Name: 2026 unpacked: The trends that will shape your agency this year
Uploaded: 2026-01-22T11:41:04.882Z
Duration: 1 h 25 min 8 s
Description: 2026 unpacked: The trends that will shape your agency this year

Transcript for "2026 unpacked: The trends that will shape your agency this year": We're delighted to have you back with us for Alto's first webinar of the year. And what a better way to kick off 2026 than by taking a deep dive into the trends that will shape your agency this year. I'm Emma from Alto and I'm thrilled to be joined by a fantastic group of panellists. You're in for such a treat this morning and I'll introduce all of our wonderful guests in just a moment. But today's session is designed to get you ready for the year. And with the help of our recent trends report and our wonderful panel of industry experts, we'll break down what concerns are being felt across the industry, how this is set to impact your day to day and also what you should be doing to make this your best year yet. Be sure to submit any questions you have now or throughout the session use the Q and A box. We'll try and get through them towards the end of the webinar or we'll follow-up with you afterwards as well. So do make sure you use that and share your thoughts with us. But we'll also be sharing this recording with you via email after the webinar is done as well. So without further ado, let's introduce you to our wonderful and large panel of guests. And I think we should hear directly from them. So I'm going to hand to each of you individually just to introduce yourself, tell us what you do and what you're looking to get from today's session. And I'm going to start with Sarah. I'll hand over to you. Good morning, sorry about that. I'm Sarah Bush, I'm an equity partner at a firm of estate agents, auctioneers and lots of other things called Chef Ins. We cover parts of Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Essex and Suffolk. So we are a partnership, so there's 10 of us that run the company and I kind of head up more on the side of sales and lettings. Amazing, thank you Sarah. And let's hand over to Chris. Good morning everyone. I've been in the industry for twenty two years now. I've worked for a single office, albeit used to be part of three or four other offices. But we've recently been acquired by another firm and it's now part of 14 office set up. As much as my size was an assistant branch manager, I've done a lot of things encompassing within that across some other offices in terms of implementing technology with the regulations from our end, improvements in what we do as well. But I'm also still doing everyday estate agency, dealing with the letting side, dealing with student properties as well. So it's all encompassing and still front end but also from a bit of a management point of view as well. Amazing, thank you Chris and over to you Sian. Testing you all now, she's got me ready to unmute. I had my Kirtle already over that. So great. Lovely to meet everybody. Thank you for inviting me. So I'm Sean Hemming Metcalfe. I'm the operations director here at Infantry Base and I spend a lot of my time looking at compliance, looking at stats and data quality and about just basically the operational side of letting agents and also the suppliers as well. So I'm hoping to bring today a bit of a grounded operational view. You know, I'm an inventory clerk by trade, so I really do understand the industry, but also work very closely with other suppliers and also our bodies like Propertymark to really get the best out of just not only the suppliers, but also understanding what legislation is doing to the industry and how we can basically help sort that out and get it into a workable manner. So everything is working in the background and not necessarily causing havoc at the front end. So hopefully today we'll be able to give you a bit of an operational view and some real good ideas of how to manage what's coming up in 2026. Amazing. Thank you, Sean. Ollie, do want to introduce yourself next? Yes, good morning. Great to be here. My name is Ollie Sherlock. I'm Managing Director of Insurance at Good Good Lord are a pre tenancy business that look after about three and a half thousand letting agents across The UK. Last twelve months we've supported about a million tenants to move home and we ensure about £1,700,000,000 worth of annualised rents across The United Kingdom. So great to be here today to discuss what the next twelve months and the future looks like for the wider industry. Wonderful, thank you so much. And Leith over to you. Hi, thank you guys. Good morning first and thank you for inviting me. I'm Leith, the founder and CEO of Bridgeeye. We are an AI infrastructure for stage agents in The UK. When I say infrastructure all the way end to end from lead management, lead generation, database nurturing and all of that. And I'm excited to share what we think from our perspective about the 2026 and what stage agents should be looking and considering this year. Wonderful, thank you Leith. And Christian hand over to you. Hi everyone, I'm Christian Byfield, also known as the Viking for unknown serious reasons. So I wear two hats. I'm co founder of Base Property Specialists, a lettings and property management company in London and also co founder of the Depository, an independent occlusion software platform and I also sit on the Zoopla Lettings Advisory Board. I'm very passionate about agency, about the role tech plays in running a successful business and delivering a great customer experience And yeah, excited to hear what the panel has to say today and share some nuggets. Wonderful. Thank you, Christian. And last but not least, over to you, James. Good morning and happy new year everyone. I'm James Dolan. I head up our pre sales education and training teams here at ASG and supporting our customers with the suite of softwares. Our hero software being Alto. My background, well, it seems like a long time, but twenty, twenty five years in agency working across both independent and corporate agencies, running my own agency up until exit and then moving into the prop tech world. All about again making sure people maximize their value of the system, the adoption and the efficiency. Amazing. Thank you so much. And thank you so much, everyone. Wow, what an incredible panel and so many of you with so much insight, which is just an incredible way to kick off 2026 with each of you here today. So let's jump straight into our topic for today and we'll kick off with our 2026 Trends Report. I'm just going to share a visual with you as well. Alto took to create this report to give the industry more understanding on the challenges and opportunities ahead. So it looks at the pitfalls and growth opportunities, and it's there to give you all the information that you need to be set up for success. It looks to bring together robust data. It's got original research and also the lived experience of more than 6,000 agents who use Alto every single day. So through the seven chapters, you'll learn what agents are considering the biggest opportunities and the biggest threats to the industry. And we've split out the results by industry side. So you can really pull the findings that relate best to you. And within that report, you'll also find real predictions and commentary from the wonderful panelists, from some of the wonderful panelists on today's session. You can see it's really, really coming from your fellow industry experts and you're hearing directly from them. So it really is your ultimate guide picking off the year. So make sure you do check that out. But with all that said, let's get started with today's discussion. And I'm gonna set the scene for you with another visual. There you go. So we asked agents what they were most concerned about as we entered 2026. And here's the top concerns being felt across the board. So if you take a look at what's on screen now, you'll see the top five concerns across the sector: economic uncertainty, rising operational costs, compliance and regulation, lead generation and conversion and recruitment and retention. So with that in mind, my first question I'm going to fire at you all and feel free to jump in with an answer throughout or I'll pick on you as we go, is which of these challenges really resonates with you and why? The first person I'm going to pick on is Chris. Thank you. I think from our own ethnicity, think legislation coming in for this year along with a little bit of economic uncertainty and I think they can go sort of side by side, I think if it's one or the other. I think there's optimism if there's one or the other, but with both there's a lot of uncertainty. So there's a lot of information, I'll say misinformation, you know, I wouldn't say panicking just yet, but it's what will actually end up coming in terms of legislation and also what might happen with the economy, what other challenges will there be later on this year and it's trying to sort of preempt that and trying to align that with vendors. And some of the difficulties with so much media attention, people make up their own judgments, obviously everyone's got their own opinions on what may or may not happen, what may come in, what may not come in and it's just trying to prep into a level platform really and make sure there's not misinformation going across or panicking people. So when there's panic, then the markets will change. Certainly from our end of things as well, we don't want people that are panicking, concerned about maybe not selling, concerned about not looking to purchase properties and waiting to see what might happen and then going forward from there. So, they're