Advertise on podcast: The Viking Chats: navigating the choppy waters of property, technology and business

What do a failed acting career, a pair of high heels and a startup office above a sushi shop have to do with the future of estate agency? Quite a lot, as it turns out. In this episode of The Viking Chats, Kristjan Byfield sits down with Alice Bullard, CEO of Nested, for a wonderfully candid conversation about ambition, rejection, leadership and why some of the most exciting changes in estate agency are coming from people willing to challenge the way things have always been done. Alice originally dreamed of becoming an actress. After studying drama and enduring the brutal reality of auditions, including narrowly missing out on a role in EastEnders, she found herself working as a Saturday viewing assistant. That unexpected career change eventually took her through Countrywide and John D Wood before she joined a very different kind of estate agency business in 2017. Nested didn't look or feel like the corporate agencies she'd known. There were trainers instead of heels, plywood meeting rooms instead of polished corporate interiors, and a leadership team that seemed genuinely interested in what she wanted to achieve. Alice even accepted a step backwards financially because she believed the opportunity was worth it. Fast-forward to today and she's running the business, having been promoted to CEO while pregnant. Nested has also just been named Best National Sales Agency at the Best Agent Guide Awards at EA Masters, making this a particularly timely conversation. Kristjan and Alice explore the rise of self-employed estate agency, why hyperlocal expertise and individual personality matter more than ever, and how traditional corporate structures can unintentionally hold talented people back. They also discuss the challenges of balancing leadership with parenthood, the double standards ambitious women can face, and why building a successful career sometimes means having the confidence to walk away from an organisation that isn't helping you grow. There's plenty of discussion about technology and AI too, particularly the difference between using new tools to make people more effective and using them lazily to produce generic, personality-free rubbish. It's a conversation about taking ownership of your career, creating businesses that treat people like individuals and remembering that, however much technology changes the industry, estate agency is still fundamentally about people. In this episode: Why Alice swapped acting auditions for estate agencyTaking a pay cut to join Nested and trusting her instinctsGoing from a junior role to CEO, including a promotion during pregnancyBreaking corporate conventions and challenging the glass ceilingWhy the self-employed agency model is gaining tractionThe commercial value of genuinely hyperlocal personal brandsBalancing ambitious careers, leadership and family lifeUsing AI to strengthen your business without losing your personalityWhether you're an estate agent thinking about your next career move, a business owner questioning the traditional model or simply someone who enjoys hearing how ambitious people find their own way, there's plenty to take from this one. Guest: Alice Bullard, CEO of Nested Host: Kristjan Byfield, Co-founder of Base Property Specialists and The Depositary Find out more about Nested: https://nested.com/ Send us Fan Mail

The Future of Property: Fewer Players, Bigger Portfolios & Better DataWith Nitin Aggarwal, Founder of Property Deal Insights Are we heading towards a UK property market with fewer landlords, fewer agents and much bigger portfolios? And if that's where we're going, what happens to the independent businesses and individual investors who've helped shape the industry for decades? In this episode of The Viking Chats, Kristjan Byfield is joined by Nitin Aggarwal, founder of Property Deal Insights (PDI), for a wide-ranging conversation about the changing shape of the UK property market, the growing importance of reliable data and why some of the industry's biggest challenges have surprisingly little to do with a lack of information. Nitin's journey into PropTech began with his own property investments. Having spent years delivering major technology programmes in banking and financial services, he found himself wondering why assessing a property investment in the UK was so unnecessarily complicated. What started as a collection of tools for himself and fellow investors has evolved into a business bringing together data across more than 34 million UK properties, helping agents, technology providers and institutional investors make more informed decisions. But this conversation goes well beyond property data. Kristjan and Nitin explore the increasing influence of institutional landlords, the pressures facing smaller property businesses, the unintended consequences of housing policy and the danger of allowing uncertainty to paralyse an entire industry. They also challenge the way some letting agents have communicated rental reforms to landlords, asking whether the people trusted to provide reassurance and guidance have sometimes contributed to the very panic they're complaining about. There's plenty of practical discussion too, including the potential for upfront property information to reduce failed sales, the complexities of London's leasehold market and how changing tenancy patterns are forcing letting agents to rethink everything from marketing timescales to revenue forecasting. And, of course, there's the question of AI. As more businesses build increasingly sophisticated products, Nitin explains why PDI is focused on becoming the underlying data infrastructure that makes those products possible. In this episode, we explore: Why the UK property market may be moving towards fewer operators managing larger portfolios.How fragmented property data creates unnecessary complexity for buyers, sellers, agents and lenders.Whether upfront property information could help reduce failed transactions.Why London's leasehold market presents particular challenges.The unintended consequences of housing policy and constant political uncertainty.Whether letting agents have sometimes made landlords more fearful of reform than necessary.How changing tenancy patterns could reshape agency workloads, cash flow and marketing strategies.Why good AI depends on the quality and accessibility of the data behind it.Nitin's ambition to make PDI the equivalent of Stripe for the property industry.It's a candid conversation about the future of property, with plenty of disagreement, a few uncomfortable questions and a shared belief that better decisions start with better information. Whether you're an estate agent, letting agent, landlord, investor or PropTech founder, this episode is well worth your time. Send us Fan Mail

