Halcyon Lettings: a void counter that prices the empty days
Concept build. Halcyon Lettings is an invented firm. This was made to show how we approach a property brief, so nothing here is a client result and no figure describes a real business.
The brief we set ourselves
Independent lettings agencies in this bracket all say roughly the same thing: that they answer the phone, that they chase things, that a landlord's property won't sit empty on their watch. A landlord with one to eight properties has usually heard that line from an outfit that went quiet the moment the tenancy started, and no amount of reassurance copy proves otherwise.
Halcyon Lettings is an invented Bristol agency, eleven years trading, managing around 340 properties. We built it to test whether one specific, sourced number could do more work than another paragraph of reassurance: England's average void is 24 days, and at £47 a day that is £1,135 gone before a tenant has paid a penny.
What we built
A warm, literary page rather than a corporate one. Palatino Linotype carries the headline and the void counter's own numerals; Corbel carries the body copy and the ledger. The palette is chalk and ink with a single terracotta accent, and one colour, alert red, is fenced off entirely for the void counter. It appears nowhere else on the site, including form validation, where it earns its place rather than decorating.
No card grid. What full management covers is set as a stepped ledger: duty, who, how often, because a landlord reading it wants a record, not a row of icons. Fees are a plain stated table, three tiers, percentages given rather than "on application."
The void counter
A full-height section styled as an empty room. As you scroll it, a tabular-numeral figure and a day count accrue together, mechanically, no easing tricks, because the point is a meter rather than a slot machine. The counter holds at day 24 and states plainly that this is England's average void. Scroll past it and a let-agreed threshold locks the figure at £1,135 recovered, and the section drops the alert red out of the palette completely. The one colour on the page tied to a bad outcome disappears the moment the outcome resolves. Reduced-motion visitors get the same two states as static panels, no counting.
Details that did the work
- Tabular numerals throughout, so the counter and the fee percentages don't jitter or ragged-align
- Enquiry form asks for number of properties and postcode area, not just a name and a "message us" box
- Compliance section anchored to 1 May 2026 and the current gas, electrical, EPC and deposit obligations, stated as plain fact rather than alarm
- Marketing consent on the enquiry form left unticked by default
- Fee table published outright rather than hidden behind "get a quote"
Where it stands
Audited at 87 out of 100 across usability, uniqueness, beauty and freedom from generic AI patterns. The honest weakness is the hero: on first paint, before the held image has settled into its frame, the headline sits low against the fold rather than commanding the opening view. It is the first thing a second pass would fix.