the two main points but I think really all five of those are absolutely things that we need to be aware of and look out for throughout the year. Yeah, it really sounds like then that sort of support of knowledge and just keeping people informed is going to be key to that, to avoid that panic. Sarah, do agree with that? Would you have anything different to add to that as well? No, totally agree with Chris. I think that you need to be mindful of all of those challenges. I think all of them need to be in our minds. They need to be seen as threats but also as opportunities. The most important thing that I've spent the last eight months doing since all of this has been really coming to the front of how twenty twenty six was going to be a challenging year has been about communication. And as Chris touched on, getting communication across to your clients, your staff, even your suppliers to make sure that it's the right communication, it's the right message that's going across. But every company and every person I've spoken to has seen 2026 as we've gone into it is going to be a challenging year. One message: we need to embrace change. If we embrace change and we take on board what we believe our threats are, we'll all get to the end of it and we'll have a new way of moving forward. Yeah, you're so right as well in that if it's coming, it's going to happen whether you want it to or not. So the more you can embrace it and just prepare yourself for it, you're going to put yourself in the best stance to actually deal with whatever challenges are coming for this year. Christian, would you agree, do you have any anything to add on that? Yeah, mean really just reiterating to something that's already been said, think as we've highlighted for letting agents, obviously we've got a lot happening this year. First of all, with Making Tax Digital kicking in in three months time, which will be the first wave of that. So any landlords receiving £50,000 a year or more in rental revenue will need to be doing quarterly digital tax submissions and then the very next month we've got the first wave of the Renters Rights Act kicking in. So, yeah, so I think for a lot of agents it's embedding and preparation. I mean, with all of that happening was one of the key deciding factors of why at BASE we partnered with Good Lord this year because it's been fascinating to watch their work over the last year or so tracking the Renters Rights Act and all of that and the education pieces they've put out and the preparation they've put in. So, you know, as an agency it's about plugging in really key partners that are going to help you meet that compliance of regulation but also give your team the tools they really want and need to perform really well. So, you know, we also use inventory based on here for our inspections and we're really excited. We know Alto's got some really exciting AI powered features dropping over the course this year. Can't wait to see what those do. So I think there are things to be cautious about for sure. But generally, mean, I'm generally a glass half full kind of guy, but I'm actually quite excited about this year. I think the two biggest challenges at least letting agents face is change of fee structure off the back of the renter's rights act. I think that's something that's not being massively talked about at the moment and not being talked openly enough and it's going to be the biggest impact to letting any kind of revenue since the term fees act. So you know that is definitely something for people to wrap their heads around. Yeah, absolutely. And I like making the staff afterwards is definitely the best way to be when dealing with challenges, especially going into a new year. So yeah, we'd like to think in that. I mean, economic uncertainty is a concern across the board for everyone, I think. But you can see 63% of agents have ranked that. How can agents look to address rising cost challenges? It's something that is unavoidable. Let's go with Ollie. Ollie, do you think? Yeah, so I think actually these are all linked and appreciate that these are just next to each other, but this is a funnel of things, right? These are all intrinsically linked in terms of how we go about taking on what I think the next year is going be the year of the agent. And if it's not as agents, you're missing an opportunity. I share Christian's sort of optimism because hell, what's the other choice? But also because I think it's true. And as much as that the sector is professionalizing at a rate for landlords that is unprecedented. It is the hardest time ever to be a landlord. And by definition in my mind, that means it's the best time to be a letting agent. If you set your stall out in an appropriate way. And I think you can link these five boxes in a specific order that mean by answering one, you're answering the next. And when it comes to rising operational costs, Christian's absolutely right to point out fee. I think sometimes we're a little bit too sort of backwards and coming forward and talking about fee because it affects us all. I used to be a letting agent myself. We're all very proud people, right? We're competitive, I think by nature of going out to try and win business against others. But the reality is this parity on fee across the entire sector has to stop. We add more value. You know, not all businesses are made equal and certainly a letting agency perspective. Know speaking to thousands of letting agencies, they definitely don't think they're equal to their counterparts in their towns or cities or local boroughs, etcetera. So I think it starts as a funnel and it's about, how are you setting your stall out? What is your niche? What's your overall proposition and how does it differ to your next competitor? And from that, what do you need to invest in in order to make it different? And sure, that's where operational costs in both in tech services staff. The fact that recruitment and retention and writing operational costs on here is two separate things is quite interesting. You know, there's been plenty of commentary in the market around whether we place salaries that write mark for our overall staff base. Do we retain the best talent? I would argue sometimes we don't. So I think actually what's happening here is the overall sort of customer base is professionalizing at a rate of not I. E. Landlords. Agents have the opportunity to evaluate what is our role? And I would urge agents to do that immediately. What are you actually trying to solve? How close are you wanting to be with your customers? What's the value add and the value add with such legislative change hitting us as Christian pointed out in the May 1 and the first wave, and it's not going to stop by the way, is to really become compliance and regulatory experts. And it's a very interesting to me. That's one of the concerns. I think arguably every single one of these boxes is an opportunity for letting agents. I'm at risk of sounding a bit fire festivals there Emma, but if you just watch that, you know, want solutions to our problems. But the truth is I see all five of these things as opportunities for agents, if they grasp that opportunity with immediate effect. Yeah, absolutely. And I love what you're saying about almost trying not to be scared of each other. You know, you need communication between agents as well. It shouldn't be their own thing to some extent, because there's so much to learn from each other because everyone does things into the right as well. Sean, what are your thoughts on on that and how can agents look to address the rising cost challenges? Yeah, I mean, was just listening there. Unfortunately, I dropped out a little bit, but I got the most of that. And I agree, you know, it is an opportunity and it's actually Christian and I have spoken about, you know, several times is the fact that yes, there's economic pressures. Yes, we've got a huge amount of changes coming our way as a sector. However, we've got an opportunity then to actually rethink exactly how we work both as an agent, as a supplier and also together, and how we can actually make it more efficient and also co productive. Often we talk about what will letting agents do, what will landlords do, what will tenants do, what will suppliers do, and we talk to them as individual stakeholders. But actually, we're all part and parcel of the same journey. So we've got an opportunity here to really rethink how we work, what we can achieve and also what kind of systems and processes we use to be able to get there. I mean, I've spoken to a couple of agencies recently and they've talked about cutting headcount, you know, because they're looking at potentially some cost changes. And the first thing is, oh, well, will we just reduce the headcount or reduce the supplies that we use or we'll look for savings in them, which often back fires because then quality doesn't necessarily come with it. It should be the opposite way around. Put the quality first. Okay, how can we work efficiently together? How can we avoid things like duplication? How can we get our software talking about depository with Christian, in which base is integrated as we are with Alto. So we create an ecosystem so we can share information, share it quickly, get it to the right people at the right time. So we're reducing that inefficiencies, reducing the need for duplication, reducing the need for maybe additional staff to do stuff that really, to be honest with you, they don't need to be done because there could be better purpose building pipeline and doing other things. And then with that comes the compliance element. If you build everything from a compliance standpoint, so