Savills’ Five-Year Rental Forecast: What It Means for Letting Agents, Repairs and Tech-Led Property Management

Savills’ latest five-year rental forecast points to a quieter, more predictable private rented sector than the one letting agents have been navigating since the pandemic. After years of double‑digit rent hikes and intense competition for stock, the research suggests that UK rents will grow by around 12% over the next five years and begin to track income and inflation more closely.

On the surface, that looks like welcome relief for tenants. For letting agents and landlords, it signals a different challenge: in a world of slower rent growth and persistent cost pressure, efficiency, service quality and property condition become the primary levers of performance. Repairs, compliance and technology are moving from the back office to the centre of strategy.

This article unpacks Savills’ forecast through the lens of UK letting agencies and explores how a smarter, AI‑ and video‑enabled repairs model – like the one offered by Help me Fix – can turn a maturing rental market into an opportunity.

1. From Turbulence to Normalisation

Savills’ research highlights just how unusual the last few years have been:

• Rental growth at UK level peaked at around 12% in the year to August 2022, far above typical links to wage growth.
• By 2025 the average renter was spending 32.4% of gross income on rent, up from 30.4% five years earlier – the sharpest deterioration in affordability since at least 2006.
• This was driven not just by constrained supply, but by unprecedented demand: post‑lockdown mobility, high net migration adding 600,000 households over five years, and limited owner‑occupation options.

Savills expects that surge to ease. Easing migration, more first‑time buyers able to access mortgages and some recovery in landlord instructions should bring the market closer to the conditions of the 2010s; rents growing between CPI inflation and income growth, rather than far ahead of them.

For letting agents, that means the era of “rents will rise anyway” is ending. Agencies wanting to retain and grow landlord books will need to demonstrate value in more fundamental ways – controlling costs, protecting assets and delivering a visibly better experience to tenants.

2. Structural Pressures on Supply Are Not Going Away

Even as demand normalises, Savills underlines that supply remains fragile:

• Landlord instructions have been falling since 2017, as tax changes (notably Section 24), higher interest rates and regulatory uncertainty pushed some investors out.
• Build‑to‑Rent has scaled, but still averages just 15,000 completions per year; small in the context of around 4.9 million PRS households.
• The Renters Rights Act and further regulation are seen as key upside or downside risks: if they undermine profitability for leveraged landlords, more stock could exit just as conditions stabilise.

In a world where gross rent growth is more modest but capital and operating costs are still elevated, how agents manage repairs and property condition becomes central to keeping landlords in the market.

3. Affordability, Void Risk and the Cost of Downtime

As rents gradually realign with incomes, headline affordability metrics should improve. Savills already notes that the average rent‑to‑income ratio fell from 33.4% at the end of 2023 to 32.4% in Q3 2025.

But that does not automatically relieve pressure on households. Many renters will still be at, or close to, the limit of what they can sustainably pay, especially in higher‑cost cities.

For agents, this has three implications:

1. Void risk becomes more expensive. When rents are high relative to incomes, even short voids represent significant lost revenue for landlords.
2. Condition drives retention. Tenants with options are more likely to stay in well‑maintained homes with quick, transparent repairs – smoothing income for landlords and fees for agents.
3. Unmanaged disrepair becomes a business risk. Poor property condition feeds arrears, disputes, complaints and enforcement in an era of stronger tenant rights.

In a stabilising market, it is no longer tenable to treat repairs purely as a reactive, manual process; it becomes a key lever in protecting yields and agency margins.

4. Why Repairs Strategy Sits at the Heart of a Maturing PRS

Savills emphasises that the main risk to its relatively benign rental outlook is a supply shock, driven by landlord exits if regulation and costs make letting unattractive. Letting agents have limited influence over taxation or macro‑rates, but they do have real control over two crucial elements:

• Total cost of ownership for landlords: how much routine and emergency maintenance actually costs over a tenancy.
• Regulatory and reputational risk: how well properties meet emerging Decent Homes‑style standards and how defensible the agent’s processes are if challenged.

Traditional repairs models – phone calls, email chains, “send a contractor to see what’s wrong” – tend to perform poorly on both. They are inherently expensive (because almost every report generates at least one call‑out) and weakly evidenced (because information is scattered across inboxes and notes).

