AI phone assistant for letting agents
Lettings enquiries are a budget, a move-in date and a referencing question. Tel-Agent takes all three before a viewing is offered.
- Move-in date
- Budget
- Pets and sharers
Why letting agents waste viewings on unqualified calls
A lettings viewing costs an agent an hour and a landlord an interruption, and most of the ones that fail were never going to work: a move-in date six weeks apart, a budget that does not reach, a pet the landlord will not take. All three are one question each, on the first call.
How the AI receptionist handles a lettings enquiry
It answers, including outside office hours when most applicants are free.
It asks which property and when they need to move in.
It takes the budget as a monthly figure.
It asks how many people and whether there are pets.
It proposes viewing times only for enquiries that actually match, and writes the rest to a list.
What the agent is told to ask
Written by you, in your own words, as the assistant’s instructions.
What a lettings phone assistant should and should not do
What it does
- Answers when applicants are actually free to call
- Takes the move-in date, the budget and the household
- Asks the pets question before a viewing is offered
- Proposes viewing times for enquiries that match
- Keeps applicant data on the agency's own machine
What it never does
- Decide whether somebody will pass referencing
- Say whether a landlord will accept a pet or a guarantor
- Negotiate rent or a deposit
- Take a holding deposit over the phone
- Send applicant data to a third-party server
Questions
Which question saves the most time?
Pets, closely followed by the move-in date. Both are single answers that make a viewing pointless, and both are routinely discovered at the property rather than on the phone.
Can it say whether somebody will pass referencing?
No. Affordability and referencing are a process with a provider, not a judgement to be made on a call. It records the budget and the household and leaves the assessment where it belongs.
Does it handle maintenance calls from tenants?
Those are a different sector - property management - with different fields and different urgency. Mixing them into a lettings enquiry list buries the ones that are actually leaking.
Can it take a holding deposit?
No. Card details are never taken by the assistant, and holding deposits are regulated in most markets.
Where does a landlord asking about a void period go?
It takes them and routes them separately. A landlord asking about a void period is not an applicant enquiry and should not sit in the same queue.
Does the EU AI Act allow an AI to answer a repair report?
Yes, under Article 50 of Regulation 2024/1689, which asks that the caller be told they are speaking to a machine - that line belongs in the greeting you configure. Nothing about this work falls under Annex III, the list of high-risk uses. The distinction the Act draws is between assisting and deciding, and this agent assists: it never screens, ranks or turns away an applicant. Austria's KI-Servicestelle at RTR publishes the same reading of the transparency duty.
Who is the data controller for what a caller to a lettings agency says on the phone?
You are. A repair report is ordinary personal data, though a tenancy enquiry carries more than the caller expects, and Tel-Agent is self-hosted with your own model keys, so the recording, the transcript and the record it writes stay on your server and never reach Dpro GmbH. There is no processor agreement to sign with us because we never receive the data, and the source is AGPL-3.0, so you can check that rather than take our word for it.
Can a lettings agency run this in the United States?
There is no single federal AI statute to comply with, but a phone line carries older rules. Fair housing rules make automated screening a real risk, which is why the agent does none of it. Consent to record is set state by state, and California and Illinois among others want every party to agree. Running the software yourself makes you the caller of record, so the disclosure and the recording switch are yours to set.
Not usable yet. The day it answers a real call will be a release, not a newsletter.
Watch the repository