everything that you do around your agency, around your stakeholder interactions with your suppliers and do it about what is actually needed and how we're then going to get there. That in by itself will also help with the financial pressures as well, because you're creating those efficiencies and driving out the inefficiencies. So I think certainly the way to look at it, as we've already been talking about, is it's an opportunity. But how can we do this best? How can we work with each other to get the best out of the systems, our processes and also our different solutions and offerings? And they said that there often is a conversation about, well, we're going up against the other agent, the other supplier and everybody's trying to get their own little piece of the pie, as it were. But it doesn't mean then we can't be in the same pie and then just make sure that, you know, to use the analogy, quarter out that everybody is fair and equal, and everybody feels that way. And if they feel that way, then they're more likely to work together. And I think one thing certainly that I've noticed since Covid, if I may bring that in, is that we're actually more open to working together than we ever were before that event happened. And I think we just got to build on that. We've got to make sure that we work together, make sure that we talk with each other and find out where we can best find those efficiencies that we can drive that change for the customer and also for each other. And that's why one of the reasons we're with Alto, we're with Depository, we're with other providers and systems so that we can effectively give the customer the best and most efficient service possible. And I think we need to keep that in focus because otherwise we look at just the money side of it and how we can either one create more or reduce it in regards to fees sorry, not fees beg your pardon costs, then we lose sight of the bigger meaning of what we do in the industry. Yeah, absolutely. And I see exactly why, you know, if you're facing that economical pressure, then the first thing you'd want to do would be to try and get the team a bit smaller, save some money there because it's an immediate win. But actually it's worth putting some more money into the business, finding these tools that are going to support you and actually free up more capacity to then focus on the things that are going to start getting you that money and income again. JD, what are your thoughts on it from an auto perspective? Yeah, I mean, I think I'm really going to echo what's already been said, but, you know, profitability will hinge on operational efficiency. How much more automation can you bring in to free up people's time so they can go and focus on additional areas of the business, you know, rather than keep hiring. Like I said, we've got things like AgenTik AI that can now remove the stress of manually having to go and look for what gas safeties are coming up, chase those gas safeties. And that takes up a lot of time. And now we're going to give that time back to the agent, going and focus on winning on more business. You know, there's less room for error now, isn't there? Inofficial processes now cost you real money. So increase that efficiency, increase that automation. What I'd also say is there's so much opportunity in your database, right? There's untapped opportunity. We look at things like the renters rights bill, reform bill, and all those let only landlords, how are we targeting them and talking about those changes and how it's going to be more efficient for them now to maybe have their property managed by the agency. So really where I'm coming from, it's all about being more efficient, automating more and identifying that untapped opportunity within your CRM. Yeah, I mean, you just sort of mentioned with the renters reform and I mean compliance and changes in legislation are a major challenge and always have been and potentially always will be because they're changing so often. We're seeing it with when three form EPC came out, etc. How are you preparing for the changes individually? So Chris, I'll come to you. Yes, so from touching on what you just said there about let only landlords, it's exactly what we've done around the curve for last week in terms of contacting people because even though there's a lot of media information, there's still so many landlords that just assume one thing and it's far different to that and obviously I think it's giving them the confidence to come over to us to say look there's a lot of changes here that you won't know about, there's a lot of things that you know how the procedure you've got to do things. We've got a matter at the moment where a landlord's privately rented and he's asking us for advice saying, oh, should I do this? Should I do that? How do I go about this? How do I do that? And the processes of that and that's just one example and that's just, one of many that I know will be experiencing issues at the moment. From our other things, we're trying to take in obviously all the information, until would say definite things come in but there's still that nervousness for some people to jump over but we're trying to get all the information and make a plan going forward. We are speaking to a lot of landlords, we are speaking to a lot of let only clients as well and just saying, look, you need to be coming to an agent, you need to be reliant on us, we will bring you the information, we will give you that confidence to be able to use us and make sure that we're doing everything properly, that they will be protected, the tenants will be protected and that it's, I wouldn't say, foolproof, but as best as we can really, because like we've all sort of said and noted, there's going to be a lot of changes, there's going to be a lot of things that will have to happen, But we're trying to come in on things such as this, you know, all of the information coming out from various parts of the industry and then trying to make our own plan going forward. Yeah, absolutely. And I guess you've got to be really equipped within your agency with the knowledge so that you can be confident when speaking to your clients as well, because obviously they're coming to you wanting you to be the expert in the industry. We've got some very big clients and obviously they know a lot of information as well, so it's no good for us or it's not an efficient way for us to be behind them, we've got to be absolutely ahead of them as we would be. But there's a lot of individual landlord clients or accidental landlords, they're the ones that will probably ask us or answer the limited amounts and we'll deal with things. But with very big landlords as well there's still challenges that they face as well. So yeah, absolutely. It's a lot we've all touched on. It's all about communication between various industries, different platforms but also mainly back to you know where it stems from is the clients. Yeah, absolutely. I think compliance is no longer a support task like it used to be. It's now a core value proposition for agencies. They should be able to sell on and sell their fee on and how great an agent they really are. Exactly. And like we said, it is a way of sort of winning business as well. If you can be ahead of the game and be really, really quick in that knowledge and be confident with it, that actually stands out the time where landlords are panicking a little bit and need it. It could be a tool to win those. I think it's also not just about winning, it's that reputational risk isn't it as well, is the fact that anybody within the tenancy chain, be it landlords, be it tenants and suppliers and also the agents themselves, all looking to make sure that they're doing everything right. And also so that when tenants and landlords look to come to your agency to rent or to list their property, that actually they've got the confidence in that agent knowing that they have not only the understanding, the intelligence, but all the processes in place to make sure that they're going to look after them and keep them safe, keep their safe, keep their reputation safe. And some agents do very, very well and really rely on their reputation and like to be seen and be known as someone that you can trust and rely on. Other agents don't always necessarily put much stock by it. But I think certainly with the compliance side of things, yes, you can do your value proposition on that. But what will bring people to your door, as it were, and open that door and bring them in to start talking to your team, is the fact is that you've got that right reputation. You're known and seen to be not just a subject matter expert in the room, but also in the industry and a safe pair of hands. But that then will then naturally go down the line in regards to suppliers, everybody else that's involved with your agency. So as a supplier, one of our jobs is to make sure that we support our client, our customer. And in between that, with the other suppliers like with Christian, like with yourselves as Alto, we want to make sure that we are upholding not only our values, but your values, but also then working with you to make sure that we're doing everything the right way, at the right time, to the right level. And that then naturally will create a reputation that will naturally draw people to you. Yeah, absolutely. And it's legislation, isn't it? It's not a sort of a nice to have. Like, you know, we will say it's so important and you're really, really bang on with the word safety. It is a safety there and it's so important for it to be correct. And the best way of building that trust and your reputation is by knowing your