How we’re helping reduce rent loss with our voids prioritisation software
Vacant council properties, known as voids, pose a significant challenge for local authorities but a prioritisation system could be the answer.
05/12/2023
Working closely with local councils across the UK, we’ve seen many challenges with empty council properties, also known as voids.
While these properties remain vacant, people in need of housing remain stuck in temporary accommodation, local authorities receive no rental income and the backlog of voids continues to grow.
To help solve these challenges, we’ve expanded our SaaS (software as a service) products, creating a new Voids Prioritisation System to help local authorities to:
- speed up reletting times
- reduce rent loss
- clear their growing backlog of Voids
- get residents into social housing as quickly as possible
How are voids usually managed?
Traditional voids management processes involve a lot of manual work. From inspections to tracking and managing properties, council teams are swimming in Excel spreadsheets, Outlook calendars and housing management systems.
A minimum of 3 different teams review and coordinate on each property. In some cases, where contractors are involved, more systems and programs are added into the mix, making the process of tracking and validating data even more complex.
How are voids currently prioritised?
As you might expect, properties require varying levels of repair and redecoration before they can be re-let and occupied by new tenants. When it comes to prioritisation, voids are often assessed and maintenance issues addressed in chronological order, but this could be more efficient.
Many housing management systems used by local authorities fail to consider the ease of repair, resulting in properties that could be swiftly re-let being stuck in the backlog until they reach the top of the list.
For example, a council that has to prioritise voids that will take the longest to address (due to the level of repairs needed) has a knock-on effect on the backlog of voids and extends the wait times for residents waiting to be housed.
Introducing our Voids Management Software
The combination of legacy technology is slowing down these processes and taking up valuable time that could be put to better use. But with newer, modern technology we can make the best of smart algorithms to support the public sector.
To help local authorities we knew we had to design something that could integrate simply and easily with the traditional processes they’re using. With our Voids Management software, councils can use their existing spreadsheet data to review properties in the order they came in or by those that will take the longest to re-let.
Local authorities can also see when a new property is void or when repairs on a property are completed. Through our prioritisation system, voids can on average be re-let 20-30% faster.
With the average rent in the UK being £109 (£161 in Greater London) per week, local governments can potentially earn £459.36 (£687.47 in Greater London) more per void property than before (based on reducing the average relet time down to 30 days from the current void relet time of 59.5-days).
How to get started with Voids Prioritisation
By aligning with the existing process of capturing and managing voids data through spreadsheets, teams can easily import spreadsheets into our system where we securely store them in S3 on AWS. Our Voids Prioritisation software will then analyse the data and identify the void properties with the quickest turnaround times.
To see our Voids Management Software in action, take a look at our demo video:
