Letting agents have been receiving an increased number of requests from landlords to take on full management of rental properties.

The trend was first noticed in February, and appears in the latest Propertymark rental market snapshot, which uses data from that month.

The trade body puts the requests down to the proximity of the Renters Rights Act, which comes into force at the beginning of May.

With literally hundreds of existing laws relating to property condition and management, plus new rules in the Act, many landlords who previously handled tenants and properties themselves, now want professional agents to do some or all of the management.

Elsewhere in the market snapshot, the average number of new prospective tenants registered with each Propertymark branch jumped up to an average of 80 in February.

But each branch has only around 11 homes available to rent, so the typical number of applicants per property is just over seven.

On the sales side, the Propertymark report notes with alarm that no fewer than 43% of housing transactions took longer than 17 weeks to complete.