What does the future of the property industry look like through the eyes of someone who's only just getting started? Welcome to Voices of Tomorrow, a new series within The Viking Chats where I sit down with young people aged 25 and under who are building careers in property. The idea is simple: rather than having another conversation about what the next generation thinks, why not actually ask them? For our very first episode, I'm joined by Flyn Crowley, a 22-year-old Business Development Manager at The Guild of Property Professionals, whose journey into the industry has been anything but conventional. Born in Galway and raised in Brighton, Flyn never particularly imagined himself working in property. After spending 18 months working for his cousin's removals business, he decided he wanted something different. Inspired partly by estate agents he'd been following on Instagram, he headed to London with a handful of printed CVs and started knocking on agency doors across Kensington, Chelsea and Knightsbridge. Only one business got back to him: The Guild. Three years later, he's progressed from making cold calls to sitting opposite experienced agency owners and directors, helping them understand how Guild membership could support their businesses. Not bad for someone who was barely out of his teens when he arrived in London. But this isn't simply a conversation about Flyn's career. What I particularly enjoyed was how willing he was to question some of the things our industry has accepted as normal for decades. Why are UK estate agency fees so low compared with other markets? Flyn has spent enough time talking to independent agents to recognise how much work goes into delivering a good service, yet we're still an industry where discounting fees is almost second nature. We explore why agents can become obsessed with winning instructions rather than completing sales, why being the busiest agency in town doesn't necessarily make you the most successful, and why knowing the value of your service sometimes means being comfortable walking away from a potential client. There's also a fascinating discussion about how AI could reshape the industry over the next five to ten years. Flyn sees enormous opportunities to improve productivity, particularly around administration, communication and sales activity, but he's equally convinced that technology won't replace the human relationships at the heart of good agency. I couldn't agree more, although I suspect the changes ahead will force us to think much harder about where people genuinely add value. And then we get to something that really matters to this new series: what's it actually like being young in the property industry? Flyn admits that he doesn't always volunteer his age when meeting experienced agency directors. At 22, he knows some people might question his credibility before he's even had the opportunity to demonstrate what he can do. His mentor, Ian McKenzie, gave him a piece of advice that has stuck with him: “If you're good enough, you're old enough.” It's a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with, but it also raises some uncomfortable questions about how our industry recruits, develops and rewards younger talent. With so many young people struggling to find meaningful employment, are we doing enough to welcome the next generation? Are we offering genuine career opportunities, or simply expecting people to work their way through poorly paid entry-level roles and prove themselves before we take them seriously? And if property really is a people business, shouldn't we be investing considerably more in the people who will be running it ten or twenty years from now? As usual, the conversation wanders into a few unexpected places, including the psychology of negotiation, estate agency profitability, the problems with UK property transactions, charging what you're worth and why a good attitude can be considerably more valuable than years of experience. Flyn was also making his podcast debut, and I think he did a fantastic job. In this episode, we explore: How Flyn found his way into property at 19, and why social media played a surprising part.The realities of moving to London and building a career from scratch.Why UK estate agents struggle to command higher fees.The difference between winning instructions and running a profitable agency.How AI could transform the everyday work of estate agents.Why confidence, communication and negotiation remain essential skills.The challenges of being taken seriously as a young professional.What experienced industry leaders can learn from the next generation.About Voices of Tomorrow This is the first in a new series of Viking Chats conversations with people aged 25 and under who are working in, or trying to break into, the property industry. I want to hear what excites them, what frustrates them, what they think we could do better and how they see the future unfolding. No corporate scripts, no predetermined answers, just honest conversations with the people who will help shape our industry's next chapter. If you're 25 or under and would like to join me for a future episode, get in touch. We record in person at our offices in Shoreditch, London, and I'd love to hear from you. Guest: Flyn Crowley | The Guild of Property Professionals Host: Kristjan Byfield | Co-founder, The Depositary and Base Property Specialists Podcast: The Viking Chats | Voices of Tomorrow #1 Send us Fan Mail

