40% portfolio growth. 80% less admin.
If you’re busy but not growing, it’s probably not a motivation problem.
It’s a systems problem.
That was the reality for DBK Sales & Lettings – a 44-year-old West London estate and lettings agency covering sales, lettings, property management and mortgages.
Instructions were coming in.
Deals were happening.
The team was working hard.
But growth wasn’t compounding.
And admin was quietly eating the business.
As Director Jazz Sandhu put it during our recent Alto Masterclass: “We were wasting so many man hours in admin. You just can’t afford that in today’s world.”
Something had to change. If you’d like to watch the full interview with Jazz, you can watch the 45-minute session on demand here.
Otherwise, a summary of the interview can be found below.
The hidden cost of “managing it”
Before switching CRM, DBK were running:
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Disconnected tools
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Manual client accounting
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Fragmented reporting
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Separate systems across sales, lettings and property management
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Repetitive daily admin
Sound familiar?
Director Jazz Sandhu described it plainly: “We were wasting so many man hours in admin. You just can’t afford that in today’s world.”
This wasn’t a demand issue. It was operational drag.
And operational drag kills momentum.
The decision: fix foundations before scaling
Most agencies try to grow first and tidy up later.
Jazz did the opposite: “I was not prepared to grow the business until we had the foundation set.”
Before opening a second branch, acquiring another portfolio or scaling headcount.
They fixed the core by moving to Alto, the leading cloud-based estate agency CRM, that covered:
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Sales
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Lettings
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Property management
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Client accounting
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Reporting and analytics
All in one place.
No compromises.
The feature that changed everything
When asked which feature made the biggest difference, Jazz didn’t hesitate: “Client accounting. I don’t know how we operated before.”
Before:
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Manual processes
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Time lost reconciling
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Limited financial visibility
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Colleagues chasing colleagues
After:
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Automated accounting workflows
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Full money in / money out visibility
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Real-time access across the team
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Faster reconciliation
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Compliance confidence
For multi-branch and growing agencies, client accounting isn’t admin.
It’s control.
80% less admin. What actually changed?
This wasn’t cosmetic efficiency.
Here’s where the time came back:
1. Automated email templates
No more drafting the same landlord, vendor or tenant emails every day.
2. Faster property listings
Reduced listing admin across sales and lettings.
3. Joined-up pipelines
Full visibility across sales progression and lettings workflows.
4. Streamlined works orders
Cleaner property management processes.
5. Centralised compliance tracking
Gas safety, EPCs, documentation – visible and accountable.
Jazz summed it up: “Those hours that we’ve got in the day, they’re really valuable. They go by quickly. You just can’t afford to waste them.”
Admin dropped by up to 80%.
That capacity wasn’t absorbed by chaos.
It was reinvested into growth.
Visibility is what actually unlocks growth
This is the bit most agencies underestimate.
It wasn’t just automation.
It was visibility.
“Being able to see a snapshot of your entire business before the day has started is extremely valuable,” said Jazz.
Across:
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Sales KPIs
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Lettings pipelines
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Property management compliance
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Accounting
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Works orders
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Team performance
Better meetings.
Faster decisions.
No blind spots.
Growth doesn’t come from hustle.
It comes from clarity.
Scaling without breaking
Since moving to Alto, DBK have:
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Opened a second branch
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Acquired nearly 300 additional tenancies
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Grown their portfolio by 40%
The acquisition data was absorbed seamlessly.
No spreadsheets.
No chaos.
No service drop.
“Without Alto, we would not have been able to operate the way we do today.”
That’s not a marketing line.
That’s operational resilience.
“We’re too busy to switch systems”
This came up during the live Q&A.
It’s the most common objection in estate agency CRM conversations.
Jazz had already tried switching providers once before Alto – and it failed.
His view? “Once we chose Alto, migration was seamless. They stuck to timelines. They delivered.”
Team adoption was fast.
The UX was intuitive.
Go-live was measured in weeks, not months.
His advice to directors feeling stuck:
Step out of the business for a day.
Look at where time is leaking.
The answer becomes obvious.
What this means for estate & lettings agencies in 2026
If you’re searching for:
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The best CRM for estate agents in the UK
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A joined-up property management system
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Estate agency client accounting software
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A cloud-based estate agency platform
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How to reduce admin in your agency
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How to scale without burnout
The answer isn’t “work harder”.
It’s fix the foundation.
DBK didn’t grow because they chased more instructions.
They grew because:
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Systems were unified
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Accounting was automated
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Reporting was centralised
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Compliance was visible
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Admin was reduced
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Leadership had full control
As Jazz said: “It genuinely felt like the last CRM we’d ever need.”
Watch the full Alto Masterclass
You can watch the full 45-minute session on demand here.
If you’re busy but not in control, this will land.
Ready to See What This Looks Like in Your Agency?
If you want to see how Alto could work for:
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A single-branch independent
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A growing multi-branch agency
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An acquisition-ready business
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Or a compliance-heavy lettings portfolio
Book a tailored demo here.
Alto is the UK’s most popular and fastest-growing CRM for estate and lettings agencies.
And if you fix the system, growth gets a lot simpler.
