We acquired a competitor managing 220 properties and immediately ran a full market rent analysis across the entire portfolio. What we found was typical of a passively managed book: the majority of tenants who had been in situ for over 12 months had received minimal rent increases — approximately £20 per month at each renewal. The previous agent had applied these token increases because they were easy to communicate and unlikely to provoke a dispute.

The problem is that a £20 per month increase bears no relationship to actual market movement. New lets on the same street were going out at market rent. Renewals were not. The gap between the two had accumulated to an average of £155 per property per month - average rents of £896 against a market of £1,051.

Within four months of taking over, through structured, evidence-based rent reviews negotiated properly with each tenant, average rents across the portfolio had risen to £1,051. The total revenue increase across all 220 landlords was 17.3%. Not through a single dramatic action, but through doing the basic job of portfolio management that had not been done.

This portfolio presented a more acute version of the same problem. Tenants had been in residence for extended periods — in some cases many years — and rents had barely moved. The majority of properties also had outstanding maintenance issues, and the two problems were linked: landlords whose rental income had been eroded below the level needed to maintain their properties had deferred works, which had made the properties harder to rent at market rate, which had further compressed income.

Tenants in substandard accommodation face real risks to their health and wellbeing. A poorly maintained property reduces in capital value, increases void risk and — under the new Decent Homes Standard — creates regulatory exposure. The cycle of deferred maintenance and below-market rents benefits nobody: not the landlord, not the tenant and not the investment.

We resolved the maintenance backlog and applied properly benchmarked rent reviews across the portfolio. Some landlords and tenants who were not prepared to move to a properly managed model did not stay with us. That is the right outcome. The landlords and tenants who remained now have a portfolio that works: well-maintained properties, market rents, stable tenancies.

A landlord purchased a block of flats from an existing client of ours. The sale included a remaining management contract of 3.7 years. At our first meeting, we made a straightforward commitment: if we did not perform better than his existing agent on the rest of his portfolio, we would release him from the contract at no charge.

When we analysed his 11 separately managed properties, the gap was stark. He was achieving an average of £273 per property per month below the current market rate — a total shortfall of £36,000 per year. This was not because his properties were in poor condition. It was simply because nobody had been looking at the market properly and acting on what they found.

Eighteen months after our first meeting, this landlord had moved all 11 properties to RedDoor Homes, purchased a further 24 properties through our off-market network and grown his managed portfolio to 35 properties with us.