What an empty unit really costs, and the website's share of it

Landlords measure most costs to the penny and voids by feel. So here is the number: across England, the average void period now runs about 24 days and costs about £1,135 in lost rent per void, up 12.9% on the year before, according to Simply Business's analysis of April 2026 letting data. Call it £47 a day, before the mortgage, insurance and council tax that carry on regardless.

Some of that time is structural. Referencing takes days. Check-out, works and check-in take days. No website shortens a gas safety inspection.

But a slice of every void is discovery time: the gap between "unit is available" and "the right applicant knows it exists and can act on it". That slice is where your website either earns its keep or adds days.

Where websites add days to voids

The unit is not on the site. Updating the website means emailing someone and waiting, so it happens weekly, or monthly, or when someone remembers. An applicant searching on the day your unit becomes available finds silence.

The unit is on the site but cannot be found. No search, no filters, no size or rent on the page. Commercial applicants in particular filter hard: use class, square footage, rent band. A page that hides those numbers behind "POA, call for details" filters itself out.

The applicant found it and cannot act. It is 9pm. There is no enquiry form, or the form posts to an inbox nobody watches. The applicant does what everyone does now: goes back to the portal, finds a similar unit from a firm that answers, and books a viewing there.

Nobody trusts what they see. If the availability list is a PDF dated last quarter, an applicant assumes everything on it is gone and rings nothing.

What shortening the slice looks like

The mechanics are not exotic. Availability that updates the moment a unit's status changes, in one place, by you. A live availability page you can send to any applicant or agent as a link rather than an attachment. Listing pages that state size, use class, rent and EPC plainly. An enquiry route that works out of hours, confirms receipt, and lands somewhere someone actually looks.

None of that fills a unit by itself. What it does is stop the website adding its own days to every void, on every unit, every year. Against £47 a day, a site that removes even a few days per void across a portfolio has paid for itself quietly and keeps doing it.

If your availability currently lives in a PDF, that is usually the first thing we fix. Request a quote and we will price it in writing.

Void figures: Simply Business, "Rental void period losses double for UK landlords", reporting April 2026 data.