Rent out your flat yourself, and only show it to people who are serious.

Renting out your flat privately: the hard part is the enquiries

Advertising your flat yourself is easy. What wears you down comes next. In busy areas a listing can collect dozens of messages in a few days, and most of them say the same thing: "Is it still available? Can I come and see it?"

• Viewings that go nowhere. You book ten people, half don't turn up and the other half find out at the door that the second bedroom is a box room or there's no lift.
• People who can't come round. A student arriving in September, someone relocating for work or a tenant moving from abroad can't pop over on a Tuesday evening.
• Choosing with too little information. With that many enquiries it's hard to tell who is serious, and getting the tenant wrong is expensive.

Doing it without an agent saves the letting or management fee, which the landlord pays (tenant fees have been banned in England since the Tenant Fees Act 2019). The cost is that the work is all yours. A virtual tour doesn't remove it, but it takes away the most repetitive part: showing the flat again and again to people it was never going to suit.

How RoomTour works when you let your own flat

1. Get the flat ready. Blinds up, lights on, surfaces clear. If the outgoing tenant is still there, ask first and pick a good time, or wait until they've moved out.
2. Take about 30 guided shots per room. Stand in the middle of each room and the app shows one target at a time on screen; you just turn with your iPhone. No tripod, 360 camera or LiDAR needed.
3. The app builds each room's 360° panorama on the phone and, from the phone's movement, an approximate floor plan of the flat.
4. Publish the tour and you get a link (roomtourapp.com/t/…), an embed code for a website and an A4 poster with a QR code.
5. Send it before you book anyone in. Reply to every "can I view it?" with the link and "if it still suits you after a look round, let's find a time".

Before you try it on your flat, open the example tour on your phone to see what a prospective tenant gets.

What you get

• A tour link that opens on any phone or computer, with nothing to install. It goes in your listing where the site allows it and in every reply.
• An iframe to embed the tour on a website, if you have one for your lets.
• An A4 QR poster for the window or a local noticeboard (with permission). Passers-by walk round inside before they call you. It opens in Spanish; add ?lang=en to the poster link, or use the toggle on the poster page, for English.
• An approximate floor plan so people understand the layout. It can be out by about 10 to 20 cm, so don't use it to measure or quote square footage.
• View counts. The app shows how many times each tour has been opened. If the tour gets plenty of views but nobody asks to see the flat, look at the rent first.

Fewer viewings, with more serious tenants

Nobody should rent a home without seeing it in person, and the tour doesn't replace that viewing. What changes is who you meet. Someone who books a viewing after walking round the living room, kitchen and bedrooms has already ruled out what didn't work for them. You skip the "just having a look" viewings and have more time for the people who are genuinely interested.

For anyone who isn't local, the tour is the first viewing. A student shows it to their parents, a couple watches it together from two different offices, someone relocating decides whether the trip is worth it.

Under the Renters' Rights Act, in England you now have to state an asking rent and can't invite or accept bids above it, and you can't turn people away because they have children or receive benefits (GOV.UK). Showing everyone the same tour and the same information up front fits that well. Pair it with a clear listing; how to write a property listing has a template.

A visual record of the flat's condition (with limits)

Record the tour just before you hand over the keys and you have a dated picture of every room: walls, floors, kitchen, bathroom. It's a useful extra next to the inventory and helps you remember what everything looked like when the tenancy ends.

It isn't an inventory, though. A 360° tour doesn't capture the detail of a specific mark or scratch, the tenant hasn't signed it, and it won't settle a deposit dispute on its own. Do a written inventory and check-in report with close-up dated photos as well, signed by the tenant. The full landlord checklist is in how to rent out your flat without an agent.

What RoomTour doesn't do (and when something else is better)

• It doesn't list on portals. There's no integration with Rightmove, Zoopla, OpenRent or Zillow. The link goes in your listing text and your messages.
• It doesn't vet tenants or draw up the tenancy. It filters viewings; Right to Rent checks, referencing, the agreement and the deposit are still your job.
• It doesn't measure. The plan is a guide to the layout, nothing more.
• iPhone only. There's no Android app.

If you don't have time to answer messages, run viewings and deal with repairs, a letting or management agent is a sensible choice. What makes no sense is letting it yourself and spending a fortnight showing the flat to people who were never going to take it.

Free for early users

RoomTour is free for early users: you don't pay to make or share tours, and they carry no watermark. The iPhone app is now on the App Store.