evolution. And a lot of the mistakes I made early days are kind of classic tech mistakes, raising too much too early, and not having a clear plan on what the hell that money was for. And that, I think, early, particularly young founder stage of thinking a big money raise, is you've already done it. and it's like, no, now the work begins. - Yeah. - And, but no, it's been nice to see the journey. It was really interesting seeing William come in. I mean, when he came in originally, I wasn't aware of his background with Alex at that time or any kind of knowledge. I was a bit like, what the hell's a guy from love film gonna do with that? That's gonna just be bizarre, you know? And there was a lot to unpick, and there was several tough years where again, we touched on a thought, there's not the industry was like, how is this gonna work? And then you look at the last kind of two, three years of where you guys have got yourselves to, and it's been fascinating to watch that last two or three years. And I think for us as someone building a platform and a product in a kind of similar space and with similar objectives, It's quite reassuring to watch a company, even with that level of expertise and that much money, and agreed. Like I said, the early investment wasn't necessarily wisely spent, but it's kind of reassuring for us to see a company that does now, has had a good strong leadership in time for a long period of time and some very serious investment. And yet still it takes time to bed yourself into the market, to really refine your product. So it really delivers everything that you want it to. And for the industry to trust you as well, it takes it takes time. I was chatting to someone the other day and I was saying, you know, we're we're at that five five year mark with depository. And it reminds me of base. there was like a three year mark, a five year mark, and then kind of like a seven year mark. And it was like three years, you just kind of suddenly noticed a little bit of an uptick and it's like, "Oh, they've lasted three years." Like, you know, they've passed that first test that like 80% of businesses fail. So you get a little bit of trust. But then when you hit that five year mark, then you start to get bigger businesses go, "Well, okay, if they've done another couple of years, then and they've got to be, you know, and then if you can embed your position and start to grow, then over that next kind of year or two, then you start to get into that territory of driving adoption. But yeah, it's been fascinating to watch from afar. And then see-- - Even more fun when you've been in it. (laughing) - Oh no, well it must be, but it must be, and you know, like, you know, when you think everything we've gone through, I mean, obviously more recently the Renters Rights Act, which I think generally is good for everyone, but I think for agents and software, if you're not looking at a stack, I mean, I was saying to you, I mean, we've not that long ago signed up with you guys, I think it was three months. - Yes, I don't have favorite customers, but thanks for signing up. (laughing) - We come off the hit list, start board. But no, I mean, we're a base. I said to you before, we're in a real period of not reinvention, but we've been going 21 years now. And the last 18 months, two years, to a certain extent, has been reinvention. We've kind of, we sacked off our, well actually this was five years ago, you know, off the back of COVID, we sacked off our sales department. We were always a letting's orientated business. And so sales never got the attention it deserves. And so it ended up really being a bit of a distraction. I could turn over money. I mean, I think our sales side was bringing in like 50 to 80 grand a year, like zero effort, which on the surface of it sounds nice. And I think early stages in the business, that was some welcome revenue. But we got to that point five years ago, and when COVID hit and everything else, and we were just like, why are we doing this to ourselves? It really felt like by then it'd become a distraction from what we were trying to grow. So we closed that off, best thing we ever did, we left right move, which at the time was right for us. And what now five years later, you've saved like 150 grand in fees that we would have spent in that time. But then, you know, what we totally reimagined what an agent's website would be like, we launched that with our 20th anniversary May last year, and then we've been on a marketing thing, a kind of real marketing journey of sorting out our marketing. But now we're really looking at our tech stack. And I think obviously with everything that's happening in the AI sphere. I've kind of taken that attitude, I think next year is gonna be a really interesting year for AI. I think we've kind of, we've spent the last two or three years in that early fad phase with quite a lot of gimmicky stuff. But I think we're now starting to get into the real meat and bones of what AI is gonna be capable of. And I think next year we're gonna see some quite big step-ups. But I think to be ready for that, and to be ready to leverage that as much as you can, we've just been looking at everything else. So like I said, we left our long trusted referencing partner and we came to you guys recently, partly because we know that your high end referencing products are really good, but also the fact that you're integrated with Alto, who we work with, we've got that seamless integration. and as a supplier, integrations is that word that you kind of love and hate, and particularly being an agent, like I know I've used it three bajillion times, and it is legitimate. So it's good to understand that space. And