Summer Surge, Summer Strain: What Every BTR Operator Needs to Know

Caroline Offergelt -

TL;DR Executive Summary:

  • The UK BTR sector faces a seasonal leasing paradox every summer: huge surges in leasing demand collide with rigid cost structures.
  • Traditional options (in-house teams or high-street agencies) leave landlords overpaying and under-served.
  • Home Made offers BTR operators the best of both worlds: flexible capacity, infinite scalability, expert leasing, transparent pricing, and full data visibility — without the people problems or inflated costs.
  • As we enter peak leasing season, BTR landlords need a new, scalable model fit for modern leasing economics.

The Seasonal Leasing Volatility: Blessing or Burden?

Summer has always been considered the golden quarter for residential leasing, particularly in the Private Rented and Build-to-Rent sectors. With high tenant mobility between June and September, demand spikes dramatically.

But for BTR landlords and operators, this creates a paradox:
How do you scale leasing operations efficiently during peak season without locking in high costs for the rest of the year?

There are two legacy options but neither scales with the season

1️⃣ Build Your Own In-House Leasing Team

For many BTR owners, the natural instinct has been to build leasing teams internally. While this gives the illusion of control, the reality is far more complex, and expensive.

The challenges:

  • Permanent Overheads:
    You staff for 100% occupancy year-round, even though peak season may last 3-4 months. In winter, your leasing team becomes a fixed cost with diminishing output.  You have to staff to balance for a period of surge vs the low season.
  • Capacity Mismatch:
    Leasing demand doesn’t scale neatly. One minute you're over-resourced, the next you're scrambling to keep up with 30 new tenancies a week.
  • People Problems:
    Recruitment, training, annual leave, sickness, and turnover create unpredictable operational risks, right at the point your occupancy targets peak. It’s easy for the model to break when you need it the most.
  • Impact on Renter Journey
    The hours when team members are doing viewings is also when new inbound enquiries require timely responses.  Being pulled in multiple directions leads to lost leads, disgruntled prospects and poor brand reputation.
  • Non-Core Competency:
    BTR owners excel at acquisition, financing, development, asset management.  However leasing is a specialist sales function requiring deep local market expertise and customer-centric process management.
  • Inefficient Marketing:
    Internal teams often default to local site-level marketing or costly wide-net advertising with poor ROI.


Most of the year an in-house team is overstaffed, but during peak months is severely under-resourced.  You need to balance the cost to serve vs the surge.

2️⃣ Use Traditional High Street Agencies

The fallback for many landlords has been to outsource to local estate agencies. But traditional agents were designed for the homeowner (PRS) market, not for institutional BTR leasing.

The downsides:

  • Layered Commission Costs:
    You're not just paying for the agent’s time - you're funding their branch overheads, commission structures, and franchise fees.
  • Local Focus, Limited Reach:
    High street agencies typically operate hyper-locally, reducing visibility across your wider portfolio and limiting your lead pipeline.  
  • Lack of Control & Transparency:
    No real-time data. No clear view on enquiry-to-appointment conversion rates, average voids, or pricing optimisations.
  • Summer Agency Blackouts:
    Ironically, just as your leasing peaks, many agencies shift their priorities to the lucrative PRS market, leaving you under supported.
  • Misaligned Incentives:
    Many agents chase quick wins and rapid commissions. This can lead to poor applicant vetting, pricing misalignment, and avoidable void periods.  An agency might push through a marginal applicant just to secure their fee, leaving the operator exposed to early-stage arrears or higher turnover risk or not process all prospects due to a lack of time and intent, resulting in higher leakage.

The Cost of Doing Leasing Wrong

Let’s be clear, for a 300-unit BTR asset, inefficient leasing models can easily create £250k+ in unnecessary costs on an annual basis through:

  • Prolonged voids
  • Overpaying on commissions
  • Inefficient marketing spend
  • Hidden operational risk from people management

The summer paradox makes this even more acute. You pay through the nose to scale for peak season, but can’t sustain that structure year-round.

The Home Made Solution: The Best of Both Worlds

Home Made was built specifically for professional landlords, institutional funds, and BTR operators.

Why we fit the modern leasing model:

  • On-Demand Capacity:
    Our hybrid model offers centralised efficiency alongside local viewings; a set up which flexes with your seasonality.  We don’t have a fragmented, multi-branch setup with fixed staffing headaches for you to worry about.
  • Specialist BTR Expertise:
    We focus exclusively on the professional rental sector. Our team handles high-volume leasing pipelines, complex move-ins, and institutional reporting every day.
  • Data-Driven Leasing:
    Full reporting dashboards give you instant visibility on every metric: lead volumes, appointment conversions, pricing performance, and void forecasts.
  • Transparent Flat Pricing:
    No hidden commission stacking, no franchise fees, no head office deductions.  Just a simple, aligned pricing structure tailored per asset.
  • National Reach, Local Delivery:
    We have the capability to run viewings 7 days a week and outside of traditional hours across the whole of the UK,  including during peak summer periods when other providers disappear.
  • Aligned Incentives:
    We only succeed when your voids fall and your revenues grow.

BTR Leasing in 2025 Requires a New Model

As we enter another intense leasing season, BTR operators cannot afford to operate with outdated models that break under pressure.

The rental market has evolved and the BTR sector very much requires a specialist approach. Your leasing strategy should too.

With Home Made, you finally have a partner built for modern BTR economics.

To understand how we can support your portfolio, reach out today and email us on btr@home-made.com