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. Send us Fan Mail

Rachel Hanniquet-Brooking has had one of those careers that makes considerably more sense when you look backwards than it probably did while she was living it. She grew up internationally, spending parts of her childhood in Singapore, America and Australia thanks to her father's career as a ship's captain. She left school without much interest in university and started working at McDonald's in Australia, an experience she still talks about with enormous affection because of what it taught her about systems, service, management and taking pride in doing a job properly. From there came five-star hotels in tropical Queensland, looking after guests including AC/DC, Claudia Schiffer and Bill Clinton, followed by travel and tourism, where Rachel helped develop experiences for holidaymakers and found herself doing things like sourcing helicopter whale-watching trips and swimming with sharks. It sounds a long way from residential property, but listening to Rachel talk about her career, the connection becomes increasingly obvious. Whether somebody is staying in a hotel, going on holiday, renting a home or living in a large Build to Rent development, the physical product is only part of what they remember. The experience around it matters just as much. Rachel eventually found her way into property through Regent Street Direct, working within the management operation for the Crown Estate's Regent Street portfolio. What started with commercial property expanded into residential, destination marketing, facilities management and an education in placemaking on one of the most recognisable streets in the country. She subsequently moved into high street agency with Hamptons before joining Red Door Ventures, working with Newham Council's development programme, and later Grainger during a major period of Build to Rent delivery. More recently, Rachel became Managing Director of APO Group and is now doing advisory work while considering what the next chapter of an already varied career might look like. In this episode of The Viking Chats, Kristjan and Rachel explore what all of those different experiences have taught her about housing, service and the way our industry operates. Inevitably, that leads them towards one of the biggest questions facing the rental sector today: how do you regulate an incredibly complicated housing market without creating consequences you never intended? Neither Rachel nor Kristjan is arguing against regulation. In fact, Rachel is explicitly supportive of legislation, registers and greater professionalisation of the rental sector. Good regulation protects residents, raises standards and helps remove operators who should never have been providing housing in the first place. The frustration comes when the practical consequences of regulation appear not to have been properly understood by the people designing it. Property licensing provides plenty of examples. The original rationale is easy to support: identify rented homes, establish minimum standards and give local authorities greater ability to tackle poor conditions and rogue landlords. The difficulty comes when professional operators and compliant landlords are paying substantial licensing fees while there remains a question over how effectively authorities are identifying the properties whose owners simply ignore the scheme altogether. For Build to Rent, the issue becomes even more complicated. Rachel talks about large professionally managed developments already operating within extensive regulatory frameworks, yet potentially facing enormous licensing bills across hundreds of individual apartments. Different local authorities can also have different processes, definitions and requirements, creating significant administrative work for businesses operating across multiple areas. The discussion becomes particularly interesting when Rachel and Kristjan get into HMO licensing. A property that most people would consider an ordinary self-contained flat can, under some local licensing schemes, fall within an HMO definition simply because of the number and relationship of the people living there. Kristjan shares a recent example of a landlord whose perfectly legitimate tenancy required an HMO licence from the local authority. Once that licence was granted, the lender became aware of it and warned the landlord that HMOs were prohibited under the mortgage product. The landlord had permission to let the property. The tenancy was legitimate. The agent had followed the council's licensing requirements. Yet complying with one set of rules potentially created a problem under another. It is a wonderfully mundane example of a much bigger problem. Housing does not operate as a series of isolated policy decisions. Change something in one part of the system and landlords, tenants, lenders, agents, investors and local authorities all respond to it, sometimes in ways policymakers may not have anticipated. The same principle runs through the conversation about the Renters' Rights reforms. There is plenty within the direction of travel that both Rachel and Kristjan support. Tenants should have safe homes. Bad landlords should be held accountable. People deserve proper protections and professional standards from those managing their homes. But good intentions do not remove the need to understand behaviour. Kristjan talks about landlords who had allowed long-standing tenants to remain substantially below market rent deciding to reset those rents as the regulatory environment changed. The concern was entirely predictable: if possession becomes harder and future rent increases more constrained, some landlords will reduce their exposure to that risk before the new rules take effect. The same question applies to rent tribunals. If tenants can challenge an increase with little downside while the landlord potentially waits months for an overloaded system to reach a decision, behaviour will change. If a tribunal can no longer award a higher market rent where a landlord had originally proposed something below market value, one of the incentives for that landlord to be deliberately generous may also disappear. None of this means the underlying protections are wrong. It means the detail matters. The conversation around rental bidding follows a similar pattern. Preventing tenants from being encouraged into bidding wars sounds straightforwardly positive, but if the advertised figure effectively becomes an upper limit, agents and landlords have an incentive to advertise higher and negotiate down rather than price lower and allow the market to establish the eventual figure. The result could be less transparency rather than more, particularly in a market where reliable achieved-rent data remains difficult to access. Rachel makes the point that Build to Rent has an advantage here. If you operate hundreds of apartments within the same development, you have an enormous amount of comparable evidence. You understand what different layouts, floors, aspects and views achieve because you can see those transactions happening within your own building. A private landlord with one apartment in a block doesn't have anything like that visibility. That brings the conversation back repeatedly to data and practical experience. Rachel has worked across traditional agency, institutional ownership, development, Build to Rent and customer operations. She has seen what happens at street level and what happens when decisions are being made across portfolios containing thousands of homes. Her argument is not that policymakers should simply do whatever the property industry asks. Industry participants have commercial interests and those need to be recognised too. Tenant groups also play an important role in highlighting poor practice and representing residents who might otherwise struggle to be h Send us Fan Mail