alongside everything else that's happening, we are moving into this kind of maturing integrated environment. You guys are now integrated with a lot of products. you know, depository. I mean, we've built what 13, 14 partner integrations so far and more planned next year. And, you know, and, and so seeing that space evolve, but for us, we just, you know, we're really doubling down at the moment and revisiting stuff. So I said, we've signed up with you three months ago, literally, I said to you when you walked in the door, we've just signed with FixFlow, which is, you know, fascinating to go back to them because we were an early adopter when Raj first launched. And then we did leave to use whatever you call it, Zootplers, Altos, Dupixes, it was Dupix at the time, property file product, which was kind of a fixed flow light, I think is fair to say, but did have that fully integrated solution for us. But we're just kind of doubling down and tidying up our tech stack at the moment. So we're in the best possible position. And then I think what's great with that is you've got, you've got established, you've got established businesses like all of us exploring how we can leverage AI, partially for our own business benefit, but also for clients. And I think for a lot of agents, that's where the vast majority of AI adoption going to come from initially because it's kind of done in that safe space. We're just about to roll out our second AI tool with depository in the new year. I mean, it's actually officially live now, but we've not released it to any clients because we're still having a play. But I think wearing the agent hat AI is both incredibly exciting but also quite intimidating and utterly overwhelming because there's so much happening. It goes back to an agent understanding their business and you know AI wise there are some great efficiencies that have come in some great solutions that it will drive but at the same time as well a little bit like you know previous bubbles but also there's going to be lots of stuff that AI built for solutions that were never an issue to begin with. So you know the approach that we're definitely taking in terms of how we look at it and we're advising agents generally in their business when they look at any other solution where it may be is, you know, you know, what is what is stopping you from progressing the next deal? What is what is stopping that progression? Where do you stop in your business understanding where you're, you know, whatever, whatever role you're doing within the business? What is what's what's the stop? Yeah, yeah, who when are you spending more time working on revenue you've already achieved, rather than the next bit. And that's really where we're thinking about, okay, how do we turn an agent's full staff into progressions? - Yeah, and I think, look, I think, A, not enough agents know the stats, know the data within their business. I still think there is a massive disconnect with agents of understanding where their people drive value. Like, I both agree and disagree with this kind of statement that our industry bends around of people by from people. In that I think it's a safety blanket most agents wear to tell themselves that it's fine, we employ humans and everything else will kind of figure itself out. But A, I think what that statement massively ignores is people by from people that they like, they identify with and that fundamentally they're going to get the result they want to from. Yeah. But I think also there's a, there's a massive disconnect with understanding where your staff actually deliver value and what you're actually paying them for, or what you should be paying them for. Rather, it's actually good when I speak to business owners and, you know, they'll say to me, you know, we have, you know, two property managers that, you know, they do it. They look after the whole move in tenancy process and everything else. And you get to know how much time they spend on creating a tendency. And they say, oh, it's probably a couple of hours maximum. Okay, so two people, couple of hours, take away their holidays and everything else, weekends, they don't work weekends. Okay, so they're working about 220 days a year. Okay, and it's taken them a couple of hours. So why are they only doing 200 properties a year? Yeah, what do they do for the other three quarters of the other nine months of the year based on your numbers? Yeah. And Hmm, I've never thought about that. So it's actually eight hours' potency. So it's like, yeah, it's like, so it's the eight hours' potency, or does your staff literally, the minute you leave the office, they just literally put their thing up and take a break? Absolutely not. So it's just, yeah, just the way that they, if you were to do a look at their business and don't even see, you know, the obvious stuff. But I still think we've got an issue in this industry. I don't necessarily think this is unique to our industry, I think this is unique to most workplaces, but there's still this thing about staffing busy for busy, so I find it astonishing that there are agents who still operate out there who set viewing targets and like appraisal targets and listing targets, 'cause I'm like, I get it as a business, you should absolutely have a framework of objectives that gets you there. But this thing of, you know, if you make 20 calls a day, your book 10 appointments and out of that six will go ahead and out of that six four will make an offer and out of that four. Unless you're my sales team. You're my sales team, that worked. But no, it's essentially because I say when I was, you know, when I was dealing with sales agents, One of the things I used to love, the few