stuff and doing it properly. So do you agree with that? What would you add there in terms of how are you preparing for the changes in the legislation? Sorry, you're asking me? I'm cutting out of it. So we actually took it upon ourselves. So take us right the way back to 2019 to the tenant fee ban. A lot of agents panicked then and how are we going to keep going? We've got to put all our fees up, etc. It's all about preparation and communication in my opinion. And there has been a lot of noise around what was going to happen with this new legislation coming in. I mean, even sales are obviously, there's things happening behind the scenes now in government about changes that they want to make in the sales process. There's always going to be changes coming into our industry. One of the things that I've learned in my thirty year history is if you're transparent, if you're honest, if you give people information, communicate them, give them the links that they need, then people will just research themselves, but they actually will come back to you to ask the questions and ask why you've communicated with them. One of the most important things for us in the last twelve months has been how Alto have really put a lot of work into making communicating with our clients easy, templates, things that we can link in, videos, everything we can do to send out and communicate with our clients. So we started communicating a lot of this information over a year ago. And I'm proud to say that as a company, we have lost minimal amount of our clients. In fact, we've increased our actual tenancy base based on communicating information out to our clients. We do it in a positive way. We give them the links, making tax digital. We've been working with our clients for a long time on that. And even though some of the information that we have been given by good, honest bodies and government has all changed, the fact that we've been communicating and trying to work with our clients and give them a heads up and help them, they've actually stuck with us, they've come back to us, they've increased their portfolios and to me, as I say, everything comes about communication and right the way down to staff as well. Again, staff retention was one of the things you've had on here recruitment costs, everything. Actually getting the staff to take an interest, take any of the courses that they can take, understand what's coming down the line, prepare for it, it means that you retain more staff, keep them more knowledgeable. And we're proud of our reputation at Chef Ins and we do keep a lot of staff and gain a lot of staff from giving out good communication. That's amazing and I'm overjoyed to hear that our support, you know, education material and everything has been helpful in getting that messaging across. That's an absolute win for us. Over here. Sorry to cut you short, but I wanted to actually touch upon regarding the concerns. And of course, I agree with all my peers and Liz here. But regarding what Oli mentioned, it's quite interesting. And if you look at them, all the points are all related somehow and they share a common thing. And if I wanna look at it from a business perspective, it all comes whether you're running a business, a state agency, running law firm, whatever you're running, it all comes down to returning your best talent and returning the best talent requires giving them the best tools and freeing up their time from doing repetitive tasks. Like I can relate to that when I was a state agent years ago. I remember like doing so many calls a day that my ears used to get so hard because like there's so much you need to do and there's a limit for like how many calls and I actually recorded, if you do everything properly, you cannot go over sixty, seventy, 80 calls a day. If you actually do it properly and give the time to do that and thinking about it, working in an estate agency and letting manager, I remember like looking at my staff, some of them were just so tired of taking phone calls and answering the same questions and you need to have your front line, the strongest line. You cannot have it the weakest link. And that means if your first line is weak and they're not managing the expectations and they're not providing the best customer service, which means the data they're taking is quite poor, which means the data they're adding to Alta is not going to be as strong. Meaning we go to lead generation and lead management and the database nurturing and all of that. So somehow it's all linked and I believe it's all related to, with saying the best talent and from personal experience, retaining this talent, you, they get burned out, not because of the jobs that we give them or they get burned out because of the repetitive things that they do. You know, I'm not a machine. Like a machine can do the same thing a thousand times. Give me something more creative. Give me something that I can speak to a landlord, negotiate something, right? So again, but that takes me to James point regarding the AgenTik AI, now why, what AgenTik AI now is doing. And that's what we're more focused on the AI infrastructure where it's a layer rather than automate. What do you want? What you're struggling with as an agency? I'm struggling with this aspect. All right. Automate it, connect it with the right tools. And I'm glad that I've seen Alto for the last twelve months plus, they've been working actively on the APIs and the integrations and I can see the improvement there, which allows other partners like myself and the others where you see, we can do so much, but until the API, until we have access and that's what the agents are looking for is a one thing where they don't want to bring something to their team. Oh, is there another thing that we need to do? Is there another tap? And again, that makes them spend more time. But the retention is a key point because it all takes you back. If I lose the team, then I need to put more time there to train the new person and then I train them to a point where they might leave for an extra $23 for another agency down the street. If I don't give them something, advantage I have as an agency that others don't have. But yeah, that's my take on. No, so that's so valuable. I know that you and Sarah both mentioned there about the retention and actually you're so right with that in that you see it across all businesses, you know, your strongest teams are built up with the knowledge and the experience and the real lived experience, not the taught experience. And unfortunately, it doesn't always happen. Experience isn't always prioritised. And I think that really is a lesson for all agencies and other businesses to be taken note of as well. A lot of the time workers just want a sort of a bit of praise, bit of feedback, it's that morale, that morale up. And that will go wonders keeping your staff and keeping them on board with you when you're facing particularly challenging times or challenging year ahead. I think Emma, on that point, it's interesting to me as to what agency classes is winning because the conversation often gravitates towards volume, doesn't it? It gravitates to how many properties go into management, how many new landlords have we instructed? And I think there should be some perspective on what winning actually is within that mini culture within an office or a branch or a business Because winning ultimately is the bottom line. It's the bottom line growth of the business. And my sort of two pens on this would be urging agencies just to reflect. I'm not giving direction either way to reflect on what they class success as in 2026. Given all the things that we've noted on here under the things that flying about, what does it actually look like? What are the opportunities to reposition and have better foundational growth through a business that has more longevity? Because if your sole focus is just winning more and more and more, then ultimately the retention aspect is gonna be probably more difficult because your business is geared just for hyper growth. It's not geared for retention and to the point made earlier, that consultative approach. So for me, if I was running an agency today, the only one marker of winning or losing I would have is revenue per let. That's all I would care about. I don't care how many things per se I manage. I don't care what my next competitor is doing. I'd be watching and being inspired by my local competitors of how can I match what they do and be better? Where's my niche around that? I want competitor. I want competition. That's healthy. If I'm the one person in the one town, I'm gonna enjoy myself for a while, but goodness me, that's gonna be boring. And I'm probably going to be the master of my own demise. So I would urge agencies to look at what winning actually means. And this kind of continual push for volume, I think actually is one of the main precursors to this dampening fee. And I've mentioned this once before, so I'm in the risk of a boring, but we as agencies, you can continually devalue yourselves. If you sit down and write a list of all the things you do today, every single thing you do for a landlord and then fraction that against the amount you charge and now look six months time. And so one of the other points, do think we do have certainty on the renters right now. Like we do know what's happening. So now think about what you're gonna do in six months time. And then tell me that the fee you're getting is enough. Like there's so much support out there now through different partnerships services like Good Lord, like the guys that have attended today's Call Alto and others. You can really build such a