Lucy Noonan started working in estate agency a week after her 16th birthday. Since then she’s been a negotiator, worked in lettings and franchising, managed the integration of acquired businesses, become an acquisitions director and, eventually, walked away from a secure corporate career to launch Atomic Consultancy. That last bit nearly didn’t happen. After leaving Lomond, Lucy had what she thought was a sensible plan. Friends in the industry were already calling her for advice about businesses they were considering buying, so she could see an opportunity to build a consultancy around acquisitions, valuations and project management. She did what any sensible former corporate employee would do, put together a proper business plan, thought carefully about the numbers and then took it to someone she trusted for an opinion. Christian Balshen’s assessment was fairly succinct: “I think it’s shit.” Thankfully, he wasn’t telling Lucy that she couldn’t build a business. Quite the opposite. He thought she had massively undersold herself and was allowing fear to dictate the size of her ambition. Rather than sitting behind other people’s acquisitions, he believed she should become a broker herself and use the experience she had accumulated to represent sellers properly. His advice, as Lucy remembers it, essentially boiled down to: stop being a fanny, back yourself and get on with it. Five years later, that decision looks pretty important. In this episode of The Viking Chats, Lucy joins Kristjan for a wonderfully wide-ranging conversation about the journey from teenage estate agent to founder of Atomic Consultancy, but this isn’t simply a conversation about M&A. It’s also about what happens when you build a business around something you genuinely love, what success starts to feel like once other people think you’ve achieved it, and why learning to let go can sometimes be considerably harder than starting the bloody thing in the first place. Lucy’s route into agency began at Hunters, back when it was still a relatively small operation centred around York. She worked weekends while studying, spent a summer helping with the company’s move into Manchester and eventually dropped out of university during her final semester after earning a place on Countrywide’s management development programme. It was proper old-school estate agency. Applicant cards, targets, bells being rung when deals came together and an enormous amount of telephone work. Lucy loved it. There are also stories involving sleeping underneath a desk after working rather too many hours, accidentally offering Gary Neville her own autograph and some fairly questionable early-career decision making, so this is not an entirely reverential trip down memory lane. After moving through independent agency, lettings and franchising, Lucy eventually found her way into acquisitions at LSL. That was where she started learning what happens behind the scenes when one agency buys another. It wasn’t simply about agreeing a price. Someone had to work out what happened to the staff, customers, data, suppliers, premises, telecoms, fleet and even the keys sitting in the branch on completion day. More importantly, she started seeing the transaction from the seller’s perspective. A business can be reduced to numbers surprisingly quickly. Revenue, recurring income, EBITDA, multiples, synergies and return on investment all matter, of course, but for the person selling it those numbers may represent 20 or 30 years of their life. Their employees are involved, their reputation is involved and, in many cases, a significant part of Send us Fan Mail

The property industry has never had more technology to choose from. CRMs, maintenance platforms, deposit solutions, referencing, inventories, AI tools, automation and an ever-growing collection of integrations all promise to make agents more efficient. So why do two agencies buy exactly the same piece of software and get completely different results from it? In this episode of The Viking Chats, Kristjan is joined by Taylor Coleman of Tapi, the property maintenance platform that started life in New Zealand, expanded into Australia and is now making its mark in the UK. Taylor's route into PropTech wasn't exactly conventional. Born in the US, a former university American football player and finance graduate, he headed to Wellington after university to join a startup accelerator. There he met his future business partner, whose experience of waiting six months for a huge hole in his kitchen ceiling to be repaired helped inspire the original idea behind Tapi. The pair initially thought they could sell maintenance technology directly to private landlords. That went about as well as anyone familiar with the sector might expect. So they started knocking on the doors of letting agencies instead. What they discovered was an operational problem that will be painfully familiar to property managers everywhere. Maintenance involved too much administration, too many different people, too much chasing and far too much friction between residents, landlords, contractors and agents. Ten years later, Tapi works with around 90% of estate agents in New Zealand, has established itself in Australia and is now rolling out across the UK and Ireland.  But this conversation quickly moves beyond maintenance. Taylor and Kristjan get into one of the biggest challenges facing agents as the PropTech market matures: buying software doesn't transform a business. Using it properly might. Because signing up to a new platform is the easy bit. The harder part is integrating it with the rest of your technology, configuring it around the business, training the team properly, changing established processes and, crucially, getting people to stop doing things the old way. Kristjan shares The Depositary's experience of seeing dramatically different outcomes between clients using exactly the same platform. Some agencies properly implement the technology, integrate it with their existing suppliers, train their people and make the new workflow part of how the business operates. Within weeks, their teams are reporting huge reductions in workload. Others buy the same product but barely change anything. Integrations remain switched off, teams aren't properly trained, new starters don't know how the platform works and employees continue running old manual processes alongside the technology that's supposed to replace them. Six months later, management understandably wonders why the promised efficiency hasn't materialised.  Taylor sees exactly the same thing with maintenance. Good technology shouldn't simply digitise an existing process. It should remove unnecessary work from it. That can be surprisingly uncomfortable for people who have spent years personally managing every stage of a workflow. If a property manager is accustomed to monitoring a repair from initial report through landlord approval, contractor instruction, appointment, completion, invoice and payment, being told they no longer need to manually oversee 80% of that journey can initially feel like a loss of control. The irony is that this is exactly what the technology was purchased to achieve. Taylor and Kristjan discuss why successful PropTech adoption therefore requires more than a software demo and a login. Businesses need to think about how roles, processes and even KPIs should change once technology starts removing administrative work. They also explore another area where PropTech frequently gets things wrong: user experience. An agent might be prepared to attend a training session for a new business platform. Their landlords, residents and contractors certainly aren't. Nobody wants another portal to remember, another password to reset or another app they have to download simply to approve a repair or report a dripping tap. Taylor explains why Tapi has deliberately designed its maintenance journey around the behaviour of each user. Contractors can continue emailing invoices from systems such as Xero while Tapi matches the information in the background. Landlords can approve works directly from communications rather than being forced into another portal. Residents can report maintenance through an agency's website or a QR code in the property without downloading another app.  It's a philosophy Kristjan shares from building The Depositary: if technology crosses from the agency into the consumer experience, it has to be designed around the consumer rather than simply around what works for the agent. The pair also discuss the changing UK PropTech landscape and why integrations are finally becoming easier. Legacy systems and closed APIs historically made it difficult and expensive for emerging platforms to connect with agency CRMs. That is changing rapidly, with increasingly open ecosystems allowing specialist products to exchange data and enabling agents to build genuinely connected technology stacks rather than collections of isolated dashboards. For Taylor, that shift has helped Tapi arrive in the UK at an interesting moment. Having already proved its model in New Zealand and Australia, the business has been able to build integrations across several UK CRM platforms as it grows its presence here.  There is also plenty of discussion about AI, although refreshingly little of the usual suggestion that artificial intelligence is about to make everybody in property redundant. Taylor's view is considerably more practical. Estate agency remains a human business. Technology should remove the repetitive administration that prevents good people from being consultative, knowledgeable and useful to their customers. That means the measure of good PropTech shouldn't be how impressive the technology sounds. It should be whether residents find it easy to use, whether landlords engage with it, whether contractors actually adopt it and whether frontline employees genuinely get time back. Because a platform can have every feature imaginable, but if the people involved in the process don't use it properly, very little changes. From a six-metre hole in a Wellington kitchen ceiling to building a platform used across New Zealand and Australia, Taylor has learned a fair bit about what makes property technology stick. This is a wide-ranging, occasionally sweary and very practical conversation about maintenance, integrations, AI, UX, implementation and why agents need to take more responsibility for extracting value from the technology they buy. Buying PropTech is the easy bit. Changing the way your business works is where the real transformation happens. Send us Fan Mail