things that one of the things I used to love was said to me, so what's your conversion like then on evaluation? Oh, you know, it always be between 80 and 90%. I never had anybody say less than 80%. So how many evaluations do you do a day then? Oh, two, maybe three at the weekend. Okay, so at least sort of 10 a week? Oh, probably more, I was like, well, let's stick on 10. Okay, so 10 a week, okay. So you're doing 40 a month? Yeah, absolutely, yeah, definitely at least 40 a month. - So you're listing like, 'cause you bought on-- - 36. - You bought 11 properties last time. (laughing) So 11, 40, that doesn't sound like 80% to me. And it's like, well, then you get the, oh yeah, time wasters, time wasters. - Yeah. - But it's like, come on guys. - Oh, and we're still talking to them. - This is not rocket science. But yeah, I totally agree with you. Chasing those numbers isn't-- - But again, even if you look at administrative roles, lettings, as we know, is so much a process. whether you're onboarding a property, onboarding a tenancy, managing maintenance, compliance, whatever. A lot of it is just following a process. It's doing very simply X, Y, Z. And I think a lot of managers and bosses lose sight of the fact that, you know, if someone's only value in doing a task is that it either gets done it doesn't and that's the only kind of measurable thing then that human absolutely shouldn't be doing that task right because it's like if they add no value yes they might do it nicely yes you know they might do it politely but fundamentally you know if if if all they do is they either do it or they don't and that determines whether it's a succeed or fail then why the hell have you got a human doing it because humans are incredibly fallible and they will at some point not do it. The other thing as well that the whole music, you know, every agent has multiple different suppliers that we didn't help them run their business, but they don't take the opportunity just to say to their supplier, what am I not using? Or what am I not doing? Or what are the agents that are happiest with your product? Or could you put me in touch with who you would say is the best user of your product. Because there's so much insight and that's free. It costs nothing. It's free. But yeah, understanding how to get the maximum value rather than we bought this, I bought this bit of software. It sounded really good. I've literally given it to my team. Yeah. I haven't told them what I have to say to them. Right. You're using this from now on. Okay. The team. Have you reviewed our process? No. Have you reviewed the process? The team are doing a mixture of the old process and the new process. - Yes, because they're used to the old process. - They definitely do the bit of the old process they liked doing that took them away from the bits they didn't like doing. And at no point does anybody actually communicate with anybody. - Yeah, successfully onboarding software. I am still to this day, astonished with depository where we've got clients who are now very loyal clients and agents, very good repute and many of them who I count to be very good friends who, not just from them, from their team will get feedback going, this is our favorite, this is our favorite tech product. We asked the team if we had to get rid of everything but keep one other than a CRM and a portal, what would it be? We get that and then we will have, like you said, we'll have another client who will use it for three, four months and be like, yeah, it's not working, it doesn't do what we thought it would do. But we've literally shown you what it can do. Over here, I've got an agent who's like half your size, but getting twice as much out of it. And yeah, you know, the method of adoption, you know, Megan should run a course on how to embed products into agency, because we had, I think that's probably the most remarkable turnaround that we've seen with a client. when she was still at Haslams, she came to us and they very much identified they had a really good process, really good operation, but they'd identified that their end of tenancy process was just, it wasn't delivering like the rest of the business was. And it was really fascinating to watch them roll it out because I've known Megan for several years and I've always adored her passion for lettings. But I haven't, to this day, we haven't seen an agency adopt and leverage our product the way they did, you know, within like six to eight weeks, they'd kind of reduced their deposit return times by like a third. And you know, and within another month, they were down by their own sea average, and they'd more than halved. And it's a safe experience for us. You know, Megan brought us into Haslams and it was a huge success there. And she's brought it into the new business as well. And yeah, Joseph you can achieve just by putting in, and we're talking an extra few hours, we're not talking months. - No, we're talking, you know, just cut off our-- - But it's framing it, right? It's properly launching it in. You've got a GT, I mean, I've been saying for years, you should treat a product like you're hiring a new person in a new role, right? You wouldn't hire someone in a new role and just have them quietly slink into the office on the day they start and sit in the corner and not tell anyone who they are or what they do and not adjust your operations around that new role. And yet somehow, as you talked about earlier, some people think you can literally buy a product and literally not give it a moment's thought, just kind of chuck it at your team and be like, this is gonna change your lives and then walk away and leave them to get on with it and then be mystified that