The property industry spends an extraordinary amount of money trying to find people. Estate agents pay portals and lead generators to reach sellers and buyers, brokers compete for borrowers, solicitors compete for conveyancing instructions and tradespeople pay platforms to put them in front of homeowners.
Then, after spending all that money building the relationship, the transaction completes and we largely let that person disappear. A few years later, when they want to move, remortgage, renovate or need another property service, everybody starts paying to find them all over again. When you stand back and look at it, that is a rather strange business model, particularly when the way consumers discover businesses online is itself beginning to change dramatically.
Google Search is rapidly becoming more conversational and AI-driven. Instead of typing a few keywords and working through pages of links, consumers can increasingly describe exactly what they want in natural language and receive an AI-generated response bringing together the information and sources Google's systems consider most relevant. Google calls its latest AI-powered Search box its biggest upgrade in more than 25 years, while AI Mode has already passed one billion monthly users globally.
Google says websites remain an important part of that experience and that its AI Search features continue to send traffic out to the web. But there is an obvious question for every independent property business: what happens when fewer consumers work their way through a page of websites and more simply ask an AI to recommend the best option?
You may have spent twenty years building your business, reputation and website, but increasingly there is another layer sitting between you and the person looking for your service. That should make the property industry think very carefully about who owns its audience.
Stop renting your relationship with the customer
Estate agents already depend heavily on third-party platforms for visibility. Many other property professionals depend on Google, social media, lead-generation businesses and directories. These platforms can be incredibly useful, but ultimately somebody else controls the algorithm, the search experience and the route through which the consumer reaches you. AI potentially makes that dependency even more important.
If somebody searches conversationally for “a really good independent estate agent near me who understands older properties and doesn't charge referral fees”, they may no longer work methodically through ten agency websites. Increasingly, an AI system can interpret that request, research possible answers and present what it considers the most relevant options. The same could happen when somebody wants a conveyancer, mortgage broker, surveyor, builder, electrician or virtually any other property service.
That doesn't mean websites disappear tomorrow. In fact, the opposite may be true. As search becomes increasingly AI-driven, the original information those systems have to work with becomes even more important. Without your website, there is no data for AI to draw on. Think about it.
Google and other AI systems still need somewhere to discover expertise, local knowledge, commentary, services, experience and up-to-date information. They cannot create an endless supply of genuinely new knowledge from themselves. Somebody, somewhere, still has to publish the original material. For an independent property business, that makes its own website more valuable, not less.
Your website should increasingly become the authoritative home of what you know: your local market commentary, guides, videos, case studies, opinions, expertise, services and answers to the questions your customers are actually asking. The challenge is that publishing the information no longer guarantees that the consumer will arrive through the traditional route of typing your business into Google and clicking your website. AI may increasingly sit between the two.
So perhaps the answer isn't to abandon websites. It is to make them stronger while also building a direct relationship with the audience consuming what those websites create.
It does mean that simply having a website and hoping somebody finds it may become less powerful as a customer-acquisition strategy. Perhaps the property industry needs to start thinking much more seriously about the audience it already has rather than continually paying to find another one.
People don't leave property when they collect the keys
This is where I think we have confused being in a property transaction with being in the property market. A buyer might purchase a home every five or ten years, but their relationship with property continues every day in between.
They need tradespeople, mortgage advice, legal services, renovations, insurance, information and local recommendations. They may refinance, extend, become a landlord, move again or help their children onto the property ladder.
Renters have the same ongoing relationship. They move, need services, search for information and may eventually become buyers themselves. Property is a lifelong relationship interrupted by relatively short transactions, yet much of the property industry has been built around capturing people during those brief moments. Perhaps that is where we have been looking at the relationship the wrong way around. Instead of asking: How do we find the next seller, buyer, borrower or client? Perhaps we should also be asking: Why did we lose the last one?
