How Moovahome used PayProp to slash rental admin and wow landlords

Ashley Cain has been an estate agency owner for almost as long as he’s been an estate agent. He launched his first business aged just 22, and has since headed up a string of companies in the property sector.

Today, his main venture is Moovahome, a Swindon-based estate and letting agency. The business does pretty much everything an estate agency can do – sales, lettings, HMOs, commercial property, and sourcing – and he does it all with a crew of just nine.

How do they do it? Ashley points to his investment in technology as a key enabler of this wide-ranging but lean business model. “We’re a modern business,” he says. “We’ve grown fast, and what has propelled that growth is our tech, including PayProp.”

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PayProp, the problem solver

Moovahome had tried other tech systems for their lettings business before, but nothing came close to PayProp. The difference is like night and day. Ashley says that their client accounting option with their old CRM was effectively just an Excel spreadsheet – and its inefficiency and poor security prompted him to look for alternatives..

“I remember sitting in the office and watching one of the accounts staff. To process a payment they used to have to walk across the office to pick up the paper statement, walk back across the office to scan it and then throw it away to prevent data breaches. I started timing it – fourteen and a half minutes per payment. And it wasn’t the staff’s fault, it was the system.” Ashley Cain, Director & Owner

Moovahome didn’t implement PayProp all at once. They started out by automating payments just for their HMO portfolio, which was around 60 properties at the time – although bigger now with PayProp powering their growth.

At first, the plan was to pilot the new system for 18 months, but the speed and efficiency PayProp brought to the business had fully convinced Ashley after only six months. With PayProp, agents can reconcile the entire portfolio in just a couple of clicks – quicker than a single payment on the old system. For Ashley, this efficiency helped his business grow from 60 properties under management to over 300.

Even then, he wanted to make sure his clients were on board too, so he put together another, tougher pilot plan.

“We picked our VIP customers to test it – our hardest-hitting landlords who we knew would be really critical. Originally, we planned to bring it to the rest of the business after at least a six-month trial with our VIPs, but the feedback and the processes were so good that within six weeks, we said forget this, let’s use PayProp across our entire portfolio. I haven’t looked back since.” Ashley Cain, Director & Owner

The closer

On the lettings side of the Moovahome business, PayProp is the solid foundation of their tech stack. The platform automates rental payment reconciliation, freeing up the team’s time to focus on other tasks. Ashley likens it to a very efficient team member that never gets ill or makes mistakes.

With PayProp, all rental payments are automatically matched to the right tenant, landlord and property – meaning that reconciling your entire portfolio only takes a couple of clicks. Landlords can receive their money (and an automatically generated, professionally branded statement) on the same day the rent is paid, something that Ashley makes sure to point out to them when he’s marketing Moovahome’s services.

“We’ve got a whole section on PayProp in our sales literature. We explain what it does, and that it’s included at no extra cost. When landlords read that, they’re like ‘this is crazy, you do all of that?’ And I say ‘yes we do’.” Ashley Cain, Director & Owner

Ashley says it’s been a great tool for closing sales. And once the landlord signs on the dotted line, PayProp also makes onboarding of new properties easy – critical for a fast-growing business like Moovahome.

“Using PayProp can really expand your business. We’ve put around 32% on the business in the last 18 months. I’d say probably 20 to 25% of that is PayProp. Processing the rent is now such a simplified job that it’s released our staff to sell, upsell and manage our clients. If we could see that growth every year, I’d be a very happy man.” Ashley Cain, Director & Owner

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"Ridiculous” rent arrears recovery

Faster payments may attract landlords to PayProp-powered agencies, but it’s the automated arrears management that earns their long-term trust. For Ashley, this feature is essential. It saves time, reduces admin, and ensures compliance. With one click, his team can see who’s in arrears and automatically send timely reminders. Just as importantly, the system prevents agents from contacting tenants too often, protecting the agency from potential legal issues and preserving tenant relationships.

“It used to take one member of staff all day to work out who was in arrears. Now you just click a button. We click the automated renewal reminder, and 40% of people will pay that day. Of the rest, we know from their history that some may pay on the 8^th even though rent is due on the 6^th – we put notes on them. And for the rest, we can start a 28 day chase, with reminders at 7, 14 and 21 days. It’s really good.” Ashley Cain, Director & Owner

It’s not a complicated system, but as Ashley has discovered, it’s extremely effective at helping Moovahome to recover late rent payments – and wow their clients.

“We do a landlord night every year, and we put up our percentage of arrears. I think last year we were at less than 1%, it was a ridiculously low number. And everyone was like, ‘are you joking?’ I said no, seriously, it’s like that. We showed them the tech. And every landlord, of 150 landlords in the room, thought it was amazing.” Ashley Cain, Director & Owner

Streamlining compliance

“The other thing people might not be aware of is client money protection,” says Ashley. “Before PayProp, trying to get my client money protection insurance every year was a pain. Letting agents are also having big problems with banks – they’re closing down client accounts because of anti-money laundering rules. But as we’re with PayProp we don’t have to worry about either of these industry issues, I don’t think other agents always appreciate those benefits which make PayProp exceptional for agencies of all sizes..” Ashley Cain, Director & Owner

Ashley’s experience reflects wider challenges facing UK letting agents. Banks have been cracking down on agencies’ undesignated client accounts for several years, often closing them at short notice. For Moovahome, switching to PayProp’s automated client accounting platform brought peace of mind that this would not happen to them.

Client money protection renewal is also less stressful thanks to PayProp. The platforms detailed reports and award-winning support team are on hand to assist Ashley with the renewals process. And, because the platform automatically reconciles payments each day, the balance in Moovahome’s client account can stay lower, which in turn helps keep premiums low.

A winning solution

Moovahome has now been with PayProp for five years, and Ashley sees no reason why that shouldn’t continue.

“From a personal point of view, PayProp has given me so much time, and it’s stress free. At the end of the month, I know exactly where I'm at. I don't need to worry about the rent coming in, I know it's happening securely in the background. And if not, we know we've got the system in place for any of the staff to jump on and find it. At the end of the month, I know exactly where I'm at.” Ashley Cain, Director & Owner

"We do occasionally get calls from competitors trying to sell us their systems – and I humour them and jump on a call. When they say, ‘Let us show you how our system works,’ and they walk me through it, and I just say, ‘Okay – you've already failed.’ They ask why, and I explain: ‘First of all, I have to log into the bank and download the data manually. That’s not automated – and frankly, already a data breach and security issue.’”