things aren't changing. And as a owner manager, you've got to do better than that. you've got to look at what can we do to our operations with this. This is how we do things now. This is the new digital version of doing things. Yes, some of what the digital things will align with a lot of what you do manually. Cool. Let's strip out all that manual stuff, but also let's look at how can we double down? What else can we tweak and resolve? This is going to be our new process around it. tackling voices of dissent is massively important. - It's all change management. - Again, yeah, change management, exactly. Agents are not great at change. I think particularly in lettings as well, again, because it's so processed and good agents, the compliance, the regulation, everything. Again, I remember on Megan's team, she had one of her senior property managers who's a lady who'd been a property manager for like 20 years. And, you know, she gave Meghan quite a lot of push-pulling. She was like, "I genuinely, this sounds like your classic solution for a problem that doesn't exist. I've done this job for 20 years. I know exactly what I'm doing. I categorically don't need this." You know? And, I mean, I wasn't there to witness exactly how Meghan did it, but it felt like a velvet glove inside an iron fist, because it was, before we could gather it was like, cool, cool, cool, thanks for your feedback. This is what is happening. - Yes. - And you know, the second validation to what Megan did was not just the results, but the fact that that lady emailed us about a month after rollout. And Megan didn't even know, which was fascinating, 'cause we passed on to Megan going, oh my God, that's amazing. But she messaged us to go, I couldn't have been more wrong. like you have changed my working day. Like I thought I had it down, but I've actually realized that for the first time in my life, I feel 100% on top of and in control of all my concluding tendencies. I know exactly where they are in the process. I know exactly what I need to do. I'm not checking notes. I'm not, you know, and that for me still to this day, I mean, that was at least three years ago, you know, and that still stands out for me. It's so important. And it's, yeah, we see that tilting point, 'cause obviously, you know, if you bring good Lord into your business, you're literally, you know, wiping your desk is like everything you do today is completely changing now. - Yeah, well, we did digital contracts within Alto. We did, we had an independent online referencing partner. We used with that. And then we would do the right to rent and ID checks ourselves. looking at a minimum of six suppliers suddenly into this one and rent warranties we would go somewhere else again. Yeah, yeah. You know, so four difference that. So we see sort of 30 to 45 days of change management. So we've had to invest so every new client gets a trainer now. And though, you know, so that our trainers deal with every small amount of customers so they can be there and available to them and help with that change management. But and they stay with the customer for about 60 days. But we always see this the first 30 days are quite hard and people pushing back, not always but generally then we get to that 30 to 45 days. Some of that isn't even intentional right? No no no. It's fear. And we're creatures of habit. Yeah. I've done it for 15 years. I've never had a complaint, nothing's ever gone wrong, suddenly you're telling me this is broken, this doesn't work and I'm not doing it. So you totally get it but it takes that level and you get that 15 days sort of midterm where they're going hmm actually there are some still a few benefits maybe I'll give it a little bit more of a chance and then we get into that sort of 45 days plus where they go Actually, my life is actually I'm feeling less stressed actually things are moving faster Actually people I'm getting time to interact with people in the office and things seem just to be smoother Yeah, I think it's a huge piece probably the most common feedback we get from the frontline users is improved job satisfaction. Yeah, we just like you know, we hoped but But yeah, it's it's you know, it's really nice to see that is that you know, they don't now dread Like you know particularly summer, you know for most letting agents and we'll see what renters rights act does to this But for most agents summer and particularly if you work in student lets like Jesus Christ You know having your entire portfolio move out over the course of like a week And managing all of that and we've got you know, we've got a couple of student providers now and they're like this is This is life changing. Because I literally look at that and I'm like, you know, as our agency does, it's like, how do you manage that? How do you manage 500 properties moving out in a weekend or in a week and managing the communications and the processes and everything with that simultaneously. And then, you know, a month later, you switch the tap off and it's all done and dusted and it's fine. Now we've got Renters Rights Act, which means they can move out during the year as well. - Well, I mean, this is gonna be the interesting thing, right? I'm intrigued. I don't fundamentally think Matt and Munch is gonna change with the Renters Rights Act. - I think that's obviously, I think I have this conversation every day with someone. You know, tents don't move into a property with the view of moving out. - Moving is expensive and stressful. - Exactly. But also, a lot of them do because of where their work is, because where their score is affordability. There is not many options in the market but in certain areas as well. - And look, the average