#AI is shaking up how people find property, and you can see it in real time with Homesearch unveiling #HAILO – their brand new AI listing optimisation tool. Meanwhile, Mal McCallion is building a #property listing tool built exclusively for GEO/AEO optimisation too! We're moving on from those clunky old portal searches and stepping into something much more dynamic. Boom! 🚀 For the best part of two decades, property hunters have been stuck with bland filters like price, postcode, and number of bedrooms. Now, that’s starting to get left behind. With AI, people can finally search in “real world” terms: “3-bed house near good schools with a south-facing garden and easy commute to Liverpool Street,” for example. As both an #lettingagent and a #PropTech founder, I find it absolutely absorbing to see where this is heading. The portals have long dodged requiring proper, broad data from agents – and left properties online for ages just to bulk up their numbers. That passive approach is about to bite back. Here’s why: most portal visitors are just browsing, helping the portals stack up traffic and flog premium advertising. As agents, though, we’re focused on the serious buyers and renters. That means accurate, relevant listings matter more than ever – and AI search finally makes it possible to put the right homes in front of the right people at the right time. Agents who want to succeed here need to sort their data out. AI is ruthless – it’ll spot and surface stale, patchy or even fake listings much quicker than any human. If your data isn’t spot on and your listings aren’t what they claim to be, expect to get found out! For independents, though, this is potentially a brilliant leveller. Unlike the portals, where the big spenders get most of the eyeballs (for the lowest rates), AI-powered search rewards solid data and genuinely available stock – which is right up the street of nimble, tech-minded independents willing to do things properly. We’re already seeing products like Homesearch’s HAILO and ModelProp’s AI optimisation move things forward. Will it give you an instant edge over competitors? Only if the others don’t catch on – but more importantly, it loosens the grip those portals have had for years. Are you exploring AI-powered property search yet? Anyone out there already fine-tuning their listings – or has a horror story about bad data biting back? Let’s hear it! #proptech #AI #lettingagent #property
Kristjan, love this! The benefits to agents and consumers from this shift will be hard to believe today. This isn’t just another “print to online” moment (though it’s funny how similar the scepticism sounds... back then it was “people won’t use the internet to find homes” 😅 … now it’s “people won’t use AI”). The move online homogenised agents into neat, identical ads buried in endless feeds. AI changes that. It makes discovery smarter, faster and more personal, helping consumers find the right home, not just a home with the least amount of compromises.
AI tools will always curate from sources of authority. All the portals have an advantage in this area. Agents will still need to be on the portals but it’s possible Rightmove will lose some pricing power as visibility through AI can be achieved on OTM and Zoopla. Property search is a very visual process so portals will still get lots of direct traffic. The death of Rightmove has been predicted many times. I wouldn’t put my house on it Kristjan Byfield
Fascinating shift! AI is truly redefining how buyers connect with the right properties — data accuracy is the new currency
CEO at ModelProp, guiding AI-driven growth in property.
1w💯 Kristjan - 1 in 5 homemovers now use AI in some part of their property discovery. It's huge already and getting huger (if that's even a word ... :) ) Gotta be thinking about how to deploy it. Start small, start 'free' and build from there. Reliance on Rightmov£ does not have to continue for much longer if we work together in this new AI world.