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Industries

Real estate software development

A letting or managing agency runs on three interlocking obligations that most off-the-shelf software treats as separate concerns: keeping a tenancy compliant across its lifecycle, keeping client money segregated and reconciled, and keeping listings synchronised across Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket without duplicated leads or stale availability. Incumbent platforms such as Reapit, Alto, Jupix, Dezrez and MRI cover a lot of this ground, but agencies routinely hit the edge of what those systems will customise — a tenant portal that looks and behaves like a generic add-on rather than an extension of the agency's own service, a compliance certificate expiry process that depends on someone remembering to check a spreadsheet, or a lettings pipeline that cannot represent the specific way a particular agency matches applicants to stock.

We build software for letting agents, managing agents, block managers and portfolio landlords operating in the UK residential lettings market. The work sits around tenancy lifecycle data, deposit protection, compliance certificate tracking for gas safety, EICR and EPC, referencing through providers such as Goodlord and Canopy, Open Banking-based rent collection, and the portal feed formats — RTDF and BLM — that the major listing portals expect. None of this is exotic once it is modelled correctly, but it has to be modelled correctly from the start, because a tenancy record that does not know its own deposit protection scheme, its own gas safety expiry date, or its own Section 21 notice history is a liability the moment a dispute reaches a tribunal or the Property Ombudsman.

We do not build the identity verification, AML screening or referencing engines themselves — those sit with specialist providers such as Goodlord, Canopy and Open Banking payment initiation services — but we build the workflow, the tenancy record and the portal layer that sit around them, so an agency's own staff and its landlords and tenants experience one coherent system rather than five disconnected logins.

Where it breaks

The problems described in the sector's own language

Compliance certificate expiry is tracked in a spreadsheet, not the tenancy

Gas safety certificates, EICR reports and EPCs each carry their own expiry date and their own renewal lead time, and most incumbent management systems store the certificate as a file attachment rather than as a dated obligation linked to the property and the current tenancy. Renewal reminders, where they exist, fire too late or not at all, and an agency only discovers a lapsed gas safety certificate when a tenant complains or an inspection is booked.

Portal listings drift out of sync with the property record

A price change, a status change from available to under offer, or a photo update made in the core management system does not reliably propagate to Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket at the same time, because feed generation was bolted on rather than built as a first-class part of the property record. Prospective tenants and buyers see stale prices and properties marked available that are already under offer, generating enquiries that agents then have to decline.

Duplicate leads from multiple portals swamp the pipeline

The same applicant enquires about the same property through Rightmove, Zoopla and the agency's own website within the space of an hour, and without duplicate suppression logic these arrive as three separate, unlinked leads that different negotiators may work in parallel, wasting effort and confusing the applicant when two different staff members call about the same property.

Rent arrears chasing is manual and inconsistent

Rent collected via standing order or an Open Banking payment initiation is reconciled against the ledger, but the chase sequence that follows a missed payment — the reminder, the formal notice, the escalation toward a Section 8 process — depends on a property manager remembering where each tenancy sits in that sequence, rather than the system tracking it and prompting the next action automatically.

Deposit protection scheme registration is not linked to the tenancy record

Deposits are registered with a scheme — TDS, DPS or MyDeposits — as a one-off administrative task at the start of a tenancy, and the certificate is filed away rather than held as a live attribute of the tenancy that the system checks against when a tenancy renews, changes rent, or ends, which is precisely when incorrect protection becomes a legal exposure at deposit return or at a Section 21 notice stage.

Block management service charge accounting sits outside the lettings system

Where an agency also manages blocks, service charge budgets, section 20 consultation for major works, and reserve fund accounting are frequently run on a separate system or in spreadsheets, disconnected from the individual tenancy and landlord records the lettings side maintains, which makes a combined statement to a landlord who owns a flat in a managed block a manual reconciliation exercise rather than a report.

Regulatory context

What the sector has to satisfy

Client money protection
Rent, deposits and other client funds are held in segregated client accounts, reconciled regularly, and subject to the rules of a client money protection scheme. Software has to enforce segregation and produce reconciliation evidence on demand rather than assume it happens correctly elsewhere.
AML and KYC on vendors and landlords
Anti-money laundering checks and know-your-customer verification apply to vendors in a sale transaction and, under many agency risk policies, to landlords onboarding a property for letting, with identity and source-of-funds evidence retained against the record.
Right to Rent checks
Letting agents and landlords in England must verify a tenant's right to rent in the UK before a tenancy starts, with evidence retained for the duration of the tenancy and beyond, and follow-up checks required for time-limited immigration status.
Deposit protection schemes
Deposits taken on assured shorthold tenancies must be protected with a government-authorised scheme — TDS, DPS or MyDeposits — within 30 days, with prescribed information served on the tenant, and incorrect or late protection is a common ground on which a Section 21 notice is successfully challenged.
EPC data requirements
A valid Energy Performance Certificate must be in place before a property is marketed and must be referenced correctly in portal listings, with minimum energy efficiency standard rules restricting letting of the lowest-rated properties.
Section 21 and Section 8 process
Section 21 provides a no-fault route to possession subject to strict procedural prerequisites — deposit protection, EPC and gas safety certificate provision, and correct notice form — while Section 8 requires a specified statutory ground, most commonly rent arrears, and the evidence trail for either route needs to be reconstructable from the tenancy record.