tenant, the 98% of tenants all they want is to move into the house that they've seen, to pay the rent, to be left alone, and if something breaks for it to be fixed in a timely fashion. And otherwise, they just wanna get on with their lives. But most tenants don't spend time thinking about, you know landlords and property managers, and property regulation and... - But at the same time, you're also gonna have, you know, those lovebirds that are moved in together for the first time and then realize actually, you're not the right person for me, or people that get the job offer and you know, so you know, you're an agent, if I ask any agent in terms of how often during the year do you get someone who calls you up to say, oh, I'm wondering whether I could end the tendency a little bit earlier. So yeah, a handful of those, okay, and how many people that need to move work, I'll get a handful of those, okay? And how many people that move in together and then fall out, I'll get a handful of those, or, you know, when I say the right move, one of our busiest days was in the new year, and we put a lot of that down to people misbehaving at Christmas parties, and being thrown out, and therefore they needed a very quick rental. - But I think the interesting thing is, right, you, it will accommodate those kind of, like you said, life circumstance. - Small number of people. - Or my mates move to London, whatever. You'll have the incidental ones. On the flip side, what I think for most agents, it will tackle as a process that most of us absolutely freaking hate and especially hate since the tenant fee ban came in, and that's change of tenant. - Yes. - You know, I mean, we have pretty much come down unilaterally as a company to be like, once the act is implemented, one of you wants to go, you can all go. - Yeah, yeah. - Because we've had a couple of disastrous outcomes deposit deductions this year, where we've facilitated a change of tenant and TDS's position around documenting and evidence. I mean, I found it untenable. It seems like the landlord's basically been penalized because we've facilitated a midterm tenancy. And shocker, when you're recording, because we do do check-in reports when we do a change of tenant, we do a new inventory. But shock of all shocks, a property that is still being lived in by the other tenants doesn't record on an inventory report quite as beautifully as a vacant immaculate empty property at the start of the tenancy. And we've had two cases this year with the landlord has absolutely lost out on very justifiable situations because of that. And like I said, On top of that, compile the fact that when the tenant feedback came in and the government made that insane decision to cap a change of tenant at 50 quid. As every letting agent watching this knows, a change of tenant is more work than doing an original let. It's more work. You're juggling more people. It's more complicated. There's more emotion involved. It is not a lot of fun. Yes, periodic tendencies will mean that we will have people going, oh, my best move to London or I've split up my girlfriend or I've got a new job offer. Whereas before they might have had to consider contractual obligations into that. So we will have to accommodate that. But the flip side is we'll be able to turn around and go, no, mate, you've signed a contract. It's all of you. So one of you leave, all of you leave. You know, and we'll do a fresh lat and we'll document everything fresh. with a higher rent. Exactly, reset the rent. Yeah. Reset the rent. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, again, that's going to be termed by market conditions and time of year and everything else. I mean, it's going to be really interesting. I think one of the interesting things for us is to see whether summer stays as busy as it is. Like, we're not a student letting agency. We do a handful of student that's where primarily kind of professionals. currently we'll do 65 70% of our business in that kind of two two and a half month summer window in terms of ten whether it's new tendencies or renewals because yes everyone starts as a student but you graduate and you move on and you're still on that same cycle so I'm intrigued to see how much that shifts because also at the same time moving in summer makes sense better weather drier you're moving into a property where if it's got a roof test or a garden you move in and you can use it rather moving in Today on the greatest day on earth and and like oh great. I've got a soggy garden I can't set foot in for for three months time. So yeah, I'm I'm intrigued by generally think Fundamentally very little In the grand scheme of things very little is going to change And I think we've got a couple of years as well because the biggest benefit I think we have as an industry is it's going to be poorly communicated and tenants won't even realise. Poorly enforced. Exactly. So I think the reality will be that what will or won't happen will know in maybe a couple of years time. Yeah, and I think then we're facing actually the things that are a lot more technically concerning like AWAPS and Decent Homestand because it sets such a rigid structure about how those things are documented and tracked and resolved and everything else. So I think the fact that those are pushed back a couple of years, a lot of agents out there will be breathing a sigh of relief. I still think we've got a really interesting phase next year. I still think there's a lot of agents and I was literally having a conversation with someone I know who's a consultant this morning who reached out to me and was like, "I'm working with an agent, can I just kind of bounce your thoughts around at