Services · Ecommerce development · Rental property portals
Our rental property portal website development in Birmingham serves letting agents, HMO landlords, student housing providers and city centre build to rent operators who want a marketplace where providers pay to list and renters secure a home online. Rooms and whole properties are searchable side by side, holding deposits and short stay bookings are paid through a regulated provider, and landlords receive payouts after your fee is taken. Licensing details for the city's selective scheme are captured on every listing.
Birmingham renting splits between shared houses near the universities, new apartment blocks in and around the city centre, and family homes in the wards covered by selective licensing. One portal can serve all three, as long as each listing type has its own rules.
200+ companies servedFrom a first store to an ADX listed developer
Built into a Birmingham portal
A renter in Birmingham might be a second year student looking for a room in Selly Oak, a graduate moving into a flat in the Jewellery Quarter, or a contractor needing a few weeks near the NEC. Each one searches, pays and signs differently. The landlord side varies just as much: a single HMO owner, an agency managing hundreds of rooms, or a build to rent block in Digbeth with live unit availability. Since 5 June 2023, privately rented homes in 25 of the city's 69 wards need a selective licence, on top of HMO licensing. These are the capabilities we build so one marketplace handles all of that and still takes its fee on every let. Each one can be switched on for a single segment first, so a student focused launch does not carry build to rent features it will not use for a year.
Providers list a whole property or each room in a shared house separately, with photos of shared spaces, the number of sharers, bills included or excluded and the tenancy type. Renters filter by room, by house, by rent per person and by distance to their campus or workplace.
Shared houses listed the way students and sharers search.
When a postcode falls in a selective licensing ward, the listing asks for the licence reference before going live. HMO listings ask for the HMO licence and occupancy limit, and the portal will not accept more sharers than the licence allows, even if the provider adds extra rooms later.
Listings that match Birmingham City Council's licensing.
Student stock is listed for the next academic year with fixed start dates, group applications and guarantor steps. The portal opens and closes listing windows on dates you set and shows renters which houses still have rooms left, so groups stop enquiring about homes already let.
The busy autumn letting season handled without spreadsheets.
A group of friends applies together, each person verifies their own details and pays their share of the holding deposit, capped at one week's rent for the property. The landlord sees the group's progress in one view and can chase anyone who has not finished.
Groups secured faster, with each payment recorded.
Furnished flats and empty student rooms over summer can be offered as short stays with nightly or weekly pricing, minimum stays and blocked dates. Cleaning and service charges appear in the headline price, as drip pricing rules in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 require.
Extra income from rooms that would sit empty.
Agents pay a monthly plan, private landlords pay per listing and short stay hosts pay a booking fee on each stay. Plans, fees and VAT are set in the admin, and invoices go out automatically each month, with failed plan payments retried and flagged to your team.
A revenue model you can adjust as the portal grows.
An FCA authorised marketplace provider takes card payments with Strong Customer Authentication, Apple Pay, Google Pay and pay by bank. It deducts your fee and pays the landlord or agent, so rent and deposits never pass through your company bank account and your fee arrives already separated.
Fees collected cleanly on every transaction.
Operators of new blocks in the city centre connect their management system so unit availability, floor, aspect and rent update automatically. Renters book a viewing or a virtual tour and pay a holding deposit for a specific flat, which is then removed from search straight away.
New apartments let without manual updates.
Landlords confirm identity through the payment provider, agents add redress scheme and client money protection details, and moderators approve each account before it can take bookings or appear in search results. Licence references are checked against the council's public register where available, and the check is logged.
Renters deal only with checked providers.
Renters can report a misleading listing, a refused refund or a problem at check in. Your team handles each case with messages, documents and a clear outcome, and points to a deposit scheme or redress scheme when the dispute belongs there, so nobody is left without a route.
Problems resolved on the record.
Who this is for in Birmingham
Birmingham is a large, young rental market with several distinct pockets, so the most successful portals start with one of them and expand. These are the businesses that tend to approach us, and what the first release focuses on for each. In every case the providers pay, because tenant fee law rules out charging renters for most things. The first release is planned around the month you need to be live, which for student stock is usually well before the autumn rush, and for build to rent is the date a new block hands over its first flats.
Agencies letting houses around the University of Birmingham, Aston University and Birmingham City University spend each autumn fielding group enquiries for the following year. A portal of their own, open to partner landlords on paid plans, lets groups browse houses, book viewings and pay holding deposits without the office managing every step by email. Partner landlords see how many groups viewed their house and how many applied, and the agency earns from plans rather than from fees it can no longer charge students. Guarantor details and identity checks happen once per student and are reused if the same person applies for a different house.
First release: room listings, group applications and the letting calendar.
Several HMO owners pooling their rooms under one brand want a shared marketplace without paying an agency on every let. The portal handles listings, applications and payments for all members, charges each a monthly fee, and keeps licence details visible so nobody in the group drifts out of compliance with the city's HMO rules. Members also get a shared repairs contact list and a single reporting view showing occupancy, holding deposits taken and payouts by property, which is usually what persuades a new landlord to join.
First release: member plans, HMO licence capture and payouts.
New blocks around Snow Hill, Digbeth and the Jewellery Quarter let dozens of flats at a time. A direct portal shows live availability by floor and aspect, books viewings and takes holding deposits for specific units. Other operators can be invited to list too, turning a single brand site into a marketplace for new build lets in Birmingham. Resident referrals, amenity pages and building guides sit alongside the listings, so the portal also works as the main marketing site for each block.
First release: unit feeds, viewing slots and holding deposits.
Hosts letting furnished flats to contractors, visiting staff and people attending events at the NEC or in the city centre want direct bookings rather than paying travel site commission every time. Rental booking platform development in Birmingham for this model focuses on calendars, nightly pricing, deposits and company invoicing. Longer contractor stays can switch to weekly billing, and repeat guests book again from their account without entering their details or their employer's billing information again. Hosts see occupancy and income per flat across the year.
First release: availability calendar, checkout and invoices.
How we work with Birmingham clients
Codeeo is not based in Birmingham. Our team of 80+ works from Dubai, Riyadh and Karachi and supports UK clients remotely, with discovery, design reviews and demos held by video call. Most portal owners commission a fixed scope first release and then keep a monthly retainer for new features and rule updates. Larger operators sometimes take a dedicated team. We share a written plan after every call. We have delivered 200+ projects across the UAE and the US, and we are rated 4.7 from 23 Google reviews.
A defined build with a deadline
We agree what the product has to do, write it down with a price and a date, and build exactly that. Changes are priced before they are made, not discovered on the invoice.
A product that keeps evolving
Named engineers who work your hours, join your standups and stay on the codebase. You direct the backlog; we own the quality of what ships.
Something live that needs looking after
A monthly block of hours for improvements, fixes and the small requests that otherwise wait months. Unused hours carry for a quarter.
Technology
Fast server rendered pages for room and flat search, an API driven back end for listings, applications and payouts, a regulated marketplace payment provider, and hosting in UK or EU regions that your own team can manage later, with documentation kept alongside the code.
01Web
02Commerce
03Data and cloud
04Marketing and tracking
Room and whole home listings, licence capture, holding deposits and payouts.
Most Birmingham portals succeed by doing one segment well before adding others. For a student or HMO focus that means room listings, group applications and the academic letting calendar. For build to rent it means unit feeds and viewing slots. In both cases the first release must take holding deposits correctly, collect licence references in selective licensing wards and pay providers through a regulated marketplace provider, because those are the parts that earn revenue and carry legal risk.
Schedule a free consultation and get a written recommendation, with costs, before you commit to anything.
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