How portal AI is turning us all into teenagers

There’s a noticeable shift on the horizon in how we search for property. If I handed my phone to my 13-year-old stepdaughter and asked her to find us our next home, I can guarantee it wouldn’t be in the way you might expect, or have been pre-conditioned to ‘search’.

Endless scrolling still has a place for dancing dogs (personal fav), but when it comes to property search, the game has gone hyper-personal. Those days of searching through hundreds of irrelevant listings are probably nearing their end. Almost all of the major property portals worldwide are now deploying increasingly biased AI-powered search tools. These systems learn from your behaviour, preferences, and even subtle cues you might not even realise you’re giving away. They see everything! from your browsing history to your engagement levels with photos, and can surface homes that match not just your explicit criteria, but also your implicit desires. Maybe you never knew your subconscious preferred homes with a blue door - me too.

Data, data, and more data

What’s truly revolutionary about this next generation of property search is the sheer volume and variety of data now at our fingertips. AI and deep machine learning models are pulling information not only from traditional agent listing feeds, but also from open source and government data banks such as HM Land Registry, EPC registers, and planning portals. This provides buyers with a more comprehensive view of each property that was unobtainable before. 

Questions such as “can add an extension here?” Or “how long will it take to do the school drop off?” Or even “can you calculate what my monthly bills would be” is fast becoming standard, and it’s just the start. Agents, portals or other search aggregators that hide valuable data behind login or paywalls may start to feel the pinch if their experiences fall short of user’s evolving expectations. The bar is rising, and users are demanding more.

Tell me what you want, what you really really want

Natural language search, ie speaking or typing in everyday language, is making the process feel more human. The code graveyard of ‘filters’ is growing as search criteria switches to questions that mirror working with a real life estate agent, translating those wishes and desires into much more personalised results. For example: “Show me 3-bedroom houses in the catchment of a good school and close to Waitrose for under £500,000,” and I can get my tailored listing results back in seconds.

Looking ahead, AI agents or chatbots could go on to answer deeper questions about your shortlist, help schedule viewings, and even suggest offer prices based on local market comparables. The experience is becoming more intuitive and seamless, and critically is becoming more expected. 

Winner winner, profits dinner

Undoubtedly, it’s the consumer. Technological advancements are reducing the pain points in the early and mid search process, connecting us to what we want faster and, for the most part, more enjoyably. We all get to be our own estate agent for a day! 

The portals have a critical opportunity here to stay relevant and get closer to the transaction stage, easing some of that early workload traditionally handled by agents. With many portals worldwide reporting that up to 40% of leads go unanswered, tech is picking up the slack and maximising more opportunities. 

Portals, historically very wary of jeopardising their core revenue streams from agents, now have more legitimacy in claiming ownership of leads and nurturing them further along the pipeline. For agents, this means leads may become scarcer and more expensive. Quantity becomes less and less important; quality prevails, as deals are completed faster and more securely. The expertise of the agents needs to shift away from ‘lead qualification’ or property matching, to the critical elements of negotiation and process handling, ensuring the transaction runs smoothly. 

With portals embedded deeper into the decision-making stage, the opportunity gates open wider to additional services. Introducing lucrative partnerships with mortgage brokering, legal advice, moving services, and other post-transaction services that today are typically agent-led can super charge revenue streams. 

This shift will significantly impact agents who often rely heavily on partnerships and referrals to drive profit. In the UK particularly, the average agent commission is just 1.2%, one of the lowest rates globally. If ‘qualified’ leads become more expensive and portals control more of the value-added services, agents may find it harder to increase their margins - unless we see a rise in commission rates.

Another possible change is that we start to see a shift in the pure classified models, portals dropping to very low or potentially free packages for standard content - aka listings - with hot revenue lines jumping over to those ancillary services or pay-per-lead models. After all, without the content (the critical data) even the best ai models will be flawed. Paying for a service that you give away content to seems alien in today’s world, and then add paying a premium, ‘top-of-page’ listing positions, the whole process feels even more redundant and outdated. What’s going to give first. 

The F1 consumer driving seat

The evolution of technology is ushering every industry into a new era. But the property sector, long known for its reluctance to change, is being propelled forward by rapid shifts in consumer behaviour. 

If you find yourself having to relearn how to use an outdated platform by today’s tech standards, it’s probably time to rethink your approach. The future belongs to those who embrace the change and the opportunities it brings. People won’t stop moving home, agents wont cease to exist, but property searching just got a lot more interesting!