the moment?" Because they make a lot of money on let only renewal fees. And they are terrified that they're no longer going to be able to justify charging it. And it's like, "Okay, cool, but where's the value?" I think there's going to be a lot of agents that aren't thinking surprisingly about really what's most important for them, which is revenue. There's a lot of agents, I think, who haven't given proper thought to, like I say with our business, "Oh, our revenue summer." So they're just thinking, "Oh, they're probably not even thinking about it and thinking about other stuff and then it's like, but you're not, you're not going to have that massive wave in summer anymore. It's going to be... We were telling agents two years ago that, you know, that was still charging, you know, upfront. It was like, you know, you need to start moving your fees, whether it's managed or whatever, maybe onto monthly, move it now so your landlord gets used to it rather than a, we're doing it for this reason. But I think the other challenge there as well is that agents haven't thought about generally speaking is how they commission their staff because you know when I say to an agent so what what plans have you put in place because obviously you know nothing worse than nothing worse than clawbacks on your commission yeah you're right yeah you're right out of property you're right out of property and then you know you've paid their commission then someone gives notice in four months time they really let that property you pay out their commission and then it could go wrong again. So yeah how have you built the commission plan to get, they say clawbacks wise the last thing you want to do is a clawback because get one two three clawbacks they're gone. The Guantanets competitors promised them the world and taken some of your landlady's with them. So they haven't thought about okay maybe we need and once again do it now don't wait until the first of May. Get them used to it get them steady get that But look, you and I know, you know, weeks, days before the Renner's Rights Act got royal assent, there were still agents out there going, "Ahh, it won't go through." "It won't happen." They're probably going numb a lot. And it's... Thinking that just because you hope it's true really isn't a great way to navigate things. I think it's, but look, it's challenging. It's, I think a lot of agents get, they get so consumed with the day to day. Again, bringing it back to the fact that our industry is made up of small agents, small teams, small agents, small offices. You know, they get so overwhelmed with the day to day that it's just about, all they can think about is what has to get done that day to kind of get the deal done or get it over the line or hopefully to be as compliant as possible. But there isn't that time, you know, that old adage, you need to work on the business, not in the business. They're not carving out that time to be like, okay, look, we're stuck at like a 12% profit margin and I regularly find myself worrying about how I'm gonna pay the salary bill this month for the business rates or whatever it is. And yet they're stuck in that loop because they just, they can't find the time or resources or they can't get their head into that mindset of being like, how do I solve these problems in my business? How do I grow that profit margin? And we're not talking about chasing right move house-y and levels of profit. We're a service industry. If you can get to 20, 25% profit margin in a service industry, globally, that's a pretty good standard. And if you can push it past that, fantastic. We, you know, we've managed to do that with base for quite a long time, but then we work in a very privileged market, which is London, although that said, so do a third of all UK estate and land agents. So, so this is your point, because say, I've been, I've been selling solutions into this marketplace for 20, come on 21 years now. And it's amazing. Our busy period for people coming in is just after Christmas, just after Easter holidays, just after the summer holidays. So it's where they've literally had a few hours or a few days or a few weeks of work. Yeah. And it's like, do I sort it out or that really pieces me off? I can't go back and deal with that again. Yeah. It's like, you know, it's like it's all it's all crammed into those into those moments, which is bonkers because they know it's there. So, let's see, what do we think the market's gonna be like next year, rental-wise? I'm not expecting too much change. I think much much less. I think it's gonna be pretty stable. I think for all the talk about landlord-exodus, there is properties being sold, but I think we're largely... I don't think we're gonna see much change in London, because London, We've got other factors playing in here. Capital appreciation has kind of left the London market about a decade ago. And that's only, I think, really starting to trickle through to a lot of property investors. So I think there's, you know, but, yeah, I just don't see much happening in the London space. I think it will stay pretty solid. And then in other parts of the country, I think we're seeing kind of side hustle accidental landlords quite rightly go, "Yeah, I've had my run. I've had my run. There's too much involved now with the landlord ombudsman coming in, with the landlord database coming in, you know, the upping of fines, the fact that it is getting so much more technical." But as an industry, you know, you know, agents have so much control over that. Education, highlight. As a letting agent, I think this is genuinely the most exciting kind of lettings market we've had for a long time. In terms of if the tougher, the