A recent survey of lettings professionals by Propoly has identified five core areas where human expertise is considered essential, even with the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the property sector. These include building relationships with landlords and tenants, handling difficult conversations or disputes, dealing with sensitive tenant circumstances, and assessing situations without clear-cut answers.
Additional tasks flagged as requiring human input included resolving complaints, advising landlords on pricing and strategy, and making final decisions on tenant selection.
Conversely, agents see greater potential for AI in administrative functions. Compliance administration was ranked as the area where AI could provide the most assistance, followed by processing and reviewing documents, fraud detection, and summarising lengthy email or message chains.
However, trust in autonomous AI operation among letting professionals remains limited. Only 19% of respondents would be comfortable allowing AI to draft a routine email without review, and just 12% would trust it to produce a property description independently.
Sim Sekhon, Group Chief Executive of Propoly, stated that AI has the potential to remove friction from property management, particularly in repetitive administration. He added that the technology should give agents more time for tasks that AI cannot replicate effectively, as "lettings is ultimately about people."