valuable proposition and then demand that fee. And I think the final 10% of that demand is I think confidence. I think it's very hard to go on a ledge and say I am at thirteen, fourteen percent when my local competitors are 11. But if you can find a reason and the tour track as to why you're that, I promise you there'll be a proportion of landlords that are attracted by a premium offering that value that in the same way as a proportion of people that are attracted by Porsches or Range Rovers in the same way there's a portion of people attracted by Skoda's because it fulfills a need. So I think understanding who your customer is and what winning looks like over 2026 is going to be the key to a lot of agencies' success. Yeah, that's a really Absolutely, it just resonates with me so much that what Ollie just said. A lot of agents downvalue themselves so much. It takes a lot to be in this industry at the moment and say retention of staff as we talk about it. If you go to any member of staff and say to them, there's new legislation coming in, we're throwing out the rule book, we're going back to tenancy agreements we've never had before, we've got to learn everything from scratch. I know there's been a lot of movement in the industry for the last year with all this coming in. People have just thought, just don't want to do it anymore. I'm going. We've not seen that purely because we take it as a challenge. But more importantly, let's say the communication that we've been having with our landlords, we've actually been digging ourselves up and I'm not ashamed to say that. It's a lot to take on. It's a lot more learning. AI is going to be playing a massive part going forward and it already is. We've got to look at ways of changing, but most importantly we've got to sell ourselves to our current landlords as well as new landlords. We've personally gained new landlords because of that stance, because we've put ourselves out there and said this is going to take a lot more. This is going to mean we're going have to retrain. We're going to have to do so much more for you to protect you, Mr Landlord, with your investment and with not making any mistakes. We need to value ourselves more, but we also need to embrace and look at what works for us in our areas. And we shouldn't be looking at our competition unless they've got some really good ideas we can steal. We need to find out who our customer is and make sure that we're keeping a high level of service and we are not ashamed to ask for that bit more if we're going to give the service that we need to give and they want to have. If they don't want that service and they don't want to repair and they don't want to follow legislation, then they can go to the agent down the road that might want to give them a cheaper fee. And that's the point, right? So you know your customer, right? I think the urge of course for all of us in business, it's like I want to serve everyone. Like if I can serve everyone, that means I'm surely going to get more clients. And I think that's just not true because you end up taking your eye off the wall of what you specialize in. And I think it's understanding I used to do, sort of when I used to out to see agencies more often, I would sort of ask like what supermarket are you? Like are you Waitrose? Are you like the top end? Are you the Tesco that you know it's going be middle of the road relatively quality but it's not going to be stellar, It's gonna be middle on pricing. Or you're an elderly or little that is focusing on price. It's focused on that core customer that is just price orientated, right? So knowing who your target landlord is and if the answer is everyone, you're not setting your business up correctly for me. It can't be everyone. You can't serve all things at one time. Yeah, I think that's a great view. It's the old sort of way of just trying to get all in every business and actually refining that and really focusing on what your strengths are and what you want your brand to be as well, is a really, really clever way of doing it. And Jane, sorry, go ahead. I was gonna say it's really valid point. And I remember being at the conferf ball conference and Josh Fiegen said exactly that. You need to know, excuse me, who your market is, what audience it is that you're serving and have that data at hand. I mean, and how many agents are really driven by data and knowing what demographic they need to serve and what applicants are registering and have they got the right properties and the right demand and scope in those areas and again knowing what their fees are and their profitability. That's a big question as well because I'd be very surprised like how many people are really analyzing that data and really know. Regarding the data, there is, the data that we have in the database like in every CRM and out as well, there's a quite useful lesson from history. So in the late 1800s, there was during the oil boom, every company delivered, believed growth came from drilling more oil. So they kept prospecting further and further and like the cost and the competition rose and the margins actually collapsed. But there is a company that you can look it up called Rockefeller, did quite opposite. He realized the problem was not the old supply. It was the wastage and the inefficiency they had. So the oil was lost in transports and refining was fragmented. So no one could and actually no one controlled the full gen. So instead of drilling more, he focused on refining and infrastructure. He extracted more value and from the same oil ended up actually dominating the market. And that resonates with not only me thinking about the stage and see background today, should rather than focusing about chasing more leads, more portals, more spend, more volumes. If we can focus on the gold mine that we sit in on, the database that sit in that there is a, it could be a landlord or vendor from years ago who thinking they were not ready back then, but probably they are now. So I don't think that could be like lead generation. It's more about lead leakage and the follow-up and so on. So yeah, that's regarding what James mentioned. That's a really good point of nurturing historic leads as well and nurturing your database that you've already got and all the names and contacts that you've already got access to. But in general, I mean, lead generation always remains a constant challenge for a lot of agents. What are the most effective prospecting approaches agents should be prioritizing today? How with the landscape shifting? Is it that they should just be nurturing their current database? Is there anything more they can be doing? James, I'll come to you for that one. What do you think from an Alto perspective? Well, I mean, is a market that's changed massively, isn't it, in terms of how people are generating leads first off? I mean, you know, we look at Leif and, you know, Bridge AI and how they're revolutionizing that space. We look at how over the last twenty years, you know, the likes of Brightmove and Zoopla and OnTheMarket have changed the marketing strategies and we go to what people are doing right now and it's all kind of social media, isn't it? You know, you've got TikTok videos and Instagram and all these different ways of portraying you as a brand and the property and your business. In terms of obviously what we're doing at Alto, you know, we've really simplified the amount of data that you can pull when you are booking things like your appraisal. So we're bringing in land registry data for when it was last sold, previous sold prices using home track data to forecast the current value of that property. It's giving that insight at your fingertips. So when you're on that phone call with that prospective vendor or landlord, you are seen as the expert, you know, historically, as I was asking them questions, when did you move in and what do feel your properties were? And tell me how many bedrooms it's got. We have all that data and all that insight sitting there. It's directly plugged into the CRM the minute you put that address in. Yeah, absolutely. It's been a huge focus this year, well, last year now, getting that all up and ready. Leith, what about you? How do you think agents should be prioritizing getting those leads today? That's actually quite interesting what JD said regarding TikTok. And if you look at TikTok and it was Vine before back in 2019 and the reason why actually they skyrocketed because of the algorithm they created, it was so specific to the customer needs. It was like the next video, oh, I'm actually quite interested in what the And then that's where they keep, because it's so pointed to the customer. What that takes me to, what the issue with generating the database and nurturing the database that we, and might say something that's a bit blunt, but I would argue that could be next year's revenue is already sitting in your pipeline. It's said there somewhere that you don't know. Sending emails, spams no longer really works. And even if it works, even if someone opens the email, doesn't go to spam because it's so generic. It's not related to the comment or to the notes that's been taken by the negotiator last time they had a contact with the landlord or vendor. So I think, course I'm being biased to Bridge AI and AI and the infrastructure and of course nurturing the database and that's a big thing we work, that we have to read the comments and the notes from Alto and based on that you can create the message and the next, so to follow-up with the customer. So I believe just using the right tools, of course, my peers here, but at the same time, looking at your database, not as a general