We collect points when we fly, shop for groceries, stay in hotels and even buy a coffee. Yet for millions of renters, their single biggest monthly expense traditionally gives them absolutely nothing back. Why? In this episode of The Viking Chats, Kristjan sits down with Josh Pavis, founder of BrickRewards, to talk about the surprisingly simple idea behind a new approach to rewarding renters. Josh's route into PropTech isn't exactly conventional. A talented hockey player who represented England and Great Britain, his sporting ambitions were abruptly interrupted by an injury just before his first senior GB game in Australia. What felt disastrous at the time ultimately pushed him towards entrepreneurship, starting his first business with his brother before going on to build and work with a number of different ventures. It was during a trip to America that Josh came across the concept of rent rewards and began wondering what a version built specifically for the UK could look like. The result is BrickRewards: a platform designed to give renters something back for paying the rent they were going to pay anyway, with rewards ranging from everyday savings on coffee, restaurants and groceries to the chance to have a month's rent paid. Kristjan and Josh talk about adapting an American idea for a very different UK market, why rewards need to be useful rather than purely aspirational, the inevitable "what's the catch?" question, and how the business actually makes money without charging renters to participate. They also explore why agents and landlords should care. At a time when household finances remain under pressure, could something as simple as helping residents get more from their biggest monthly expense become another small but meaningful part of delivering a better rental experience? Sometimes the best ideas are the ones that make you wonder why nobody was doing it already. Send us Fan Mail

What happens when the processes, systems and structures that helped build a successful agency are no longer the ones it needs to keep growing? In this episode of The Viking Chats, Kristjan is joined by Sam Olliver, who has spent almost 25 years in agency, including nearly two decades with Michael Jones. Having experienced the business grow from a relatively small independent into a substantial regional operation, and subsequently become part of Lomond, Sam has seen first-hand how dramatically the needs of a business change as it evolves. Now, through his own consultancy, Olliverr, he's using that experience to help agencies take a fresh look at how their businesses actually operate. Kristjan and Sam get into why buying good technology doesn't guarantee good results, why some businesses abandon perfectly capable software without ever really implementing it properly, and the often-overlooked gap between the decisions made at leadership level and what actually happens on the ground. They also explore centralisation, accountability, handovers, KPIs, staff engagement and the danger of managing a business purely through spreadsheets. There's a particularly interesting discussion around why involving your team in change matters without allowing "we've always done it this way" to become a veto on progress. More broadly, this is a conversation about business evolution. The people, processes and technology that get an agency through its first stage of growth won't necessarily be right for the next one, and sometimes it takes an outside perspective to spot where the friction really sits. A great listen for agency owners, directors, operations leaders and anyone wondering whether their business is genuinely set up for where it wants to go next. Send us Fan Mail