Integration surface

The systems we connect to, named

Portal feeds

RightmoveZooplaOnTheMarketRTDFBLM

Management platforms

ReapitAltoJupixDezrezQubeMRI

Referencing and payments

GoodlordCanopyOpen Banking

Deposit and compliance schemes

TDSDPSMyDepositsEPC registerGas Safe register

Finance and identity

XeroSagee-signatureidentity verification providers

Communication

SMS gatewaysemail service providerscontractor dispatch tools

Solutions

What we build in this sector

Tenant portal development

Rent statements, maintenance reporting with photo upload, contractor dispatch visibility, a document vault and renewal offer workflow, all built on the agency's own tenancy data.

Explore tenant portal development

Property management software

Tenancy lifecycle management, arrears chasing, compliance certificate expiry tracking for gas safety, EICR and EPC, and works order management.

Explore property management software

Lettings CRM development

Applicant matching against live stock, viewing scheduling, offer progression and referencing status tracking through providers such as Goodlord and Canopy.

Explore lettings crm development

Portal integration

Feed generation in RTDF and BLM formats, listing synchronisation across Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket, portal enquiry capture and duplicate suppression.

Explore portal integration

Engagement shapes

Typical scope, duration and budget band

Discovery and scoping
Two to four weeks. Mapping of the current management system, portal feed setup and compliance tracking process, identification of data quality gaps in the tenancy and property records, and a phased estimate. Fixed fee, credited against the build.
Single-module build
A tenant portal or a portal integration layer built against an existing management system. Typically 12 to 18 weeks. Indicative band £250,000 to £400,000.
Property management platform
A full tenancy lifecycle and compliance platform, including landlord and tenant portals. Typically 5 to 9 months in phases. Indicative band £400,000 to £850,000.
Lettings CRM and portal integration programme
Applicant matching, referencing tracking and portal feed synchronisation delivered alongside an existing management system. Indicative band £300,000 to £650,000.
Managed run
Post-go-live support covering portal feed format changes, defined response times and a standing change budget, priced as a monthly retainer.
How discovery and scoping works

Questions

Frequently asked

Do you build software for letting agents, managing agents or both?

Both, and often the same platform covers both functions because most UK agencies run lettings and property management as a single operation. We build applicant and landlord-facing CRM for the lettings side, tenancy and compliance management for the property management side, and portals that serve tenants and landlords from the same tenancy record, so a change in one part of the business — a rent increase, a maintenance job, a renewal offer — is visible everywhere it needs to be without re-entry.

Can you replace Reapit, Alto or Jupix, or do you build alongside them?

Both routes exist. Agencies with a straightforward book on Alto or Jupix often keep the core lettings ledger and have us build the tenant portal, referencing integration or portal feed layer on top through the platform's API or database access. Agencies whose volume or service model has outgrown their incumbent system, or who run a bespoke block management operation that off-the-shelf software handles poorly, commission a full replacement. We size this in discovery once we understand what the current system does well and what it cannot flex to accommodate.

How do you handle Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket feeds?

Listings are generated from a single internal property record and pushed out as Rightmove's own feed format alongside the more widely supported RTDF (Rightmove Transport Data Format) and BLM (Bulk Load Module) formats used by Zoopla, OnTheMarket and many other portals and syndication networks. We build the feed generation, validation against each portal's field requirements, and error handling for rejected listings, so a missing EPC rating or an incomplete address does not silently drop a property from a portal without anyone noticing.

What client money protection requirements do you build into rent collection?

Client money — rent, deposits and any other funds held on behalf of a landlord or tenant — is kept in segregated client accounts, reconciled against the ledger daily rather than periodically, with an audit trail sufficient to satisfy a client money protection scheme inspection (schemes such as Propertymark's CMP, the RICS scheme, or an equivalent). The software does not decide where client money should sit; it enforces the separation and reconciliation your scheme's rules require and makes the reconciliation report something you can produce on demand rather than assemble under pressure.

Do you handle Right to Rent and AML checks in the platform, or just record them?

We integrate with third party identity verification, AML screening and referencing providers such as Goodlord and Canopy rather than building document verification or sanctions screening ourselves, because that is regulated, specialist territory best left to providers who maintain it as their core business. What we build is the workflow around it: the check is triggered at the right point in the applicant or vendor journey, the result and its evidence are stored against the record, and a tenancy or transaction cannot proceed to the next stage until an outstanding check is resolved.

How is a typical real estate software project priced?

A single-module build such as a tenant portal or a portal integration layer for one agency, scoped against an existing management system, typically starts at £250,000. A combined property management platform covering tenancy lifecycle, compliance tracking and a lettings CRM runs higher, delivered in phases so compliance-critical tracking is live before less urgent reporting features are added.

Tell us what your systems are doing wrong.

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