email, not as a one shot thing. It's actually finding what they're really looking for. And you cannot do that manually. Need something at scale, especially if you have tens of thousands of leads and also to be GDPR compliant, right? So GDPR, you need to take the action to speak to them to say, all right, are you still interested or do you want us to remove you of the database? And if you don't do that, at some point your data becomes really useless because you need to take an action on it. Otherwise it dies. So yeah, that's my tip. No, that's brilliant. Thank you. And one thing I just wanted to ask before we move on and to look at my next visual for you. I just want to touch on local licensing schemes. They're being rolled out by requiring landlords to get council permissions to rent out properties in specific areas and to improve standards. So this will likely have a significant market impact over the next twelve months. How do you see these schemes influencing landlords as well as the border rental market? And Christian, I'm going come to you for this one. Yeah, thanks Emma. So look, I think the ongoing legislation and regulation of the PRS and agents should be welcomed by effective letting agents up and down the country. The more difficult this job becomes, the more essential expertise and knowledge becomes, the greater our value within that process. It's been fascinating to watch our industry over the last two and a half years with originally the Tenant Rights Act and then obviously changed to Labour, Renters Rights Act and what we sorry Bill and now we have the Renters Rights Act. What I found fascinating is watching how agents have communicated throughout that period differently. The agents who've won over the last two and a half years their content and attitude to what has been proposed in that ongoing process has been balanced and insightful. It's looked at the realities of things. It's not jumped at this kind of doomongering messages that you saw some of our industry put out throughout the last two and a half years oh this is going to kill the PRS, this is going to kill our business, this is going to kill that' Actually I would argue that the ongoing professionalisation is the greatest thing that could possibly happen to letting agents. So not only does that touch on what we've already talked about conveying your expertise and knowledge to justify hopefully a higher fee or a decent fee for the work that you do But what's really important people understand is that only one in two landlords use a letting agent. Only one in three have their property managed. That is the biggest opportunity. We've got what 4,400,000 homes in the PRS sector in The UK, you think half of those are not using a letting agent and two thirds of those don't use property management services. That is the opportunity. Two thirds of the marketplace are not using property management and what we're coming into with legislation like HHSRS that hit last year and AML and then coming into this year we're Making Tax Digital and Renters Rights Act and then going into the forward years we've got minimum means minimum energy efficiency, we've got the next wave of the Renters Rights Act with AWABS law and decent home standards coming in. It is going to keep getting more and more technical and more and more complex and as letting agents we should absolutely be embracing that. Educating our landlords on what is required under that a little bit I'm not a big fan of the scaremongering but a little bit of education because again that is all getting very serious fines go up from 30 to 40,000 per breach, rent repayment orders double from a year to two years so that the impacts of getting it wrong escalate dramatically. But as agents we're the gatekeepers, you know, we're the gatekeepers to this knowledge and it's really important that we educate and inform our landlords. That's not to say we can't call out in question legislation that is being proposed that we don't necessarily agree with or we think there may be unintended consequences that come with it and there is plenty of that with the Renters Rights Act coming in, but agents have to be very careful. If you're going out there going oh my god this is the end of the world, the rental market's going to crash and every landlord's going to leave the market, don't be surprised when you see your own landlords want to leave the market because you've told them to. You are the expert, you're the person in the marketplace and you are telling your client base the PRS is screwed, you're not getting anywhere, go and invest your money elsewhere and then you're surprised when your landlords do that. Have your internal conversations but be very considered about what you put out and how you educate and inform your client base and just to look at marketing as well I think you know agents that succeed this year are going to be ones that put out content that is authentic, is effective and is creative. Those are the three key things agents need to be thinking about with their content this year and the ones that do that and embrace the changes and embrace this new kind of tenant centric PRS that we're moving into are the ones that are going to do really well not just this year but into the future. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for that, Christian. I think you're very, very right when you're talking about the messaging that you're sending out to people. Also it struck me that making sure everyone's singing from the same hymn sheet and internally have all got that same messaging going out as well to customers, because it's very easy to hear sort of updates and hear all this change and hear all the news and make up your own opinions. But then if you're not all on the same wavelength, then that's going to be where some holes come into your business as well. But I mean, doing more with less, I think, especially with the economic concerns, that's fast becoming the defining theme of every agent strategy for 2026. What can we use that we've already got? Let's take a look at the top five growth strategies for 2026. And so you should see a new visual now for you. So top five growth strategies got improving efficiency, 63%, enhancing customer experience, 52, expansion into new areas, 7%, new revenue streams, 21% and mergers and acquisitions at 11%. So I mean, I kind of want to open this up and just hear your thoughts on it. Also, which of these growth opportunities do you resonate most with? Are you surprised at any? Sarah, let's come to you. I'm going to start sounding like a broken record, think. But again, all of those need to be involved with any kind of a business that we have at the present time. So we should always be looking at ways of improving our efficiencies, which hand in hand will go with improving the customer experience. Again, us, our customer experience is the most important thing. A good review is hard to get, but it will breed success. Looking after your current database, it will automatically a reaction from a customer it will breed the success. The one I probably am a bit skeptical about is the mergers and acquisitions. As a business owner, I think I'd probably throw, being blunt, probably one or two letters a week away at the moment and delete emails from companies looking to acquire. I think you can spend a lot of time looking at mergers and acquisitions, but again, it takes your focus away from your actual core database, your core customer stream that you've got. New revenue streams, again, you should always be looking at those. So again, I think there's a good point on everything that's there. We need to be keeping an eye on looking at, but not lose the customer experience. To me, that's the most important. By looking at that, what does the customer need? Make sure it's the best service that they can have. And as most people around the panel have already said, by doing that, you're automatically looking at streamlining and making sure the efficiency side is there and allowing your best staff to do what's needed the most, and that is give that customer experience and be 100% on that. So for me, it's mainly that and focusing on making sure the client is looked after and hopefully that breeds more success. Yeah, thank you. That's pretty helpful. Just to further on, as Sarah said that, think you focus on the first two there which are substantially more than the other three and if you adopt the right partners and products into your business they will deliver both of those first two things. You know I said earlier we recently adopted Goodlord into base and not only is the feedback from the team fantastic because their workload is so much easier, we've already had multiple residents going oh my god what an amazing journey that was, it was so easy. I got prompted to do this, I paid that, I got prompted to do that, I uploaded my passport and then I signed. You know likewise with inventory based with our inspections how we can share that and it was something when we built out the depository we really looked at all the stakeholders in it. So first of all we looked at agency. Now what a business owner, director, CEO wants from a software is going to be very different to what a front end user, what your frontline staff use. So we were very very clear on yes we wanted to deliver efficiency and data and automation streamlining to senior management But the frontline user they're not interested in any of that. What they want is ease. They want a platform that is intuitive and easy to use that legitimately shifts the needle in making their life easier and to this day you know five six years in with the depository the thing that makes