Last Updated on September 4, 2026
Every letting agent rents its shop window from the portals, at £1,636 a month per average branch by Rightmove’s own H1 2026 reporting. Reviews are the one visibility asset the portal neither owns nor shows: they follow your brand, not your listings. In lettings they are also strangely underbuilt, which makes them cheap territory.
Why review volume matters more in lettings
Since April 2025, fake reviews are banned outright in the UK, and 89% of UK adults use online reviews when researching a service, per Which? figures cited by the CMA, both summarised in our review statistics research. For landlords the reliance is sharper, because they cannot inspect the service in advance and often live miles from the asset. In our August 2026 AI study, Google reviews and profiles were cited in 81% of answers. Volume matters because steadiness is the trust signal: an agency managing hundreds of tenancies that gathers three reviews a year reads as either indifferent or hiding.
Lettings generates review moments constantly. Use the calm ones
Sales generates one review moment per client. Lettings generates them monthly, and the trick is to ask at the calm peaks, not the stressed troughs: landlord renewals, the annual statement, a void filled quickly, deposit returned in full, a repair closed fast. Two asks a week from those moments builds a hundred-review profile in a year, labelled by side: ask landlords to mention how long you have managed for them, tenants to mention repairs and deposit handling, because each side reads its own.
The dependency maths
The portal bill buys the tenant queue; reviews win the landlord decision that the queue is worthless without. One is £19,600 a year and rented, per the published ARPA, the other is free and owned. No agent should drop the portals, but every agent should notice which asset compounds: the branch that banks 100 labelled reviews has built a moat the portal cannot repossess, and the branch that spent the same year buying a bigger portal package has built its landlord’s dependency, not its own.
Common questions
How many reviews should a letting agent have?
There is no magic number, but steadiness beats bursts and volume signals scale: two asks a week at calm moments, renewals, statements, deposit returns, builds roughly a hundred labelled reviews a year, which few local rivals match.
Are reviews or portals more important for letting agents?
They do different jobs: portals deliver the tenant queue at a rented cost, £1,636 a month for the average branch by Rightmove’s own reporting, while reviews win the landlord decision and belong to you. The review asset compounds; the portal bill repeats.
Can letting agents incentivise reviews?
No. Fake and concealed incentivised reviews have been banned in the UK since April 2025 with fines up to 10% of global turnover. Ask honestly at natural moments and reply to everything, including criticism.
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