With the steady introduction of rental platforms and apps designed to bypass letting agents and property managers in the tenancy process, one proptech innovator is determined to do the opposite.
The developers behind the award-winning Inventory Hive app think the answer lies in improving efficiencies and showcasing the value property agents bring to the process. By doing this, letting agents and landlords can achieve much-needed time and cost-savings – and the tenant experience can become more organised and streamlined. It’s a win-win for all.
The work that goes into tenancy management goes far beyond finding and securing tenants. Yes, platforms can certainly automate aspects of that, but the move-in, inspections, certificates and check-out processes still need the agent’s personal touch and professional knowledge for legal compliance, tenant relationships and landlord reputation management.
“We work with letting agents (and tenant and landlords) every day and see the immense work they put in behind the scenes to keep tenancies filled and running smoothly,” said Richard Abbots, CEO of Inventory Hive. “Without all of these essential activities, tenancies would soon run into legal problems, deposit disputes and relationship breakdowns, to name a few.”
However, as many agents will agree, inspections, inventories and reporting take time – time that some may not always see or appreciate. The level of detail required from these visits, background checks and assessments are essential, too – both for tenant safety and landlord protection. It’s one reason why agents are such a valuable resource.
With that said, technology can lighten the load both in terms of time and cost, and the latest free feature update for Inventory Hive does exactly that.
Pre-designed reports and template questionnaires have been a popular feature within the Inventory Hive app for some time (a look at the reviews of the app demonstrates just how useful these are for streamlining agent workflow) – but now there’s a free customisable feature too.
Up to now, there were various pre-designed templates available for check-in reports, inspections, inventory reports, etc. within the standard internal library of the app - the ones that all letting agents use.
But now, with the new feature update, agents can also create their own questionnaires and customised disclaimers for anything they need. All the back-end coding and complexity has been done, allowing agents to quickly create a questionnaire for inspectors to use on Legionella assessments or fire risk visits, for example. These are then attached to the property information within the app for record keeping and reference.
It’s activities like these that agents and property managers are having to organise and manage every day.
“Every feature we create for our users is there to make life easier for everyone in the tenancy process – but it doesn’t take away from the value agents bring. If anything, it showcases what they know and how much they do – from the advertising of a property to the management of a tenancy. It simply takes away the time-consuming admin-heavy tasks to reduce costs across the board,” added Richard.
“Continuous improvement lies at the heart of everything we do. This new release is very much a case that our users have spoken - and we’ve responded. There’s no additional cost for these new features either. It’s our way of saying thank you to the agents and landlords who continue to use our app. The value of our subscriptions keeps getting better – and the workflow for agents keeps getting smarter.”
“We have a huge round of development underway already for our next big release, which will drive efficiency for property managers like no other platform. Watch this space.”
Visit the Inventory Hive landing page on Kerfuffle for more information and to see reviews