me happiest is when we get an email from a frontline user who's new to our platform they get a few weeks in and we get an email going oh my god you've changed my life', you know, I used to come in the end of tenancy part was a part of my job I've always dreaded and for the first time in my life I feel like I'm totally on top of it and it's an absolute breeze and I no longer dread that and as an employer that's what you want. You want to be removing those hurdles, you want to be removing, as Leith touched on earlier, those really repetitive mundane boring tasks that you have your staff do but where they add zero value. They either succeed or fail in what they do but they don't add any intrinsic value to that particular task and that was something we really focused on with the depository as we looked at where is the value add for those frontline property managers and property administrators and it is in the proposing and negotiating of deductions and dilapidations. Everything else that happens around that guiding tenants on how to return the property, booking a check out, arranging a clean, gathering bank details, there is no value add to that. So what we focused on was stripping out all of that and focusing on where they add value and now with the advances of AI, the AI tools we've released and we're dropping another one I think next week and again it's about making that job even easier for the frontline user but we didn't stop there. The landlord experience is really important, the tenant experience is really important. Again just as important as getting an email from a frontline user going oh my god you've changed my life' seeing an email come in going oh I had a nightmare my last letting agent or landlord when I rented it took me weeks to get my deposit back they tried to rinse me for this that and the other and then having a tenant who's got their deposit back in under two weeks being oh my god this was so easy. I knew exactly what I needed to do. The deductions I proposed were fair, were evident, it was so easy to do it on the platform, submit my bank details, bang. And you know that is what you want and good products and good partners will deliver on all sides. It's really important as agents when you're looking at partners and products you don't just look at what you want as an owner you look at what is going to make your staff happier, better and also if it is a product that your customers engage with what is that experience like? Make sure you demo what that experience is like for your landlords, for your tenants, for your buyers, for your sellers because that is really important. Every interaction a customer has with your business says something about your business and the easier and smoother that process is, the happier your people are going to be. Well, there's so many integrations out there and you could have all of them but they might not actually be benefiting you. And so picking the right ones to really elevate what you're looking to do is really key in choosing who you're going to integrate with or partner with. But that actually does lead us nicely, thank you Christian, onto a huge theme for 2026. And I'm sure you've spent most of last year hearing about it being mentioned too. But AI technology, Christian mentioned it just then. It's such a relevant and fast changing topic in most industries at the moment. And it's something that's being harnessed within the property industry. And when we asked agents which technologies they're most likely to adopt in 2026, the responses painted a clear picture. It was tools that reduce risk, increase efficiency, like we've been saying, they're at the top of the priority list and especially those that support compliance and unlock the power of AI and use it to really elevate what they're doing. So what AI tools are you all currently using? What value across which area do they bring? Chris, I'll come to you for that one. From our end of things and touch on a number of things have been said over from a lot of us today, it's really allowing sort of the things that really work for us that we can then pass on but also maximising our own time towards things and really sort of specialising. So, there's a number of things that are sort of said from the staffing point of view that it needs to work for us, but it needs to work for the clients as well. Things that work for us, efficiency and timing, then we can then pass it on and we can offer a better service, more informed service to people. But a lot of the time it's just the very manual heavy procedures that I think Christian noted and a couple of others did as well. So, our other things, from the frontline staff, simple things, some of the integrations with Amso that we've had, we've got good laws, we've got inventory based, some of the descriptions etc that we do have AI assistance on as well. Sometimes with some of those it's allowing us more time to be able to spend, as I said, with clients. But it's the ones that work for us, it's the ones that are simple and that are effective. There's still, I wouldn't say uncertainty per se, but it has to work for us, got to be the right thing. Not a blanket approach of just encompassing everything going because you've got all then, I think we touched on it earlier on, so many platforms and we've got to go on this platform, do this, do that, something that we can have control over from a minimal standpoint and lots of just the basic side of things really is where we're taking an approach from. Some of the other AI things that we've had in terms of things like reporting from our other things, I'll say very minimal things around the photography of a property but in terms of the schedule of contents, the inspections we do, the end of tenancy things as well, has seen a massive change in how we do things. Obviously, it's improved the service as well. So, we want more of that but it has to work for us. The staff needs to know how to use certain products, certain things and it needs to add either quality or time savings from our end of things, still keeping the high level of service that we offer out. Yeah, absolutely. And when you're looking at budgets and trying to keep them a little bit tighter, the incentive to then spend on another software or another partner that's going to sort of support you. It's really, really got a benefit what you're doing and to make it worthwhile. And so making sure you're using it correctly and your team using it correctly is going to be a priority there. Sarah, do you have any other sort of like AI things that you're using? I'm going be honest on this one. So AI terrifies the hell out of me. Hand on heart, we have embraced quite a lot of AI. We're currently looking at our website and putting AI behind that. We've looked at it for writing descriptions on some of our properties, taking it away from each office because we've obviously got trying to keep a tone. There's a lot of stuff that we're looking at, but we haven't embraced enough of it at the moment. I think we've kind of been one of these firms that have sat slightly on the fence with it. We have streamlined quite a lot of things. So again, like Chris has touched on, we've embraced a lot that Alto brought on with their integrations. I haven't I'm somebody sitting on this panel that probably hates me at the moment but I haven't quite gone with that company yet and have gone with a different company and streamlined the lettings process. But again, there's a lot of companies out there throwing a lot of information. What I'm very protective of is my staff. Christian, you hit the nail on the head. I'm part owner of this company. I have my specialisms. But I've worked my way from being a sales negotiator, right to be an equity partner. And in my mind, I always go before I embrace any of my AI technology, any new APIs, anything, I get the staff to look at it. I don't look at it. I look at the cost and I go, 'Right guys, if we take this on, do you want it?' That's the most important thing. I don't do it as a day job. I know how to do it, but it's not my day job and anything we bring into this company is tested by the staff and they need to see the benefits before I'll embrace it. So at the moment it's minimising too much change. It's prioritising the changes that are needed and then looking at the changes that the staff would like. And yes, anything that will save time will save obviously on the costing side, as in we don't want to make mistakes. We need things to be right. So compliance has to be one of the top at the moment. But we've obviously outsourced a lot of things, I'd say outsourced, but it's embraced things like not doing a phone call. We do do a lot of AI kind of mailing and we do a lot of the specs aside of stuff, unfortunately, I use that word, and use them to obviously find the clients that we need to be embracing and getting out to. But yeah, so I'm the dinosaur. I let the staff make the decisions and then I'll embrace it if they find it's something they want to use. No, I think that's a brilliant way to be there because actually it can go the other way. Try and implement too much change at once, It can just be too much for the team. Doing it like it isn't always a bad approach getting people used to the way they're working. I think one of the key things with AI, it's like any tech, if you're waiting to be sold a solution, you're going to get yourself into trouble, right? You need to understand what are the challenges in your business, what are the problems you're trying to solve and then go and find a solution that works for you. So examples of what we've done in BASE last year, marketing was a huge focus for us. So