Spicerhaart says it’s to spend £1.7m over five year on technology investment designed to help landlords navigate an increasingly complex regulatory environment.

The new Rex Property Management system has now been formally launched across the business following two years of what the agency calls “design, development and refinement.”

The platform has been introduced alongside Spicerhaart’s new Compliance and Pre-Tenancy Centre of Excellence, which it says brings together compliance expertise and administrative support for its 200-strong property management team.

Rather than purchasing an off-the-shelf product and adapting its operations around it, Spicerhaart worked with Rex to develop a highly configurable system drawing on experience of hundreds of thousands of tenancy situations.

The system is intended to help property managers identify and address potential issues earlier while providing landlords with greater confidence that their properties remain compliant with changing legislation, including the Renters Rights Act.

Kelly-Anne Flynn, Managing Director of Property Management and Lettings Operations at Spicerhaart, says: “Yhis isn’t about replacing personal service with technology. It is about using technology to take care of complex processes behind the scenes so our local property managers can spend more time talking to landlords and tenants, resolving problems, overseeing repairs, protecting rental income and looking after properties.

“We believe that combination of specialist central support, intelligent technology and accessible local people is particularly important during a period of significant change.”

The new platform replaces a legacy system that was no longer being developed and which the agency says would not have provided the scale, automation or flexibility required to support future growth.