Rentancy and 2022 Lettings Market in Review

Rentancy

In 2022 Rentancy became part of Chime Technologies Inc. Chime is a leading, US-based, real-estate CRM provider. Since the sale, engineering in Rentancy has expanded and we are working through a challenging roadmap of innovation and improvements which will come to market in 2023. Rentancy is also benefiting from Chime’s unrivaled expertise and skills in CRM and AI automation too.

Alongside becoming part of Chime, Rentancy in the UK doubled down on growing its services business. Rentancy has become a listed ARLA member, a PRS member, and a member of Money Shield.

UK Letting Market

The major themes of the second half of 2022 have been inflation and the energy crisis. Agents are starting to be asked by their clients to implement rent increases to help cover higher mortgage payments. At the same time, leading agents are also providing help and advice to tenants to reduce their energy consumption and related bills.

The traditional tenant seems about to be squeezed hard in 2023, but with a diminishing stock of rental properties and, so far, no protection from the UK government, they have few options except to pay up or downsize.

For the letting agent too, it feels like 2023 is going to be hard work. Probably with higher numbers of tenants falling into arrears and with clients unhappy if they are not able to pass on necessary rent increases leading to increased churn.

Alongside these new 2022 factors, landlords were already under siege from UK tax changes and government disincentives. For example, landlords can now only recognise a proportion of their related mortgage expenses, and so, landlords are having to professionalise and move their properties into incorporated companies, increasing professional accounting fees and impacting how capital gains are handled. Making tax digital changes will further increase the reporting requirements for landlords.

Combined with interest rate raises, general inflationary pressure of supply and property maintenance costs, all these factors are pushing some landlords to the point that they are considering, “is now the time to sell some or all of their portfolio?”

At the agent level too, they are not immune and are experiencing higher costs to serve with staff requesting pay rises, input costs increasing and more competition in the market as house sales slow and estate agents re-energise their lettings businesses too.

Overall 2023 looks set for one of the most challenging years in recent times whether agent, landlord or tenant.

Rentancy and 2023

As a business, we believe 2023 will be more challenging than 2022. We are doing 3 things to prepare our business:

Operational excellence – we are implementing our own best practices throughout the business to systemise our way of working and how we work with our agent and landlord clients.
Hiring the best talent – we continue to look for and recruit exceptional industry talent to Rentancy in client accounting, bookkeeping and property management.
Industry partnerships – we will expand our partnerships with industry leaders and thought leaders in the industry.

How can Rentancy help?

Despite any challenges coming, Rentancy has an expert team of highly qualified bookkeeping and property professionals with collectively 50 years of experience and is keen on helping your business grow and thrive.