In Five Years, Will Leaseholders Even Need Managing Agents?

That’s not a distant dream. The technology already exists. With AI assistants handling resident communication, lease interpretation, compliance workflows, and even staff training, the old argument for “scale” collapses. For the first time in decades, the profession itself may be the dispensable part of the leasehold equation.

The New Oligopoly

Private equity has already reshaped block management. Rendall & Rittner and HML have both been absorbed into investment-backed structures, creating mega-firms with tens of thousands of units. They can afford compliance departments, in-house lawyers, and fire engineers.  These are resources a smaller agent simply cannot replicate.

For anyone managing fewer than 10,000 units, the outlook is bleak. Regulation of agents is on the horizon. The Building Safety Act keeps shifting the goalposts, adding Safety Case Reports, Resident Engagement duties, and Accountable Person liabilities. These reforms are not bad in themselves.  In fact, they’re overdue. But they are structured in such a way that smaller agents cannot realistically comply.

The barrier to entry is locked. And leaseholders are the ones left with poorer outcomes.

Legacy Buildings, Modern Problems

UK estates are not gleaming BTR towers with embedded sensors. They’re legacy stock: 1970s slab blocks, 1990s riverside schemes, 2000s city infill developments.

The compliance demands placed on them — fire safety, ESG, resident engagement — are as high as on new builds. But expensive IoT retrofits aren’t realistic.

That’s why the solution must work on legacy buildings, today, without invasive technology.

Capture Everything: The Tempest Model

At Tempest AI, we’ve built a system that addresses the real problem: not lack of data, but lack of joined-up intelligence.

Prospero (tenant-facing): A WhatsApp assistant where residents log repairs, request permissions, manage parcels and keys, and receive fire safety updates. Every interaction captured, logged, and categorised.

Miranda (agent-facing): An AI colleague who reviews leases, drafts licences, triages compliance, and guides staff step by step through complex processes.

Dashboard (portfolio-facing): The control room where everything converges. Repairs, complaints, permissions, Building Safety Act duties, resident engagement — all visible, all auditable.

And critically, we know who is subletting, who has pets, and who is carrying out works in their flats. By capturing and regularising these lease requirements, agents generate profit through permissions and registrations, while schemes become better run, with legal agreements binding relationships and transparent knowledge of who is living in the buildings.

As Calvin Liu, CTO of Tempest AI, puts it: “This isn’t the IoT future. It’s the AI present. And it works on the buildings we actually manage.”

Solving the Talent Crisis

Even if you fix the systems problem, the people problem remains. COVID stripped three years of training and mentorship from the industry. Experienced staff left, juniors never got real exposure, and now we face a crippling knowledge gap.

Our answer: the AI bootcamp.

Tutorials and tests on core legislation (Housing Act 1985, Housing Act 1987, CLRA 2002), health & safety, and building safety.

Daily coaching from Miranda, the digital buddy that never tires and never forgets.

Transparent progression tracking, turning a junior into a “superhuman” Senior Property Manager within six months.

No expensive external courses. No years lost to “learning the ropes.” Just accelerated, structured professional growth.

As Liu notes: “AI isn’t just a compliance tool — it’s a teaching companion. We can watch new staff evolve from zero knowledge to senior capability in months, not years.”

Compliance First, Profit Follows

The model is simple: capture everything → make the portfolio compliant by design → unlock income growth.

That translates into:

Higher arrears recovery.

Optimised service charges.

Properly monetised permissions and registrations.

Better staff pay, lower attrition.

And most importantly, a pushback against the “grudge and grime” perception of block management. Compliance and profit reinforce each other.

A New Class of Management

Here’s the real provocation: do we even need traditional agents at all?

With AI systems like Tempest, RTMs and RMCs can bypass agents completely. They could employ directly, give their staff AI bootcamps and dashboards, and run estates lean, compliant, and efficient and without paying a managing agent margin.

That possibility should terrify traditional firms. But it should also galvanise them. Because the question is no longer whether technology will reshape block management, but who will control it.

The Fork in the Road

Block management stands at a fork in the road. Down one path lies consolidation into a handful of PE-backed giants, smaller firms falling away, and leaseholders worse off. Down the other lies reinvention: smarter systems, empowered staff, and a new model of management where AI makes excellence achievable at any scale.

The tools exist. The need is urgent. The only question is: which road will you take?

Tony Hymers FRICS, Co-Founder of Tempest AI