Build the place they don't need to leave
That thinking is one of the reasons we started building WiggyWam. Not simply as another place to advertise property, but around a much wider idea: that somebody's relationship with the property industry shouldn't have to begin again every time they move house, change mortgage, need legal advice or hire a tradesperson. Someone might initially arrive because they are looking for a property. Another person might arrive because they need a professional. Someone else might already be buying or selling. The important bit is what happens afterwards.
If the platform remains useful before, during and after a transaction, there is far less reason for the relationship to disappear once the keys are handed over. The transaction ends. The relationship doesn't have to. That is the part I think property has been missing.
There is another reason professionals should care
This isn't simply about creating another website for consumers to visit. It is about whether the property industry can build stronger, more direct relationships with the people it already serves.
If consumers increasingly rely on AI to decide which businesses, websites and information they see, perhaps independent property businesses should be doing more than trying to optimise themselves for somebody else's algorithm. They should also be giving their customers reasons to remain connected. They all have relationships with their clients (customers for trades). Those people don't stop owning homes, renting, borrowing, renovating, moving or needing advice simply because one transaction finishes. Yet in many cases the relationship simply stops. Then everybody starts again.
Perhaps the more interesting opportunity is to create an environment where those relationships can continue and where consumers can continue discovering useful people, information and services without having to disappear back into the wider internet every time they need something.
Discovery should help people choose
There is another issue here too. Someone searching for a property professional shouldn't necessarily see only the handful of businesses an algorithm has decided deserve the first few positions. Which is also pretty much what most lead generation platforms do. The user answers questions, selects filters, and then a handful are presented to them (and in many case, those businesses have paid the platform for the special visibility) this, I don't think is in the consumer's best interest.
They should be able to explore the market, look at different professionals, understand who they are, read what they have to say, see what other customers think and make their own decision. Discovery should help people make a choice, not quietly make the choice for them.
That becomes increasingly important as search becomes more personalised and more heavily interpreted by AI. For independent businesses especially, relying entirely on somebody else's ranking system may become a much bigger strategic risk than many currently realise.
Content becomes part of the relationship
This also changes the value of articles, videos and podcasts. An estate agent can talk about their local market. A conveyancer can explain leasehold. A broker can discuss mortgage changes. A surveyor can explain property defects. A tradesperson can demonstrate their work. That content continues representing them twenty-four hours a day.
More importantly, it allows somebody to get to know the professional before they actually need their service. That is very different from trying to appear in front of somebody at precisely the moment they happen to type something into Google. A person may read an agent's article today and sell their home two years from now. They may follow a mortgage broker long before their fixed rate ends. They may learn something useful from a conveyancer months before they instruct one. That relationship has value even when there is no immediate transaction attached to it.
Perhaps the real asset isn't the lead
The property industry talks constantly about traffic, enquiries, instructions, leads and conversion rates. All of those numbers matter. But perhaps there is another number we should start watching much more closely: How many people stayed?
A homeowner who remains connected to their estate agent doesn't necessarily need to be reacquired when they decide to sell. Someone who follows a broker's content already knows who they might call when their mortgage needs reviewing. A homeowner who has previously found a trusted tradesperson knows where to look when another job appears. And somebody who remains part of a property community doesn't necessarily need to be won back by another portal five years later. They never really left. That may ultimately be far more valuable than continually buying another lead.
The bigger question
As Google, AI and the wider internet change the way consumers discover businesses, property professionals may need to think beyond simply making sure their website appears in tomorrow's search results (and given those results only display a handful of potential businesses, millions of others will go unseen - possibly forever). Therefore, they may need to think about the relationships they already have. The people they have already helped. The customers they have already paid to acquire. And the reasons those people might want to remain connected afterwards.
That is the wider thinking behind what we are building with WiggyWam: a property environment designed to remain useful beyond the relatively brief moment when somebody happens to be buying, selling or moving.
But the bigger idea is not really about WiggyWam. It is about whether the property industry should continue spending billions trying to capture people's attention for a few weeks at a time, only to lose the relationship and start again later.
Because the next battle in property may not simply be about who has the most listings, the biggest advertising budget or the highest Google ranking. It may be about who owns the relationship with the customer.