Written by
Emma Collins
Published on
Jan 29, 2026
It's 11pm on a Friday. Your phone buzzes. A tenant's boiler has stopped working.
Your heart sinks. Not because the problem is complicated — it's probably just low pressure — but because now you have a choice. Respond and lose your evening. Ignore it and feel guilty. Either way, your weekend is already off to a bad start.
This is the reality for thousands of property managers and letting agents. Tenants expect availability around the clock. Licensing requirements often demand it. But you can't work 24/7 without burning out.
There has to be a better way. And there is.
The out-of-hours dilemma
Property management has an inherent tension: tenants live in their homes all the time, but letting agencies operate during business hours.
Problems don't respect office hours. Leaks happen on Saturday mornings. Heating fails on Sunday nights. Lockouts occur at 2am.
Tenants — understandably — want to know someone is dealing with it. They're not being unreasonable; they just want their home to be safe and functional.
Meanwhile, Awaab's Law is introducing fixed timescales for responding to hazards. HMO licensing often requires 24-hour emergency contact details. The regulatory direction is clear: faster response, better documentation, round-the-clock availability.
But you're a person, not a call centre. You have a life outside work. Your team does too.
What actually counts as an out-of-hours emergency?
Part of the problem is that tenants don't always know what constitutes a genuine emergency. To them, any problem with their home feels urgent.
True emergencies requiring immediate action:
Gas leak or smell of gas
Major water leak or flooding
Complete loss of electricity
Security breach (break-in, broken lock, smashed window)
Total heating failure in freezing conditions
Sewage backup
Fire or fire damage
Not emergencies (can wait until the next working day):
Boiler making an unusual noise but still working
Dripping tap
Appliance not working (washing machine, oven)
Minor leak that can be contained with a bucket
Heating issues in mild weather
Non-urgent repairs of any kind
The challenge is that a tenant reporting "no hot water" at 10pm doesn't know whether it's a serious fault or just low boiler pressure they could fix themselves in two minutes.
Without guidance, they assume the worst and expect an immediate response. With guidance, many issues resolve without any intervention from you.
Current approaches and their problems
Option 1: Your personal mobile, always on
The most common approach for smaller agencies and individual landlords. Your number is the emergency contact. The phone is always nearby. You're always on call.
The problems:
You never truly switch off
Every notification triggers anxiety — is this the emergency?
Work bleeds into every evening, weekend, and holiday
Partners and family resent the constant interruptions
Burnout is inevitable, not possible — inevitable
This approach might feel manageable for a while. But it's not sustainable. And it gets worse as your portfolio grows.
Option 2: Rotate on-call between the team
Sharing the burden across team members seems fairer. Everyone takes turns being the emergency contact.
The problems:
Staff resent it, affecting morale and retention
Inconsistent responses depending on who's on call
Still disruptive to whoever's turn it is
Handovers are messy — what happened overnight?
Training everyone to handle emergencies properly is hard
Better than one person carrying everything, but still fundamentally disruptive to people's lives.
Option 3: Outsourced call centre
Third-party services offer 24/7 call handling for letting agents. Someone always answers the phone.
The problems:
Expensive, especially for smaller agencies
Variable quality — operators don't know your properties or tenants
Often just message-taking, not actual triage or resolution
Tenant still frustrated; issue still waits until morning
You're paying for a human to do something that could be automated
Call centres solve the "someone answers" problem but often don't solve the underlying issue.
Option 4: Just don't offer out-of-hours service
Some agencies explicitly state they don't handle out-of-hours emergencies. Report it Monday.
The problems:
May violate licensing requirements (especially HMOs)
Compliance risk under Awaab's Law
Tenant frustration and complaints
Small issues escalate into big issues over the weekend
Reputation damage — tenants tell other tenants
In 2026, this approach is increasingly untenable. The regulatory and tenant expectation direction is towards more responsiveness, not less.
What tenants actually need out-of-hours
When a tenant contacts you at 10pm, they need:
Acknowledgment — confirmation that their message was received and someone will deal with it
Guidance — is this something they should act on now, or can it wait?
Instructions — if it's something they can handle, tell them how
Escalation — if it's a true emergency, get the right help
Reassurance — to feel that they're not being ignored
Most of this doesn't require a human. It requires the right information delivered at the right time.
A better approach: intelligent triage
Imagine this instead:
A tenant messages at 10pm: "No hot water."
Within seconds, they receive a response asking a few questions. Is the heating working? What does the boiler display show? Is there an error code?
The tenant replies: the heating is also off, and the boiler display shows the pressure is at 0.3 bar.
The response guides them through repressurising the boiler — a simple process that takes two minutes. The tenant follows the steps. The pressure rises to 1.2 bar. The boiler fires up. Hot water and heating return.
Issue resolved. No contractor. No phone call. No disruption to your evening.
Now imagine a different scenario:
A tenant messages: "I can smell gas."
Immediate response: "If you smell gas, this is a potential emergency. Do not use any electrical switches. Open windows. Leave the property. Call the National Gas Emergency line on 0800 111 999 immediately. Once you're safe, let us know and we'll arrange follow-up."
The tenant is directed to the right action instantly, with your on-call contact or emergency contractor notified in parallel.
This is intelligent triage. AI handles the initial conversation, gathers information, assesses urgency, provides guidance where appropriate, and escalates genuine emergencies — all without your involvement unless truly necessary.
The 80/20 of out-of-hours issues
The reality is that most out-of-hours "emergencies" aren't emergencies at all.
Based on patterns across letting agencies:
A significant majority can be resolved with guidance (boiler pressure, tripped electrics, pilot lights)
Many can safely wait until morning with appropriate reassurance
A small minority — perhaps 10-20% — are genuine emergencies requiring immediate action
If you can handle the 80% automatically, you only get contacted for the 20% that genuinely need you. That's a completely different workload — and a completely different impact on your life.
Setting up sustainable out-of-hours coverage
Define what constitutes an emergency
Document your criteria clearly. What triggers immediate escalation? What can wait? This isn't just for tenants — it's for whatever system or person is triaging.
Link to your emergency vs routine framework so the criteria are consistent.
Communicate clearly at move-in
Tenants should know from day one:
How to report issues (including out-of-hours)
What counts as an emergency
What to expect in terms of response
What they should do themselves in common scenarios
Clear upfront communication reduces inappropriate escalations.
Automate first response and triage
Use AI to handle the initial conversation: acknowledge the report, gather information, assess urgency, provide guidance where appropriate. This happens instantly, 24/7, without human involvement.
Your team — or your on-call contact — only gets alerted for issues that meet the emergency threshold.
Review and improve
Look at patterns. Are the same issues coming up repeatedly? Could better tenant guidance prevent them? Are your emergency criteria working, or are genuine emergencies being missed?
Continuous improvement makes the system better over time.
Protecting your wellbeing
Property management is demanding. But it shouldn't mean you can never switch off.
The expectation of 24/7 personal availability isn't sustainable for anyone. It leads to burnout, resentment, and eventually people leaving the industry entirely.
Technology exists to provide tenants with round-the-clock responsiveness without requiring humans to be available round the clock. Tenants get faster, better responses. You get your evenings and weekends back.
That's not a compromise. That's better for everyone.
Lanten handles tenant messages 24/7 — gathering information, providing troubleshooting guidance, and escalating genuine emergencies to your on-call contact or contractors. Your tenants get instant response; you get to sleep. Book a demo to see how it works.