How confident are you that your lettings business is fully compliant? If your answer is "pretty confident", this episode might make you think again. In this episode of The Viking Chats, Kristjan is joined by Paul Conway, founder of Yuno, for a fascinating discussion about one of the biggest challenges facing the private rented sector: the ever-growing complexity of compliance. Paul's journey into property is anything but conventional. From working in the oil industry to property development, co-living and ultimately building one of the UK's most sophisticated compliance platforms, his career has been driven by solving operational problems that most people simply accept as part of the job. And nowhere is that more apparent than in today's lettings landscape. What starts as a conversation about property licensing quickly develops into a much broader discussion about the future of property management. Licensing schemes, planning regulations, fire safety, Awaab's Law, the Decent Homes Standard, Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards and the Renters' Rights Bill all point in the same direction. Compliance is no longer something agents can simply keep up with manually. Kristjan and Paul explore how regulation has evolved from a handful of legal requirements into a constantly moving target, with councils introducing new licensing schemes, changing boundaries, updating requirements and increasing enforcement powers. The reality is that what you don't know can now carry significant financial and legal consequences. The discussion also tackles one of the industry's biggest challenges: demonstrating value. As regulation becomes more technical, letting agents are doing more work than ever before, much of it invisible to landlords. Kristjan argues that one of the profession's biggest mistakes has been making complex work look easy, while Paul explains why better technology doesn't replace expertise—it gives agents the tools to apply it consistently and at scale. Together they discuss why smaller agencies may soon find it impossible to manage compliance manually, how technology can reduce risk without replacing people, and why educating landlords has become just as important as understanding the legislation itself. This isn't an episode designed to create fear. It's a conversation about preparation. Because the pace of regulatory change isn't slowing down, and the agencies that thrive over the next decade won't necessarily be the biggest. They'll be the ones who understand the risks, embrace the right technology and stay ahead of what's coming next. If you work in lettings, property management or the wider private rented sector, this episode is essential listening. Because sometimes, what you don't know really can cost you. Send us Fan Mail

How much has the property industry really changed over the last 50 years? In this episode of *The Viking Chats*, Kristjan sits down with one of the industry's most recognisable figures, Ed Mead. From his early days learning the ropes in London's estate agency scene during the 1970s, through helping build Douglas & Gordon into one of the capital's best-known brands, to founding Viewber and becoming one of property's most respected commentators, Ed has experienced almost every major shift the industry has gone through. As the episode title suggests, one thing has remained constant throughout his career.The industry never stands still. This is a conversation about what changes, what doesn't, and why the businesses that thrive are usually the ones prepared to evolve. Ed reflects on what made Douglas & Gordon different during its growth years, the importance of having great mentors early in your career, and why maintaining a healthy balance between work and life was one of the secrets to enjoying such a long career in agency. The discussion then moves into the creation of Viewber. Originally conceived as a way of solving a simple problem—how to cover more viewings outside normal office hours—it quickly evolved into something much bigger. Today, Viewber supports auction houses, estate agents, institutional landlords, social housing providers and property professionals across the UK through a nationwide network of thousands of local property representatives. Along the way, Kristjan and Ed explore why some technology businesses flourish while others disappear, why so much PropTech has historically been built by people who never truly understood agency, and how AI is changing not just the products we build but the speed at which businesses can innovate. There is also plenty of discussion around one of the industry's biggest talking points: regulation. From the Renters' Rights Bill and increasing compliance obligations to taxation, housing policy and the ever-changing political landscape, Kristjan and Ed debate whether governments genuinely understand the unintended consequences of housing legislation. They discuss the growing professionalism of the lettings sector, the changing profile of landlords, and why good intentions don't always produce good outcomes. The conversation also tackles qualification, training and professional standards within agency. Having once supported mandatory qualifications, Ed explains why his thinking has changed over the years, arguing that while poor operators undoubtedly exist, the overwhelming majority of agents are honest, hardworking professionals who care deeply about their clients. It's a refreshingly balanced discussion that avoids easy headlines in favour of thoughtful debate. Perhaps most importantly, this episode is about perspective. Ed has seen markets boom and crash. He's watched business models come and go. He's worked in traditional agency, built a successful technology company and advised the industry through decades of change. That experience gives him a unique vantage point on where the property sector has been—and where it may be heading next. Whether you're an estate agent, letting agent, PropTech founder, supplier or simply someone fascinated by how industries evolve, this episode offers a rare opportunity to hear from someone who has spent half a century adapting to change without ever losing sight of the fundamentals. Because in property, just when you think you've seen everything...The industry never stands still. Send us Fan Mail

