If you’re really good at what you do, there’s a strange problem: you can make it look so easy that people start wondering what they’re paying you for.

That dilemma sits at the heart of this episode of Viking Chats, as Kristjan sits down with Mouna Patel, Enterprise Account Executive at Goodlord, for a wide-ranging conversation about letting agents, technology, compliance, expertise and the challenge of demonstrating value in an increasingly complex industry.

Mouna's route into proptech isn't the usual one. Before joining Goodlord, she spent more than six years on the agency side with Connells Group, starting as a trainee negotiator and eventually progressing into senior roles managing flagship London branches. She therefore understands first-hand both the realities of working inside a busy lettings operation and the challenge technology businesses face when trying to build solutions that actually work within one.

They begin by looking at just how much attitudes towards technology have changed. When Mouna joined Goodlord around five years ago, many agencies were still heavily reliant on manual processes, fragmented systems and, in some cases, physical paperwork. Today, conversations about integrations, automation, AI and connected tech stacks have become increasingly mainstream.

But simply having more technology doesn't necessarily mean having a better business.

Kristjan and Mouna discuss the importance of creating a connected ecosystem rather than accumulating software, and why agents need to be particularly careful that they don't end up running their tech rather than running their business. As CRMs become more open and specialist solutions become easier to integrate, the opportunity for agencies is enormous, but only if the technology genuinely removes work rather than simply moving it somewhere else.

That leads into one of the biggest themes of the conversation: how do letting agents demonstrate the value of everything their clients never see?

Kristjan shares a recent experience at Base involving a longstanding landlord who decided to take the management of two properties back in-house. From the landlord's perspective, the visible service appeared relatively simple: the tenant had remained in place for years, there hadn't been a recent rent increase and arranging a gas safety certificate didn't seem particularly complicated.

The reality was rather different.

As An began explaining the responsibilities that would now sit with the landlord, what initially appeared to be a fairly simple handover quickly expanded into deposits, prescribed information, tenancy documentation, compliance records and a growing regulatory landscape. It highlighted a problem familiar to many good managing agents: when you've spent years quietly taking care of everything, your client can understandably lose sight of just how much “everything” actually involves.

Kristjan also recalls another landlord who decided to let properties himself because, from the outside, the process didn't appear especially difficult. He successfully found a tenant and got the tenancy underway, only for a subsequent conversation with Base to reveal a series of compliance requirements and checks he hadn't realised he needed to complete. Halfway through working through the list, his reaction was telling: “Is this what you do on every let?”

It raises an uncomfortable question for the industry. If your clients don't understand what you do, is that their fault, or have agents become too good at keeping the complexity hidden?

Mouna brings in a similar example from outside agency. Her brother is an experienced electrician who can sometimes diagnose and resolve a problem extremely quickly, only to have a customer question the cost because the job didn't take very long. Yet they aren't really paying for those few minutes. They're paying for the years of knowledge that allowed him to identify the problem and know exactly what needed doing.

Kristjan likens it to the famous story of the engineer who repairs a broken engine by knowing precisely where to hit it with a hammer. The value isn't in swinging the hammer. The value is knowing where to hit.

That distinction between time spent and expertise applied becomes increasingly important as lettings grows more complicated.

The conversation then turns to the people inside agencies who often possess the greatest depth of operational and compliance knowledge, but receive the least public visibility for it. Negotiators, valuers and business owners naturally tend to occupy the front of house, while some of the industry's most knowledgeable people are quietly working behind the scenes in property management, administration, compliance and operations.

These are frequently the people making sure the i's are dotted, the t's are crossed and nothing important gets forgotten. As Mouna and Kristjan discuss, they're also often the people carrying that responsibility home with them, occasionally waking in the middle of the night wondering whether an important document was sent or a deadline was met.

So perhaps agencies need to get better at giving those people a voice.

Mouna asks what would happen if businesses did more to empower their operational teams with the tools and confidence to communicate their expertise. They don't necessarily need to become salespeople, nor does everyone need to turn themselves into a polished social-media personality. Sometimes it could simply mean helping somebody explain to a landlord why something matters, giving them a useful talk track for a common question, or allowing their knowledge to become part of the agency's wider content.

Kristjan expands on that idea by looking at how AI has dramatically lowered the barriers to content creation. A knowledgeable property manager no longer needs to lose half a day trying to turn an interesting case into a 1,000-word article. They can use their own experience as the raw material, answer a handful of questions and use AI to help structure that expertise into useful content.

The important word there is help.

For Kristjan, the opportunity isn't to fill the internet with generic AI-generated articles. It is to use technology to make it easier for genuine human expertise to be shared. A real conversation, a difficult case, a compliance issue somebody has just solved or a question landlords repeatedly ask can become a blog, video, podcast or series of short social clips without demanding an enormous amount of additional time from the person who actually knows the subject.

In fact, this very episode becomes part of that discussion. Viking Chats itself is designed around authentic conversations which can subsequently become multiple pieces of useful content without losing the personalities and experience that made the original conversation interesting.

Mouna and Kristjan also discuss Goodlord's growth, the evolution of proptech over the last decade and the changing expectations of agents. Mouna reflects on moving from a large corporate agency into technology, the wider perspective she has gained from seeing how very different businesses operate, and why consulting with agencies about their challenges is one of the parts of her role she enjoys most.

They also touch on the increasingly important relationship between Goodlord and The Depositary. Goodlord helps agencies manage the beginning of the tenancy journey, while The Depositary focuses on making the conclusion easier, faster and better. With an integration between the two platforms now live, Goodlord clients using The Depositary can remove much of the duplicate data entry traditionally required when beginning the end-of-tenancy process, with further opportunities to connect the two journeys being explored. 

Away from work, there's also time to discover what Mouna did before she ever entered estate agency, celebrate a rather significant recent personal milestone, discuss dogs, poker nights and look ahead to another busy property-industry conference season.

At its heart, though, this episode is about value.

The value of experience. The value of knowledgeable people. The value of technology that genuinely removes work. The value of compliance that quietly happens in the background. And the importance of making sure that, while we make all of those things easier for our customers, we don't make them so invisible that nobody understands what they're worth.

Because sometimes making something look easy is the clearest sign that somebody really knows what they're doing.

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