IT Support for Estate Agents
IT built around how agency actually works — negotiators out on viewings, branches that stay connected, and the client documents you hold kept somewhere sensible.
Half the desks are empty by half past nine
Estate agency is one of the few office jobs where a full office is a bad sign. Negotiators are out on viewings, valuers are stood in other people’s kitchens, someone has gone for keys and someone else is photographing a flat before the light goes. The branch matters, but the work happens in cars, doorways and hallways. That single fact changes what IT support has to be.
Most support is designed around a floor of desktops. Estate agency needs the opposite assumption: the person who needs help is stood outside a property with a client due in ten minutes, holding a phone with two bars of signal. So phones and tablets have to be treated as real business machines rather than personal extras — enrolled, encrypted, and manageable from a distance with the same care a desktop gets. Supporting those devices wherever they happen to be is what separates a five-minute fix from a wasted afternoon. The same goes for laptops that only ever come back to the office to charge: they need remote access that works from a car park, not a connection that only behaves on the branch network.
The enquiry you answer first is the one you keep
Applicants rarely enquire once. They send the same message to four agents and instruct whoever gets back to them properly. That makes your email and your phones a revenue system, not an overhead, and it is worth being blunt about what breaks them.
Email is the quiet one. Portal enquiries, confirmations and offer correspondence all arrive and leave by email, and if your domain is not set up so that receiving servers trust it, a share of what you send lands in junk without anyone telling you. Nobody complains — they just go quiet. Getting SPF, DKIM and DMARC right is unglamorous work that pays for itself the first time an offer email arrives in an inbox instead of a spam folder. Shared inboxes are the other half: if enquiries land somewhere that four people can see but nobody owns, the same lead gets answered twice or not at all.
Phones matter for the same reason. A branch line that rings out at half four because everyone is at a viewing is a lost instruction. Calls that follow staff to their mobiles, a sensible out-of-hours route, and a system that survives the branch broadband having a bad day are basic requirements here rather than nice extras.
The front of the branch is a public room
Very few businesses put their network in the same room as the general public and leave the door open. Estate agency does. There are screens in the window, a counter area, people waiting, and usually a Wi-Fi password written somewhere it should not be. The fix is not complicated, but it does have to be deliberate: a guest network kept properly separate from the one your machines and files sit on, so a visitor’s laptop cannot see anything of yours. Window displays and any screens driving them belong on their own segment too, for the same reason and because a display that has to be rebooted by unplugging it is a display nobody will fix.
To be clear about scope: we handle the network, the cabling, the Wi-Fi and the computers. We do not install CCTV, alarms or door-entry systems, and we will tell you that rather than sell you something we do not do.
The documents nobody wants to think about
Agents in the UK carry anti-money-laundering obligations, and in practice that means identity checks. Passports and proof of address get scanned at a branch desk, and from there they have a habit of spreading — emailed to a colleague, saved to a desktop, forwarded to a solicitor, and then sitting in three mailboxes for years because nobody decided otherwise.
This is the most sensitive personal data most agencies hold and the least considered. The questions worth answering are simple ones: where do these files live, who can open them, and when do they go? A single controlled location beats a mailbox every time. Access limited to the roles that need it beats “everyone in the branch”. A deletion routine your compliance lead sets beats keeping everything forever because deleting felt risky. We can build that and keep it running — we are not the people to tell you what your obligations are, and we will not pretend to be.
Payment fraud belongs in the same conversation. Property transactions move large sums on predictable dates, which is exactly what payment-redirection attackers look for. The habits that defeat it are human rather than technical: bank details confirmed by voice on a number you already had, never a number from the email itself, and staff who feel able to slow a transfer down without looking difficult. Training helps, and so does an email setup that makes spoofing your own domain harder in the first place.
Portal feeds, and what is actually underneath them
Agents run software that pushes listings out to the portals — Rightmove and Zoopla being the obvious ones, fed by whichever agency system you have settled on. We are not a reseller or specialist in any of those products, and you should be wary of anyone who claims deep expertise in all of them. What we can say honestly is that a feed depends on the connection, the accounts, the licences and the machine underneath it, and that is where these problems usually live. Fixing that layer, and chasing the vendor when the fault is genuinely theirs, is the useful thing an IT company can do here.
Several branches, one system
Groups of two or three offices tend to grow into a mess of separate setups: different broadband, different logins, files that only exist on one machine, and a member of staff who covers two branches with two of everything. Pulling that into one system — one account per person, one place for files, one way in — is usually the highest-value work we do for an agency, and it is the thing that makes everything above easier.
If that sounds like your setup, managed IT support covers the day-to-day across your branches and your out-of-office staff, with on-site visits across South London, Croydon and Surrey when something needs hands on it.
Frequently asked questions
What happens if a negotiator loses a phone with client details on it?
If the phone was enrolled and encrypted before it went missing, you can lock it, wipe the work data and cut its access to email and the CRM without touching the handset. That turns a serious incident into an inconvenience. If it was never enrolled, none of those options exist, which is why we set devices up properly at the point they are issued rather than after something goes wrong.
Where should we be keeping identity documents from AML checks?
Not in mailboxes, and not on the desktop of whichever branch machine did the scanning. Those files should sit in one controlled location, reachable only by the people whose job needs them, backed up, and cleared out on a routine your firm sets. We build and maintain that arrangement. We do not advise on your AML obligations — your compliance lead or professional body does that, and we work to whatever they tell you.
Our portal feed has stopped updating — can you help?
Often, yes, though it depends where the fault sits. Feeds break for ordinary reasons: the branch connection dropped, an account or licence lapsed, a password changed, or the machine running the export is off. We check all of that first because it is usually the answer. If the problem is inside the agency software or at the portal itself, we raise it with the vendor and stay on the ticket rather than handing it back to you.
Can staff who cover more than one branch use any desk?
They should be able to. One account per person, the same files and mailbox wherever they log in, and no shared branch logins that nobody can untangle later. Where a member of staff moves between offices regularly, we set things up so the move is invisible to them — the alternative is a second set of credentials that never gets removed when they change role.
Do you install CCTV, alarms or door entry in our branch?
No. We are an IT company, so we look after the network, cabling, Wi-Fi, computers, phones and the connection your window screens run on. Security systems, alarms and door entry are a different trade and we would rather say so than take the work. If your installer needs a network point or a segment of the network to sit on, we will happily sort that side out.
Trusted by London businesses.
“Honest and transparent — they could have charged me more, but instead showed me a simple fix. Trustworthy people.”
“One of the most ethical companies I’ve ever dealt with. A genuine pleasure to work with — highly recommended.”
“The service was flawless — no bad surprises, everything just worked. Highly recommended.”
“Thank you very much for your assistance. A pleasure as always.”
Feedback from clients of our team, including our sister company PC Macgicians, who deliver much of our engineering work. Names withheld at their request.
Areas we cover
IT Support for Estate Agents across South London, Croydon and Surrey — on-site where you need it, remote everywhere.
Need help with IT Support for Estate Agents?
Tell us what you need and we'll come back with a clear, no-obligation plan and price.