Why do so many businesses keep doing things in ways that no longer make sense? In this episode of The Viking Chats, Kristjan is joined by SJ Taylor of Greenhouse OS for a wide-ranging conversation about estate agency, lettings, technology, AI and one of the most dangerous phrases in business: “Because we’ve always done it that way.” SJ’s route into property was, by her own admission, fairly typical. She fell into estate agency, started as a junior negotiator with Countrywide and went on to spend more than two decades working across sales, lettings, operations and technology. Along the way, she helped steady and rebuild a struggling lettings operation, worked through acquisitions, rebrands and rapid business growth, and developed a deep understanding of what happens when good people are let down by bad systems, poor training or processes nobody has stopped to question. That experience now shapes her work with Greenhouse OS, a Salesforce-based CRM platform designed to give estate and letting agents more freedom to adapt, automate and innovate. But this is not really an episode about software. It is a conversation about how businesses think. Kristjan and SJ explore why so many teams become trapped in inefficient processes, why technology is often implemented badly, and why innovation rarely succeeds when a business simply buys a new platform and expects transformation to happen on its own. They discuss the burden placed on property managers, the need for better training and professionalisation across the lettings sector, and the damaging attitudes that can develop when teams are overwhelmed, underprepared and left to spend their days handling complaints rather than building relationships. They also challenge one of agency’s favourite sayings: “people buy from people.” Of course they do. But they buy from people they know, like and trust. If those people are too busy with repetitive administration to answer properly, listen carefully or add real value, then the human element is already being lost. SJ explains how AI can take on the high-volume, repetitive work that people either dislike or struggle to do consistently. Used well, it does not remove the need for people. It gives them more time to do the work only people can do well: building trust, understanding motivation, negotiating, advising and helping customers make decisions. The conversation covers automated viewing bookings, prospecting, feedback, data, CRM migration, customer experience and why sixty-two percent of enquiries now arrive while agents are closed. It also gets into the uncomfortable reality of technology adoption. Why do some businesses implement a new system and see transformational results within weeks, while others introduce the same technology and conclude that it does not work? Often, the difference is not the software. It is the thinking, consultation, training and implementation behind it. As SJ puts it, people are like water: they will always find the path of least resistance. If old processes remain available, teams will often return to them, especially when change has been forced upon them without explanation, support or a clear understanding of the problem being solved. Kristjan argues that technology should be treated like the head of a new department. You would not hire someone to lead a major function, put them quietly in a corner and expect them to transform the business without introduction, authority, training or structural change. Yet that is effectively how many companies adopt software. From Yorkshire sayings and sausage-making equipment to AI agents and customer data, this is a candid, funny and practical conversation about business change. It is for anyone who has ever looked at a process and wondered whether it still serves a purpose, anyone trying to get more value from technology, and anyone prepared to ask the question that work-experience students and six-year-olds are often brave enough to ask: Why? Because the way something has always been done may explain how you got here. It does not mean it is the right way forward. Send us Fan Mail

There comes a point in many careers where success stops being measured by job titles, turnover or the size of the team you manage. Instead, you begin asking much bigger questions. Am I enjoying this? Is this still what I want? What am I actually working towards? And perhaps the biggest question of all... If not now... when? In this episode of The Viking Chats, I'm joined by Nicola and Paul Broomham, founders of 2.0 Group, for a remarkably honest conversation about reinvention, entrepreneurship and having the courage to build a business- and a life- on your own terms. Between them, Nicola and Paul have decades of experience in residential property. Nicola built and successfully sold one of the industry's best-known recruitment businesses before stepping away to recharge and rethink what came next. Paul has held senior leadership positions at some of the UK's most respected estate agency groups, leading acquisitions, business growth and large operational teams before deciding it was time for a different challenge. On paper, this is the story of launching a new business together. In reality, it's about so much more. We explore what it's really like to leave behind successful careers, why selling a business isn't always the end of the story, and how a holiday in Vietnam became the catalyst for asking whether they were living the life they genuinely wanted—or simply following the path they'd always been on. One of the themes that runs throughout the conversation is that success evolves. What motivates you in your twenties often isn't what motivates you in your forties. Priorities shift. Family changes your perspective. Health can change everything. Sometimes the bravest decision isn't chasing the next promotion or growing a bigger business—it's stepping back long enough to work out what actually matters. Nicola speaks openly about the pressures of running a business, selling it and eventually returning to entrepreneurship with a completely different outlook. Paul reflects on moving from entrepreneurial estate agency into the world of private equity, the lessons that came with it and why autonomy ultimately became more important than hierarchy. We also talk about burnout, stress and the importance of giving yourself permission to pause. Nicola shares her experience of developing a rare autoimmune condition and why taking time away from work proved to be one of the most valuable investments she could have made- not just for her health, but for her future. As with many Viking Chats, the conversation naturally wanders into leadership, culture and the future of our industry. We discuss why so many business owners mistake being busy for being productive, how technology and AI are changing what modern businesses can look like, and why founders should spend more time doing the things only they can do. The discussion also touches on something Nicola has long been passionate about- supporting women in property. We explore how the industry has evolved over the last decade, why shared parental leave could be one of the biggest catalysts for genuine equality in the workplace, and why creating better businesses often starts with creating better opportunities for people. What struck me most about this conversation wasn't the business story. It was the honesty. There's something refreshing about hearing successful people admit they don't have every answer. That they still question themselves. That they still worry about making the right decisions. And that sometimes the biggest leap isn't into the unknown—it's giving yourself permission to start again. Whether you're running a business, considering a career change or simply wondering what your own version of success looks like, I think you'll find something in this conversation that resonates. Because eventually, all of us face the same question. If not now... when? Send us Fan Mail

