For landlords. And the tenants they want.
A Manchester lettings platform built by the people who actually did the job.
DaisyLets was started in a rented flat off Oxford Road in 2017 by a former letting agent who was tired of the paperwork, and an engineer who was tired of the phone calls. Eight years on, we're still based in Manchester — and still answering the phone seven days a week.
No credit card · Free forever for landlords · ARLA-qualified team
Chapter One · Manchester, 2017
How a Manchester letting agent and an engineer decided the rental market deserved better.
Daisy Whitmore spent six years working the high street in Manchester and Leeds — viewings in the rain, deposit disputes at 9pm, the same landlord phoning on a Saturday morning to ask why their property had been empty for six weeks. She was good at the job, and she was exhausted by it.
Tom Reeve had just left a PropTech start-up in Ancoats and was between projects. The two had met through a mutual friend in Didsbury, and over a long Sunday lunch Daisy complained — not for the first time — that the software she was forced to use treated landlords as numbers and tenants as risks.
They rented a one-bed flat just off the curry mile, painted one wall with white board paint, and started sketching what a lettings platform would look like if it was designed by the people who actually answered the phone. Six months later, the Two-Month Rent Guarantee was written on the back of a beer mat in the Marble Arch. It's still in the employee handbook.
That flat is now the small meeting room at our Manchester office on Whitworth Street. The beer mat is in a frame on the wall.
The letting agent's complaint
Six years of viewings, deposit disputes and Saturday-morning landlord phone calls — Daisy had heard every reason a tenancy fails.
The engineer's observation
Tom had watched three PropTech tools try to "disrupt" lettings without ever asking a tenant or landlord what they wanted.
The beer-mat promise
If we place a tenant and they leave in year one, we pay. That clause — written in a pub — still anchors every landlord contract we issue.
I used to stand in a kitchen in Withington and explain to a single mum why she'd lost £600 of her deposit to 'professional cleaning'. That's the part of the job nobody writes about. We built DaisyLets so that landlords wouldn't have to lose a good tenant over a small misunderstanding — and so tenants wouldn't have to fight for their own money back.
The team
142 people across Manchester, Leeds and a remote UK network — answering the phone seven days a week.
Our lettings team is in-house and ARLA-qualified. No call centres, no outsourced scripts. When a landlord calls at 8am on a Sunday about a broken boiler, they reach a person who has read their file.
- Manchester HQ
- Leeds office
- Remote UK network
- ARLA-qualified
- 7-day support
Chapter Two · 2017 — 2023
Seven years, one rented flat in Manchester, and a quietly stubborn belief the system could be kinder.
-
2017
The Whitworth Street flat
Daisy Whitmore and Tom Reeve incorporate DaisyLets Ltd above a coffee roastery in Manchester. The first landlord listing goes live in November — a one-bed terrace in Fallowfield.
-
2019
The Two-Month Guarantee is written into every contract
The promise first scrawled on a Marble Arch beer mat becomes a clause in our standard landlord agreement. Within twelve months it has paid out £412,000 in rent credits.
-
2021
Leeds opens, Deposit Passport launches
We open our second office in Leeds and ship Deposit Passport — covering up to £2,400 of tenant deposits at zero cost, with claims resolved in five working days.
-
2023
Series B · £18m led by Octopus Ventures
We close an £18m Series B led by Octopus Ventures, with participation from Passion Capital and existing investors. The funding lets us take the in-house ARLA team to 142 people and roll out across England, Wales and Scotland.
The receipts
The numbers we'd rather you read than us boast about.
Every figure below is from our 2024 operating report. None of them are projections.
- The Times · Best Lettings Platforms 2024
- Estate Agent Today · Innovator of the Year 2023
- Trustpilot · 4.9 / 5 across 14,820 reviews