more complex a market gets and the tougher the market gets, the easier it should be to convey your value as an agent. in a piss easy market where there's no rules and regulations and people are literally like throwing my life I just just take my money I'll take your property who the fuck needs an agent in that landscape yes no one yes no one and but in a market where there was compliance and technicalities and the market is a bit tougher and you know you've got to really look at that risk profile of your tenants because indefinite tendencies and you know we're going to be we're going to see parts of the country with probably two year waits to get in front of a judge. I wouldn't be surprised. Give it give it a year 18 months for for impact to to hit in and I won't you look at first you look at first year tribunals when they come in. So all we need is a you know, Marty Lewis on a Wednesday night or every night he's on TV. Just yeah to say oh, you know what challenge every time it question nothing and best case scenario you could say you know a year's worth of increasing rent. Well, it won't be mountainous right it's going to be AI do it. It's good. Well, but the reality Well, I think if you look at it, you know 4.6 million properties in the PRS, okay? If 1% just 1% challenge to a first-year tribunal, that's not it's just under 900 challenges per week. Yeah, okay 900 per week Who is going to be managing that? 900 per week. Yeah, but yeah They'll still be making a decision on that on that increase before you do the funnel increase That's gonna be that's gonna be the I mean the tribunal one they have left open I think the tribunal ones a really interesting one because When they first announced the tribunal, I remember like it came out like a couple of days before we had a super letting's advisory board meeting and I was there was a lot of twitchy, yeah twitchy reactions in that room because it was oh my god, this is this is insane like and But I have to say my reaction two years ago was Guys, what are you worried about? Most tenants still don't understand tenancy deposit laws You know from from 18 years in such so so Why are we suddenly worried about tenants suddenly becoming and look in my where am I now, 23 years in agency? I have never ever had a tenant either at base or in my previous experience go to a rental tribunal. But at the moment they don't go to rental tribunals because there is a risk, there's cost, there's anything else. Whereas now it's, Depends on how it's, once again, it comes back to whether or not the awareness is there. And yeah, Martin Lewis says it on a Wednesday night, "Do you know what? That's what five million viewers, whatever it is, they will know someone. Suddenly you're at 10 million, those people will interact with somebody else. Suddenly, you know, it doesn't take a lot for the awareness to be there." But the other side is it's not just awareness, right? It's effort. And I think, like I said, my thing two years ago was like, and again, coming back to what we said earlier about tenants, the average tenant just wants to pay what they consider a fair rate for a home to be left alone, to go on with their lives and to have things fixed in a timely fashion. Most tenants are not that fussed about fighting over 10, 20, 30 pound a month in rent, really. They'd rather not pay the increase, but the effort to fight it tooth and nail and the effort at the moment. Even if you ignore the, I mean it's a small fee from what I recall, but even factoring that in, the effort to do it is I think, hey, you've got the lack of knowledge to begin with, but then like at the moment you've got to put the effort in to gain that knowledge and then you've got to put the effort in to follow it through. And like you said at the moment, you've got to think that your landlord is absolutely ripping you off to even contemplate it. And on that basis, like I said, when that was announced a couple of years ago, I was like, what are we talking about? But when we now look at the AI landscape and when we look at what we're all expecting next year is a massive leap in a genetic AI. And when we talk about that, maybe that isn't so clear, it's AI kind of taking the lead to suggest stuff and actually make actions. And I think a perfect example, one of the fastest adopted products at the moment, worldwide is Fixer. This thing that you sit in your inbox and every email that comes in, it writes a draft ready for you to go, "Oh yeah, that's bang on the money, off you go." So when tenants start using their Fixer or Google Gemini, whatever it is that's sat in their phone, their inbox that goes, "Oh, I've drafted your response." And yeah, basically, I know my rights. If you're not happy with this, we'll just escalate this to a tribunal. We're taking away the need for the tenants to have knowledge, because AI will have it and will touch on how accurate that knowledge is in a sec. But also, the effort's gone. because so AI will go, hey, I've drafted it, you know, there's no harm, we might as well try and push back. And then, you know, when that negotiation comes to an end, we didn't get where we really hope to. So I mean, like, do you want to do this? I can file it for you tomorrow. Yes. Or I can file it tomorrow. I can file it for you now. And and that's that's the big difference. And I think I think that's what and again, like I said, this was mentioned two years ago, as AI was really just in its kind of public ascendance. say. But I think that is going to be the biggest driver. And look, the government have admittedly left the door open. I mean, I think I don't think fundamentally they need to change too much. I don't necessarily disagree with it