An estate agency’s IT failure is unusually public. The phones ring constantly with people who will call a competitor if unanswered, the portal feeds have to flow or the stock is invisible, and the office window is the least important place your listings appear. Meanwhile the back office holds exactly the data mix regulators care about: identity documents collected for anti-money-laundering checks, tenant references, deposit records, vendor financial details. Agency IT has to serve both faces at once: the always-on shop front and the compliance-grade filing cabinet.
We support estate and letting agencies across Dundee, Edinburgh and the central belt, and the sector’s needs are consistent enough to describe precisely.
The property software is the business
Whichever platform runs your agency (Reapit, Alto, Street and their peers, or an older system you are quietly outgrowing), it is the system that cannot be down: applicant matching, viewings diary, offers, tenancies, portal feeds all live in it. Our job around it:
- Uptime and access: the platform reachable from every branch, every negotiator’s laptop and phone, with connectivity sized for offices that live on cloud software and big media files.
- The integrations that break quietly: portal feeds to Rightmove and Zoopla, lead emails routing into the CRM, the phone system logging calls against contacts. When a feed fails on a Friday, Monday’s leads are the cost; monitoring catches it first.
- Vendor-management honesty: when the platform itself misbehaves, you need someone who will own the ticket with the software supplier rather than the two of them pointing at each other while your branch works from paper. That sits squarely in what a support company should do.
- Migration support when you change platforms: data mapping, parallel running and training logistics, the same discipline as any system migration, applied to the system your income runs through.
The compliance load: AML files and tenant data
Agency compliance is mostly record-keeping, and record-keeping is an IT problem wearing a legal coat:
- AML records. Estate agency businesses operate under HMRC anti-money-laundering supervision, which in practice means identity documents and verification records collected, stored and retrievable for years. Passport scans in negotiators’ email inboxes and ID photos on personal phones are the failure modes; a structured, access-controlled store (SharePoint done properly) with retention handled is the fix.
- Tenant and vendor personal data. References, bank details, deposit records, disputes: UK GDPR applies in full, and a breach letter to a database of local homeowners and tenants is a reputational event an agency does not recover from quickly. The controls are the standard stack done thoroughly: MFA everywhere, device encryption on the laptops that attend valuations, leavers’ access revoked the day a negotiator moves to a rival, which in this sector is frequent and next-door.
- Scottish letting agents additionally work under the letting agent registration and Code of Practice regime, whose record-keeping and client-money expectations translate to the same requirement: files organised, retrievable and backed up, with tested restores rather than assumed ones.
- Email is where agency fraud happens. Deposit redirection and completion-funds scams target property transactions specifically, because the sums are large and the parties are strangers coordinating by email. Phishing-resistant habits, payment-verification procedures and hardened mailboxes are sector-critical here, not generic advice, and they are exactly what insurers now ask about.
Branches, viewings and the phone that must be answered
The operational layer agencies actually feel day to day:
- Multi-branch as one office: shared systems, shared files and one phone estate across branches, so cover flows where the staff are. Call queues that route the Broughty Ferry line to whoever is free, and call recording where you choose to use it, handled compliantly.
- Mobile-first negotiators: viewings, valuations and inspections happen on phones and tablets in other people’s houses. That means company data on mobile devices managed properly (lost-phone wipe, app separation) rather than hoped about.
- Saturday is a working day. Support arrangements that go quiet at Friday 5pm fit agencies badly; response expectations should be agreed around your actual trading week.
- Media pipelines: photography, floorplans and video tours are large files moving between photographers, branches and portals; storage and upload paths sized for them stop the Thursday-evening listing bottleneck.
What agencies typically pay
Sector pricing sits in the standard band: £50 to £85 per user per month at the managed tier (full breakdown), with agencies commonly landing mid-band once the compliance controls and mobile management are included. Multi-branch adds connectivity lines rather than support premium. Against the sector’s two catastrophic scenarios (a redirected deposit, or the property platform dark on a launch weekend), the fee prices as insurance against events the sector actually has.
Frequently asked questions
Do you support Reapit, Alto and other agency platforms?
We support the environment they run in and own vendor tickets to conclusion: access, connectivity, integrations, email flows and the devices using them. Platform-internal configuration stays with the vendor; the difference is you get one number to call and we do the chasing.
What are the AML IT requirements for estate agents?
HMRC supervision expects customer due-diligence records kept and retrievable: in IT terms, a structured document store with access control, retention and backup, instead of ID scans scattered through inboxes. We build that store and the habits around it; your compliance officer or legal adviser owns the policy itself.
How do we protect against deposit and payment fraud?
Layered: hardened mailboxes with MFA, staff trained on the specific redirection patterns that target property transactions, and a verification procedure for any change of bank details, enforced without exceptions. The procedure is free; the incidents it prevents are routinely five figures.
Can our branches share one phone system?
Yes, and they should: cloud telephony puts every branch on one system with shared queues, cover routing and per-branch numbers preserved. The cost guide shows the per-user arithmetic; agencies usually save against per-branch line rentals.
What about negotiators’ phones and lost devices?
Managed mobile devices: company data in a controlled profile, wipeable remotely without touching personal photos, and access revocable the day someone leaves. Given sector staff mobility, offboarding speed matters as much as the technology.
Do you cover letting-only agencies?
Yes: the letting side carries the heavier ongoing record load (references, inspections, deposits, repairs coordination) and in Scotland the Code of Practice expectations. The stack is the same; the retention discipline matters even more.
Get the agency audit
The free IT health check, agency edition: where your AML records actually live, how a deposit-fraud attempt would land today, what your platform’s downtime posture is, and the branch-and-mobile map, with fixes priced honestly. Get in touch before the busy season stress-tests the answers.
