Almost half of more than 400 letting agents quizzed for a new study have expressed their optimism about the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the industry.
The poll also showed that a strong majority of agents believe professionals in the sector are open to adopting new technologies.
Key findings from the exercise, conducted by PropTech suppliers Vouch and Goodlord, show that 45 per cent of letting agents think AI tools such as ChatGPT will help them in the future while a further 39 per cent feel neutral about the likely impact; only 16 per cent of agents believe AI will actively hinder the industry
In England, agents in Greater London (54 per cent) were the most receptive to AI, and agents in the West Midlands (36 per cent) were the least receptive.
A large majority of agents - 70 per cent - said they believed lettings professionals were open to the adoption of new technology, while just 10 per cent disagreed.
In addition, 60 per cent of agents believe that the lettings industry should use technology more to improve the customer experience.
However, technical terms and tech jargon were still unfamiliar to many agents.
Some 83 per cent weren’t familiar or were only somewhat familiar with the term “Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Technology” and just 24 per cent of letting agents were familiar with “Identity Document Validation Technology (IDVT)”.
The term that ranked highest for familiarity was “Open Banking”, the technology used to safely verify income and confirm the financial security of prospective tenants - 46 per cent of agents were familiar, and 16 per cent unfamiliar.
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It is great to see a general attitude of excitement around the changes that AI can bring to the sector. This year will see AI products emerge across many offerings super-charging what agents do daily. We’ve been experimenting with AI behind the scenes at The Depositary for over 6 months around key areas of data extraction/analytics, dilapidation proposals and the negotiation process and the capabilities are mind-blowing. We hope to release our first iterations of AI within the next 6 months and I think our agents will be blown away by its capabilities. Importantly, we track a huge array of granular data throughout our process, so we will be able to closely examine the impact it has across an array of metrics. Exciting times indeed!
I see the demise of the letting agent with the new AI and online letting sites.
From a personal point of view, I like talking and discussing issues with my genuine, intelligent letting agent. He does most of the letting process for me as my time is valuable, especially as I grow older.
That said, AI, interlinked with online letting sites such as OpenRent, will probably be the norm in a few years - and this, no doubt, will further be linked to HMRC and a whole host of other government regulatory organisations.
Oh, to be a landlord. It's time the government moved on to another easy money-making target - landlords are exhausted!
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