being free to do it. But I just think they should have retained the fact that the decision is backdated. And that they should do what they do at the moment, which is they should reward landlords that offer a tenant a below market rate because we've had cases in the last couple of years where the judge has actually ruled in line with the landlord but has actually awarded them more than they offered because they were offering below market rate. And I think those two things in there keep that a totally free service because again, what tenant is really going to get stuck into that, even if AI is doing it, if they're just going to end up like that dragging on for a year and then they're potentially going to get that 200 pound a month increase, but now actually it's going to be 280 pound a month increase for that whole year and they've suddenly got to find three and a half grand or whatever it is. So you know, fingers crossed, let's see, I think that plays out. Yeah, we'll see how that one plays out and it's also So agents are going to, agents have got to get ready for what that new kind of AI era looks like and agents have got to stop just thinking about their business and how they can leverage it, but also how AI is going to start impacting their business. And there was an article the other day, it was really interesting saying that agents are getting more litigious sounding emails, because again, we've got people increasingly jumping into their AI going, this is what's happened. is what I'm not happy about. Write me an email and make it sound serious. And it's like, um, agents are going to have to be able to disseminate that you're going to have to really know your stuff because AI doesn't get it right all the time. I've already had several people this year. A couple of them openly say I've checked with AI and it says X, Y, Z. I'll give you two months notice, three months into my term. Yeah, I can have a pack of my term and see. We've had a few of those. You have to know your stuff because you have to go with the greatest of respect. Tell your eyes wrong. Here's the actual legislation. Or that legislation, they're kind of right, but that legislation comes into effect on the first domain. But here's the other challenge. How many agents are really, really not just training but testing their stuff on this? I remember being in a room, so I was giving a talk to about 20 agents in a room. I asked them, "Okay, if I asked you all to start a section eight notice now, who in the room would feel confident in doing so?" And two people put their hand up. I said, "Okay, who wouldn't even know where to start?" And the majority put their hand up. So if your landlord was asking questions of your staff. And there you are, that's now pretty much your sole notice. Exactly. got a clue even what a section it can't explain what it is or they can't explain what the process is or what it does you know these the people got it's amazing we were an agent I was an agent I was working with a few years ago and they had sent all their staff on like a three-day hardcore training course and I said had had had to get on it was the findings and he said well the staff came back In fact, they were really well trained. They really knew their stuff. But what it highlighted was that about 70% of the conversation with my landlord was actually with our receptionist. And we didn't train them in any way on how to answer any questions. So they were given out incorrect advice, more times than the correct advice. But we trained everybody else who doesn't answer the phone on how to ask questions over the phone. So it's not just training your negotiators or your front line. - Front line. - Who's talking, yeah. - If anyone talking to a landlord, literally, not just train them, but just test them. And make it fun. - And look, I think one of our greatest questions on a market appraisal this year, when we asked the classic question of, are you having other agents around? Great. And it would be like, cool, how many of them have spoken to you about the Renters Rights Act? Or, you know, Bill back then before it got, now obviously Act. Sorry, what? You know, they'd be like, what? You know, the Renters Rights Bill, the biggest legislative change having to... No. I mean, for that, you know, licensing, has there been any outrage in spending to you about the fact that you may require a license, depending on what kind of household you're with? No, we've got this license and no one's going to be sorry you had two valuations and no one's mentioned licensing to you It's just shocking. It's just shocking But again, you know, you'll get a lot of those valuations happening will be because that will be someone with Targets to me and walking through the door. They've hit their target You know the day they turn up and they they talk about the same stuff they always talk about and Anyway, we've done a whole lot of waffelin. That's a good one. That's a good one. We have meandered down many an avenue. Dude, it's been an absolute pleasure. - No, thank you. - And yeah, this will be going out early in the new year. So we go out sometime in January. - Well, I hope you all had a lovely Christmas in New Year. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. I've been trying to temper it with diet when things go out. But yeah, hopefully you've all had a good festive season. And maybe right now you're in that be really busy chatting with you, firing off the things going, "We need to put this in place!" But yeah, thanks for coming in, dude. Always a pleasure, always a joy. Guys, thanks for joining us again and yeah, join us soon for the next one. Who knows who that's going to be. Thanks for coming. Bye.