Building Something Better: A Decade of Innovation in Estate Agency

A few days ago, I tested LinkedIn's 'Suggested for You' to see what machine learning is truly capable of. What happened next was powerful—AI surfaced the truth. It amplified the voices of those who have been wronged and exposed the reality of exploitative investment practices. That experience only reinforced what I already knew: I've been burned before, and I won't be burned again.

The Drive to Innovate

Ten years ago, I set out to explore what was possible in estate agency technology. I had a product in my head—one that could deliver more than the Windows 98-era tick-box tech that dominated the industry, missing essential elements of duty of care and skill. When I saw Ian Springett replicate a facsimile of Rightmove, I knew that if agents were to have something better, I had to build it myself.

I wasn't an outsider speculating on agency; I was an agent long enough and qualified enough to become an FNAEA without waiting a decade to reach 30. I went from a cement engineer to a successful estate agent, doing well enough to buy my forever home at 27 during the MIRAS winter—when sales had slowed to a crawl, and prices in my area had fallen by 44%.

Back then, estate agency was a profession. Agency bosses were often RICS-qualified, and sales were a bolt-on to the professional services that drove revenue. Then the Financial Services Act changed everything. Banks and building societies reshaped agency, and in those years, I learned more about the industry than most—lessons that became the foundation of a search system far superior to the blunt instrument of portals.

The Problem with Portals

Portals reduce home search to crude filters:

• Location (12,000 results)
• Price band (5,000 results)
• A few more filters to trim the list down to an overwhelming 10+ pages of unsuitable properties.

This is inefficient, frustrating, and ignores the needs of consumers. Buyers purchase based on needs and wants, and homes rarely tick every box. It falls to skilled estate agents to bridge that gap—to overcome objections, match buyers with homes, and make sales happen.

Yet, portals have perpetuated the myth that without Rightmove, agents can't sell property. That's nonsense. I have the data to prove it.

On Rightmove, the average listing gets 332 views. Of those:

• 80% are unique to that property.
• 265 viewers never return.
• 66 return or view similar listings.

Now, an agent has a choice:

• Chase all 332 views, hoping there's a buyer in the mix.
• Focus on the 66 return viewers—those demonstrating actual intent.

This is where skill and efficiency come in. Agents don't have the capacity to handle 332 traffic inquiries, but they have a legal duty to act on the 66 who show genuine interest. This is a fundamental principle of contract agency—yet few recognise it.

Challenging the Status Quo

The industry has been held hostage by groupthink. Discounted players negotiate bulk deals for portal listings. Non-geographic agents pay per listing. Passive intermediaries ignore professional obligations, treating listings as mere advertising space. Meanwhile, service providers reinforce the status quo, and junior negotiators coast along, putting in minimal effort for minimal wage.

With so much reinforcement of the status quo, it's easy to see why many believe it's impossible to build something better. And that's why people assume I want to take down Rightmove. That's the most ridiculous claim of all.

I don't want to destroy Rightmove—I want to use it as a competitive advantage. Rightmove is a financial millstone that my agents' competitors will keep paying for long after my agents have discovered how to sell property without it.

Had I not been focused on property management until 2009, I would have already proved this by implementing a 14-day delay in CRM systems—holding back new instructions from portals, allowing an agent's website and for-sale boards to do their job first.

Funding the Future of Agency

Yesterday, for the first time in 20 years, I asked an agent for their copy—a technique that once won them more instructions but had been forgotten. The industry has been conditioned into dependence on the portals.

I've spent the last decade building something better. It took five years longer than it should have due to the all-too-common challenges innovators face—greed and destructive interference that rob projects of their potential. It was a hard lesson, but I've learned it.

Now, I have clarity: my funding must come from the agents who will benefit.

Agents have learned valuable lessons over the past ten years. Agent Mutual models work—but only when they are run by professionals who serve agents as customers, not when they are hijacked. If you invest in a mutual, you must protect it from being stolen. The betrayal of that trust is a sly way of doing business, but I won't let it happen to what I've built.

A Vision Worth Supporting

I have built something better. And I am building it in a way that ensures it cannot be sold out from under the agents who invest in it.

Rightmove pays dividends because it operates on a 70% profit margin. I won't be making excessive profits—I'll be charging a fixed cost with a fair margin. The real dividend isn't a cash payout; it's the ability for agents to choose whether to spend £1,500 ARPA on Rightmove rather than being forced to. The power to opt out of unnecessary costs is a far greater dividend than any financial return Rightmove could ever offer.

The Future of Agency: Learning from the Past, Building for the Future

The AI-driven discussion around exploitative investment has reinforced something I have always believed: investment should be about creating value, not extracting it. Without innovation, there is nothing to invest in, and investors who understand this will be the ones who succeed.

I'm not looking for the wrong money—I'm looking for the right investment from those who share the vision of a stronger, more independent estate agency model.

The future of agency isn't about tearing down the past—it's about building something better.