Sometimes the best business ideas aren't born from complex technology or revolutionary inventions. Sometimes they're born from a simple question. Why? Why do we accept things the way they are? Why do we continue doing something simply because "that's how it's always been done"? And what happens when somebody decides to challenge those assumptions? In this milestone 50th episode of The Viking Chats, I'm joined by Anna and Paul Moynihan, founders of TaskHer, a business that started with a frustrating home renovation, a global pandemic and one very simple observation. Why was it so difficult to find a female tradesperson? At first glance, TaskHer appears to be a platform connecting customers with qualified tradeswomen. But spend an hour with Anna and Paul and you quickly realise that's only a small part of the story. This is really a conversation about customer choice, trust and designing services around people rather than processes. Anna shares the experience that sparked the idea for the business—organising work at home, communicating with contractors throughout, only for them to arrive and direct every conversation to Paul as though she wasn't there. It was a seemingly small moment, but one that highlighted a much broader assumption embedded within the industry. That assumption became the foundation of a business now helping thousands of customers find trusted tradeswomen while creating new opportunities for women entering traditionally male-dominated professions. What I particularly enjoyed about this conversation is that Anna and Paul never position TaskHer as being "anti-men". Quite the opposite. Their philosophy is refreshingly simple: people should have a choice. And sometimes, that choice can have a profound impact. One of the most moving parts of our discussion centres around TaskHer's work with Refuge, the UK's largest provider of specialist services supporting women and children experiencing domestic abuse. Anna and Paul explain how providing female tradespeople for refuge properties has transformed the experience for both residents and staff, reducing anxiety, improving safeguarding and, in some cases, even inspiring women to consider careers in the trades themselves. It's one of those moments that reminds you business can be commercially successful whilst still making a genuine difference to people's lives. Along the way we also explore the realities of building a startup from scratch during the pandemic, the challenges of creating a trusted marketplace in an industry where trust is often in short supply, raising investment, joining the prestigious REACH UK accelerator and resisting the temptation to chase growth before getting the fundamentals right. We also discuss why customer service remains one of the biggest untapped opportunities in both the trades and property sectors, how hospitality often teaches skills estate agency desperately needs, and why understanding people's lived experiences should shape the way we design products and services. One of the recurring themes throughout the conversation is that innovation rarely starts with technology. It starts with empathy. By taking the time to understand how customers actually feel—not just what they need—Anna and Paul have built something that solves a practical problem while quietly challenging decades of outdated assumptions. As someone who has spent much of my own career questioning why our industry works the way it does, I found this conversation particularly refreshing. It reinforced something I've long believed: some of the biggest opportunities aren't found by inventing something entirely new. They're found by noticing what everybody else has simply stopped questioning. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a property professional, a leader or simply someone interested in how purpose and profit can work hand in hand, there's plenty to take away from this episode. Because the best ideas rarely begin with all the answers. They begin with the courage to ask a better question. Send us Fan Mail

What if the biggest problem facing estate agency isn't regulation, technology or even the market itself? What if it's people? Not because we don't have enough of them, but because we're still asking the wrong questions when we recruit them, develop them and lead them. In this episode of The Viking Chats, I'm joined by two of the industry's most respected trainers and leadership specialists, Clare Yates and Jo Bourne, for a conversation that quickly challenges some of the biggest assumptions surrounding recruitment, training and professional development in property. We begin by exploring a topic that every agency owner wrestles with: should you recruit experienced agents, or look outside the industry altogether? It's a debate that struck a particular chord with me because it's something we've consciously done at Base Property Specialists from day one. Rather than simply hiring people who've always worked in estate agency, we've often looked to industries like hospitality, where customer experience, communication and genuinely caring about people are fundamental parts of the job. As Jo puts it during the conversation, technical skills can be taught. What can't be taught is whether somebody genuinely cares. That single observation becomes the thread running through the entire episode. We discuss why attitude almost always beats experience, why so many agencies still underestimate the value of emotional intelligence and customer service, and how some of the very best estate agents don't necessarily arrive with years of industry knowledge—they arrive with curiosity, empathy and a willingness to learn. The conversation then broadens into something even more important: leadership. For all the industry's talk about compliance, legislation and systems, we arguably spend far too little time developing the people responsible for leading our businesses and teams. Clare and Jo explain why leadership isn't simply about managing performance or understanding process. It's about creating environments where people feel safe enough to ask questions, admit mistakes and continue learning without fear of judgement. That philosophy sits at the heart of the Women in Estate Agency Leadership Programme, which they have developed together. Although designed specifically to support women stepping into leadership roles, many of the principles we discuss are universal. Confidence, psychological safety, self-belief and effective communication aren't gendered concepts. They're the foundations of every successful team. Along the way we explore why so many talented people underestimate their own ability, why others often overestimate theirs, and how creating opportunities for personal development can transform not only individual careers but entire business cultures. We also discuss the industry's long-standing reluctance to invest in training. Too often, learning is viewed purely through the lens of legislation or compliance, something that has to be done rather than something that should be embraced. Yet some of the most valuable development has very little to do with technical knowledge and everything to do with communication, confidence, listening and understanding people. Because estate agency has never really been about property. It's always been about people. Buying, selling, renting or letting a home is one of the most emotional experiences many of us will ever go through, and the professionals who guide people through those moments have an opportunity to make an extraordinary difference. But only if they understand that service is about far more than completing a transaction. One of my favourite moments in the episode comes when we compare estate agency to hospitality. Nobody expects to walk into a five-star hotel and receive the same experience as a budget chain, even though both ultimately provide you with a bed for the night. The difference isn't the product. It's how you're made to feel. Perhaps estate agency should start thinking about itself in exactly the same way. This is a conversation about confidence, culture, customer experience and creating better businesses by first creating better people. And if our industry genuinely wants to raise standards, maybe the answer isn't simply more regulation. Maybe it's investing more in the people delivering the service in the first place. Send us Fan Mail