There has been a sharp rise in lettings-related calls taken by answering service Moneypenny in the third quarter of the year.

In a like-for-like comparison of calls taken for letting agents in Q2 and Q3 of 2015, calls arranging letting viewings were up by 34.2 per cent, lettings valuations by 19.9 per cent and property detail requests by 29.9 per cent.

The findings come as the company, which looks after over 1.2m overflow calls a year for lettings and sales agents, reveals that Tuesday September 1 – the first day ‘back to work’ after the summer break – saw the busiest for agents’ calls so far in 2015. 

Over the third quarter of the year, related to property-industry calls, more calls on average came in during the mornings than in the afternoons with the hours between 10am and 11am, 9am and 10am and 11am and midday respectively, receiving the highest volumes.  

Friday was the only exception to this, with between 3pm and 5pm the busiest hours of the day. The largest number of valuation calls were received during the `golden hours’ of 9am to 11am.