Fewer than one in five letting agents would trust AI to write even a routine email without checking its work, highlighting the limits professionals are placing on the technology.
Research from property management platform Propoly finds just 19% of lettings professionals would allow AI to draft a routine email without human oversight.
Only 14% would trust it to independently review a document for missing information, while 12% would allow it to produce a property description unchecked.
The same proportion would trust AI to independently flag potential problems with a tenant application.
HUMAN JUDGEMENT
Despite those reservations, agents see significant potential for AI to reduce the administrative burden of property management.
Compliance administration is identified 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.
But agents are considerably less willing to hand over work involving relationships and judgement.
Building relationships with landlords tops the list of tasks respondents consider least suited to AI, followed by handling difficult conversations or disputes, dealing with sensitive tenant circumstances, assessing situations without a clear-cut answer and building relationships with tenants.
Other areas where agents remain reluctant to rely on AI include resolving complaints, advising landlords on pricing and strategy and making the final decision over who should rent a property.
FREEING UP AGENTS
The research also suggests agents would use time saved through automation to increase rather than reduce human interaction.
If AI removed five hours of administration from their working week, 21% say they would use the time to improve their work-life balance, while 14% would spend more time speaking to tenants and another 14% would concentrate on solving complex problems. Some 12% would focus on winning new business.
Sim Sekhon (main picture, inset), Group CEO at Propoly, says: “AI has the potential to remove a huge amount of friction from property management, particularly when it comes to repetitive administration and processing information.
“But the purpose of that technology should be to give agents more time to do the things that technology cannot replicate as effectively.”
He adds: “The most useful AI isn’t necessarily the AI that does everything. It is the AI with the intelligence to know where it can and cannot add value, designed as a sidekick to experienced human agents.
“The goal of AI in lettings should be to make the sector more human, not less.”