we've really looked at AI tools that could help us achieve what we wanted to achieve with that. So throwing some things out that agents might want to check, we use something called OpusClip, which is a really great platform where you can basically go and chuck in long format videos, you can film videos on any format, you bang it in there, you have a subscription to give you credits each month and it auto edits that into short format videos to share in your socials and it optimises it, it does the titles and you can frame exactly what it looks like and it just what would have been hours of work is literally seconds. So that's one example of a product. If you're running or thinking of running podcasts there's a really cool platform called Buzzsprout which helps you distribute, not only distribute your podcast across but it's got AI tools in there to help improve the sound quality if you're concerned you don't have the best kit. You can even have an AI co host that helps like carry the conversation along. So there's some cool things in there and then obviously the one that won't be a surprise to anyone is ChatGPT. You know so we've used that a lot within our business in terms of generating content but it's really important that you understand how to use these tools correctly. You need to train AI to understand your, as Sarah said, your language, your tone, your style of business to understand what your objectives are. Toby Martin is a fantastic distributor of top tips in this field and there's some really digestible content that he puts out there to help people understand. So you can create your own little chat GBTs within your own subscription pre programmed to, like I said, talk in your tone, to be authentic and to work towards your goals. So I think from that point you're talking about open market AI, understand what it is you want to achieve and go and find products that hopefully help you solve that. Talk to friends, family, other businesses, educate yourself. On the flip side, I think in the more technical elements of business, I think at the moment the vast majority of agents are much better leaving it to the experts to leverage AI in the best way possible. I know inventory based are using it within the creation of their reports. Alto have not only got the gas safety chasers but they've got more and more stuff dropping this year. Literally their entire business is AI and one of the things we were very conscious about if you're a techie geek this whole AI thing is very very exciting but I think one of the things that we were very careful of with the depository when AI really kind of emerged onto the public scene kind of eighteen months ago was we wanted to be careful that we wanted to add create tools that genuinely added value. It wasn't just the kind of that we can stick an AI label on our product now and that makes us fabulous. We took time to really understand within the process we're working on again where were the pressures on the staff and our users and how could we use AI to improve that. And as I highlighted earlier, we'd already drilled down on two key areas where we feel the expertise of property managers and property administrators is the proposal and negotiation of deductions. But what we also know is that that's not always the most exciting task collating you know, dilapidations from a student house, an eight bedroom HMO student house with like 70 dilapidations in there, most of which are things like blown light bulbs and, you know, things that haven't been put back properly. Not the most exciting thing to be able to write up. So what we've got launching hopefully next week is our AI smart proposals and working with our partners like Inventorybase. So we've got nine integrated inventory partners. We already extract all of the data out of checkout reports, hopefully meaning that people who use our platform don't need to read through checkout reports anymore. But we've now kind of supercharged, we had curation tools in there where you curate that list of fifty, sixty, 70 dilapidations into reasonable proposals. It still took time ten, fifteen minutes maybe to curate that. The new tool at the click of a button in seconds AI will do the heavy lifting. It will group those into categories, it will create proposals and then property managers rather than worry about the whole curation will just go in and add their little expertise. They will guide it on what the value is going to be. They might add some notes of their knowledge that might be notes they're taking off the CRM of things that happen in the tenancy or their knowledge of the tenants and the property or whatever it is. But it's really important that you still give the users the ability to leverage their knowledge and expertise. You know, we keep talking about people in the business and their value that is their value. Help them leverage that with the greatest of ease that you can and again moving on to negotiation A lot of people and property managers as well because they're not negotiators typically find contentious interaction with tenants sometimes quite difficult. Also, with the greatest of respect, like doing three or four rounds of negotiation over four blown light bulbs that's costing a 10 and £15 is not the most rewarding negotiation conversation a property manager is ever going to have. So in those fairly kind of mundane moments, again, the ability for our users to click generate response and to generate a really nuanced, detailed response to something that is really quite mundane where you really feel like going 'Seriously? Are we seriously talking about this for the third time?' You could just let our eye do the heavy lifting on that and I think that's the key thing. You'll see that this year is a lot of the really good software companies out there, if they're not already, are going to really start to leverage the capabilities of AI in really effective ways. We did a web on ethical AI didn't we and just using it to elevate what you're already doing and not replacing people and replacing that expertise there. Leith, sorry, were you going to add something onto the end of there as Yeah, was actually saying, Eamon, to what Christian said, he's actually spot on every single point is starting from the problem first. There are thousands of AI solutions out there starting from the problem first and going backwards to say, all right, do we have enough data? Where are we spending our most time? Where our most time is being spent on, firstly, and each department, each team member. Is that action could be automated as Christian now said. So if we do that first and then you walk backwards, all right, what are the AI solutions out there that could serve our needs? That's one. But then what are the solutions out there that can serve our needs and also connected with other solutions like Good Lord, like depository and so on and so forth. So as long as you have, it's not a one stop shop, but at the same time, solution needs to talk to each other to avoid the repetitive and the manual efforts. Then otherwise we go back to square one. But yeah, that's fine. No, thank you for that. And in our last, we've only got a few minutes left. So just to sort of finish this off really before we bring the webinar to a close. Ollie, I'm going to come to you just as a one last question. What do you see the biggest opportunities or biggest challenges for 2026 from your perspective? Yeah, I think the obvious one is the Renters Rights Act. It's the biggest change in legislative, the biggest change since 1988 in our world, right? So if you're not preparing now, you're probably too late already. So for agencies, you've got to sort of tone approach here, get prepared and then start ultimately abiding by that legislative change. That's almost too much of a simple answer though. And I go back to my earlier points in terms of consolidating their overall value agencies present. I think this along with what looks like ROPA coming in the coming years are both sort of really good identifying points of where we can really draw a load of value as agencies out of them. You know, we should pride ourselves in being professional. Gone are the days where this is a two bit thing. You should be able to open an office and just trade the next day. That's not good for anybody. And, know, if that means that, you know, we see sort of imbalances in the sector and we see agencies stop or change, you know, I understand that may be a byproduct of it, but so be it frankly. So I think, ultimately the opportunities for 2026 lay in the compliance and regulatory change and the ability to shape that around and within your brand, present that in a simplistic way that landlords understand. And I think that they're all opportunities in front of us, albeit challenging ones if not managed correctly with the right partners. Like we said, there's opportunities in the challenges as well. Absolutely. Thank you so much everyone. I will bring us to an end now because we've had such an active discussion. We've actually run out of time for Q and A, but rather than rush answers, we'll come back to everyone after the webinar as well. But thank you so much to our fantastically brilliant, wonderful panel who've just made this the best way to kick off the new year. And thank you all again for joining us. If you'd like to understand more about how Alto helps agents, check out our demo via the link in the resources tab. You'll also find out more about our partners on this call by clicking the relevant link too. Thanks again, everyone so much for your time. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day and take care. Thank you so much. Bye.