This is where a triage‑first, technology‑enabled model becomes strategically important.

5. Triage First, Dispatch Second: AI and Video in Practice

Smart repairs platforms such as Help me Fix are built around three layers that directly address the new market reality.

5.1 AI diagnostics – consistent, instant first response

An AI repairs assistant like Aidenn sits at the front of the journey, accessed via a simple link tenants can use on any device. It:

• Collects structured information: where the issue is, symptoms, appliance make/model.
• Analyses photos or short videos to recognise common patterns: boiler pressure drops, programmer errors, single‑circuit trips, basic leaks.
• Provides safe, step‑by‑step self‑help for low‑complexity faults.
• Flags signs of serious hazards (smell of gas, visible arcing, major water ingress) for immediate escalation.

Across portfolios using this approach, around 30% of all issues are resolved without any site visit, taking immediate pressure off both costs and contractor capacity.

5.2 Engineer video triage – seeing the problem before the van moves

Where AI cannot safely resolve or categorise the issue, tenants can be escalated to a live video consultation with a remote engineer via Help me Fix Video:

• Tenants receive a secure link by SMS or email; no app download required.
• The engineer can see the boiler, CU or leak directly, removing guesswork.
• On‑screen annotations show exactly which dial, valve or button to use.

For letting agents, this has two major effects:

• Up to 75% of issues reported as emergencies can be safely downgraded once an expert has seen the situation.
• When a visit is still required, first‑time fix rates rise sharply, because the attending contractor already knows what to expect and what to bring.

5.3 Smart workflows – automated, auditable processes

Once triaged, automated workflows can:

• Generate a PDF job report with photos, diagnostics and recommendations.
• Push work orders into the agency’s CRM or property management system.
• Tag high‑risk cases or vulnerable tenants for closer oversight.

Every step – from initial report to resolution – is time‑stamped and documented, providing exactly the evidence regulators, redress schemes and increasingly sophisticated landlords will expect.

6. Traditional vs Smart Repairs: A Comparative Snapshot

In a world where Savills expects rent growth to slow and regulatory expectations to rise, that shift – from the left‑hand column to the right – is one of the clearest ways for agents to protect landlord returns without relying on ever‑higher rents.

7. Using Repairs Data as a Differentiator

A triage‑first system also generates rich data that maps directly onto Savills’ themes of affordability, risk and supply.

• Portfolio condition insight: which homes and building types repeatedly generate high‑value repairs; where capital upgrades (e.g. boiler replacement, ventilation) will do most to stabilise costs and protect Decent Homes‑style compliance.
• Contractor performance metrics: first‑time fix rates, cost per job by category, response and completion times.
• ESG and sustainability reporting: van miles saved, emissions reduced, speed of response to heating and damp issues.

This data allows letting agents to move conversations with landlords beyond fee percentages to total cost of ownership, compliance and resilience – exactly the factors that will determine whether landlords stay invested as rental growth normalises.

As Ettan Bazil, Founder & CEO of Help me Fix, puts it:
“Savills is right that the next five years will be calmer; but calmer markets reward professionalism, not complacency. Agents that can prove they manage costs, risks and tenant experience better – with data to back it up – will be the ones landlords gravitate to.”

8. Practical Steps for Letting Agents Now

In light of Savills’ forecast and the direction of regulation, letting agents should:

1. Audit their current repairs journey: channels used, call‑out ratios, average costs, and how easy it is to evidence decisions months later.
2. Introduce structured digital reporting: mobile‑friendly forms with photo/video upload that feed into AI triage rather than ad‑hoc emails.
3. Pilot video triage on high‑volume categories such as heating, hot water and electrics, measuring call‑out reduction and satisfaction.
4. Integrate repairs workflows with CRMs and property management software for a single source of truth.
5. Use emerging data to advise landlords on targeted upgrades that will keep properties compliant and attractive in a more competitive, but calmer, rental market.

In a sector moving from volatility to normalisation, the agencies that thrive will not be those chasing the last of the double‑digit rent rises, but those that run smarter, leaner, more transparent operations. Savills’ forecast simply makes that reality harder to ignore.