When used in concert with tools like Goodlord, AI has the potential to revolutionise how agents approach their roles.
The Goodlord team
Apr 24, 2026
According to the latest data in the Goodlord Is Renting Broken? report, the UK Private Rented Sector (PRS) in 2026 has a problem with value perception.
Letting agents are working harder than any time in recent memory, yet landlords are failing to see the value of what they're receiving. Landlords are leaning more heavily on property management services, yet nearly half are considering reducing their portfolios. Tenants are navigating a system that feels slow and increasingly difficult to engage with. The industry is becoming increasingly difficult to interact with, and no one feels better off for it.
The arrival of the Renters' Rights Act has brought this misalignment into sharp focus. The UK property industry is going through the biggest regulatory reset in decades, and every level of the PRS is feeling the squeeze.
The industry obviously needs to change; that much is certain. The question is how? When we take a look at what the PRS needs, we can see that all signs are pointing towards AI. Not a replacement for the human input that drives all good property management relationships, but rather as a tool that can tackle operation failures at their core. Despite the operational pressure agents are under, only 7% say technology upgrades are a priority for 2026. Just 1% of UK agencies report full AI integration across their operations, and while around 75% say they use AI to some extent, most describe that use as minimal. The sector is aware of the tools available. It isn't using them seriously enough to feel the difference.
In this blog, we'll be taking a look at the problems facing the market, how AI can help, and examples of how it could work from businesses across the Atlantic.
- Here's what's actually breaking the Private Rented Sector
- What AI looks like when it works: Lessons from the US
- What UK agents should do now
Here's what's actually breaking the market
While the UK market is nearly overwhelmed with demand from all sides, it lacks the capacity to meet it. If we take a look at some of the data included in Is Renting Broken? The evidence is clear.
Letting agents are managing more properties, more regulations, and more tenant requests than ever before. A lot of agencies are still using manual processes that would have been outdated in the 2010s. This puts what should be simple day-to-day processes under immense strain.
Admin has become the single biggest operational bottleneck in the industry, with 20% of agents citing it as their primary constraint on growth and 76% describing it as meaningfully limiting their day-to-day effectiveness. Managing maintenance, from chasing contractors and obtaining quotes to tracking compliance documents, alone accounts for 16% of operational bottlenecks, while regulatory paperwork adds further weight, cited by 11% of agents as a major time drain.
With agents drowning in admin, there is a distinct ripple effect across the entire PRS. According to our data, landlords no longer feel catered to, and tenants are waiting longer for basic maintenance. 52% of tenants say faster repairs would be the single biggest improvement to their renting experience, and 46% report being very or extremely frustrated by slow maintenance response times. Meanwhile, 59% of landlords cite high fees and poor value as their biggest frustration. This isn't because agents aren't working hard, but rather that the work is invisible to the people paying for it.
It's clear that those in the PRS who are still operating on a rickety manual system without AI and platforms like Goodlord are in danger of becoming obsolete. This is where AI could make the biggest changes. Nothing could ever replace the feet-on-the-ground impact of a good letting, but AI could help that same agent make their daily work a lot easier and allow letting professionals to focus on what they do best: delivering a human-centred customer experience when it's needed most.
What AI looks like when it works: Lessons from the US
To understand where the UK market could benefit from AI integration, we can look at what the US company Funnel has achieved.
At the recent Goodlord Leaders Forum, Funnel CEO Tyler Christiansen gave industry leaders direct insight into what AI adoption in the property sector looks like in practice. Funnel adds around 1 million properties to its platform every year across North America. As Tyler explained, that created an incredible opportunity to quickly integrate AI into their systems at scale. In the UK market, most agents are still treating that sort of operation as a far-future consideration.
According to Funnel's findings, 80% of agents send AI-drafted messages without editing them. A further 80% of tenants choose to interact with an AI agent over a human when given the option. Funnel's agentic AI tools handle mid-tenancy contract changes, add roommates, process pet requests, and manage routine administrative tasks without any human involvement. One tenant has already processed a rent payment entirely through a ChatGPT chatroom with the help of an AI agent, something Tyler described as a world first.
In a UK market where 48% of landlords have identified poor communication as their top frustration and tenants face days of waiting for maintenance fixes, the practical implications are clear. The sheer weight of the admin agents that have to deal with shouldn't be a human problem. A system that can handle it instantly, consistently, and at scale saves everyone time and energy.
With all this said, Tyler's closing point is the most important for UK agents to take away:
"Everything I just talked about highlights how great AI is, all the cool things it can do; having said that, we believe, down to our bones, that the differentiation in this vertical, this industry, is service. It is humans."
A well-integrated AI system should handle the volume. Humans handle the relationship.
What UK agents should do now
The way the American market has reacted to Funnel makes one thing clear: the technology isn’t the problem, adoption is.
Adopting these tools into our workflows doesn’t need to be difficult. Agents at every level of the agency simply need to work together to identify the biggest pain points in their processes and target them with adaptable AI tools. For most agents, that means maintenance coordination, compliance tracking and routine tenant and landlord communications, the three areas that consume the most time and generate the least visible value.
Our report found that 59% of landlords are dissatisfied with the value they receive, and nearly half are weighing up whether to stay in the sector at all. An agency with extra capacity freed up by the combination of AI and platforms like Goodlord can differentiate itself in a crowded market. This will quickly expose the difference between retaining a managed portfolio and losing it.
The Renters' Rights Act is raising the stakes further. Agents and landlords are much more accountable for compliance breaches, with potential fines of thousands of pounds. Those embedding compliance into their workflows, supported by technology, will be better positioned to navigate the changes ahead. Those who don't will find the administrative weight compounding with every new regulatory requirement, and risk incurring huge fines.
Tyler Christiansen put it plainly: the AI future is here, and it's up to agencies to embrace it. The operational crisis facing the UK rental market is real, but it isn't fixed. The tools exist. The question now is simply whether agents will use them.
The Goodlord “Is Renting Broken?” report is available for download here.