UK letting agents under pressure from AI-assisted tenant complaints

Letting agents said they were facing a flood of “complex and intricate” complaints written by tenants using AI, often relying on inaccurate information and requiring lengthy responses to resolve.

Agents reported a surge in well-written complaints, seemingly assisted by AI, often spanning several pages of text and invoking details of the law, sometimes speciously.

Propertymark, the industry body for letting agents, said the need to assess, respond to and resolve complaints was putting pressure on agents and landlords who required the capacity and legal knowledge to deal with them properly.

Many complaints might previously have been received and resolved by a short telephone call. But Greg Tsuman, managing director of lettings at Martyn Gerrard and a former president of Arla Propertymark, said 90 per cent of complaints to the letting agent were now in the form of emails several pages long, many with multiple components and quoted passages of statute, a change that had taken place in the past two to three years.

He said AI’s predisposition to “tell you what you want to hear” could falsely lead people to believe they have grounds for complaint where none exist. “We have seen a spike in complex and intricate complaints. We are now having to spend time and effort addressing multi-part points and complaints that are sometimes without grounds.”

Ben Stokes, a lettings director at agents JNP, said AI-generated complaints sometimes included elements of previous proposed versions of the Renters’ Rights Act in England that had not found their way into the final legislation.

“The biggest thing we are finding is that AI tools are empowering people to complain about things and blow small situations out of proportion.”

Tsuman called for changes to the rules on submissions to the Property Ombudsman so that complainants lodging claims there should indicate whether the complaint had been assisted using AI.

“The aim would be to prevent potential spurious complaints . . . where tenants might potentially end up including details which are not correct or are taken out of context,” he said.

Notwithstanding the use of AI by tenants to support their complaints, agents were already using it themselves on administrative tasks, cutting their labour costs, Propertymark said. Tsuman added that Martyn Gerrard was using AI to summarise the longer complaints it received from tenants to speed up their response times.

Shelter, the housing charity, said renters had fought for years for the protections in the Renters’ Rights Act. “For the Act to work properly, it’s vital that tenants understand how to exercise these new rights,” said Sarah Elliott, chief executive of Shelter.

The charity said its advice teams had seen several instances of generative AI platforms making “false, incomplete or misleading statements about the new changes” under the Act.

“Without a full understanding of what these new changes mean for them, there is a risk that renters might cite incorrect information when making complaints about poor conditions or when negotiating with their landlords.”

Shelter recommended that tenants seeking advice refer to fact-checked online sources such as Shelter or Gov.uk.