One word keeps popping up a lot in the lettings world at the moment: quality.

I spend a lot of my time wandering around London, and despite the stiff knee I picked up from a Slavic squat-kick gone wrong at my brother's wedding, I quite enjoy it. The purpose is to introduce myself to agents in person (we're in the people business, after all), and get an understanding on the ground of just what's annoying them the most.

There are three things I've found so far:

I think I was somewhat naïve about the short-term impact of Renters' Rights post-implementation. I know it was a pain to get prepped for (one lettings lead telling me about having to mail 15,000 letters!), and I believed that the twin threat hanging over landlords of Section 21 abolition and two-month rolling termination notices would keep agents in a perpetual state of panic — but so far, so calm… it seems.

Although the concerns around the direct impact of the RRA have dissipated, there's an indirect consequence that's been bubbling beneath the surface for some time — and I believe the industry isn't as well prepared for it as it could be. That being quality.

Think about it. Lettings has been a numbers game for some time now. Agents would expect healthy demand for properties, quick safeguards to vet new tenants, and regulatory space to evict (not that it was really easy to begin with), should those tenants not live up to expectations.

In that world, efficiency always won. AI bots flooded the market with the promise of automating enquiry collection — with varying results (at least I haven't seen any stories about people falling in love with an estate agent's chatbot).

Now, although the panic has dissipated, the underlying impacts of the act are becoming more pronounced when it comes to agency practices. The results?

With this in mind, most of the agents I speak with are increasingly stressing the importance of finding quality tenants — but I don't think that will come as a surprise to anyone. The question is: are we missing an opportunity to unearth the quality?

Most of the industry will talk about introducing more robust processes to protect their clients. Referencing providers are doing more checks, rent insurance operators are becoming the standard, and guaranteed-rent providers are popping up all over my Instagram feed (I miss the videos of people falling off bikes). These are great!… Right?

On the surface, yes. But when you give them a bit more thought, you realise that all of them are reactionary — restricting landlords to concessions they'd never need to consider pre-RRA, and all at the mercy of an unpredictable tenant. And what happens when they fail? If someone fails referencing, you're back to square one. If a rent insurance provider needs to pay up, your premiums go up. If you're using a guaranteed-rent provider, you're consigning yourself to a below-market rent.

I know what you're thinking. Henri, this is all very well and good, but what else can I do?!

Well, I'm glad you asked! What if we stopped looking for ways to defend ourselves and found more ways to proactively do a better job of finding the best tenant — before you've even gone to viewings?

That's our vision.

At HomeHub, we believe there's an opportunity on both sides of the process. While agents are focusing on finding better quality, the average number of enquiries per property is 8 (according to Propertymark). The opportunity? Well, if I was enquiring against seven other people, I'd want to know how to make myself stand out. And as an agent, I'd want as much information up-front to make better-informed decisions.

By building HomeHub, we're bridging this information gap between all parties — giving enquirers the chance to put their best foot forward on each enquiry, while giving agents the visibility to progress their best leads with confidence.

The result? A more transparent rental system that saves everyone time and money. That's our opportunity.

So next time you're not convinced about an applicant, or you're talking to a landlord about how you protect their tenancies, ask yourself: how can I be more proactive?