Rightmove has been the undisputed king of UK property searches for years. But if you ask one of the country's most experienced estate agents, its days at the top might be severely numbered.
Trevor Abrahmsohn isn't a guy who just throws wild guesses around. He's the man who originally came up with the idea for an agent-owned portal—the exact concept that eventually became OnTheMarket before US giant CoStar snapped it up. Now, the owner of high-end London agency Glentree Estates has made a bold prediction: Artificial Intelligence is going to hand power right back to the agents, and leave the big portals scrambling.
Let's be honest, we've all felt it. You sit down with a cup of tea to browse houses, and the experience just feels a bit stuck in the past. As Abrahmsohn rightly points out, the filters are dated, searches feel clunky, and there's a nagging, low-level frustration that the whole process should definitely be smarter by now.
Instead of ticking endless boxes and mindlessly scrolling through hundreds of irrelevant listings, the new wave of AI tools is changing the game completely.
Imagine just typing a normal sentence into your phone, like: “Find me a three-bed near good schools under £1.5m with low council tax and a short commute.”
Instead of fighting with a search engine, the tech searches across multiple sources at once. In Abrahmsohn’s own words: "Seconds later — done."
But it doesn't stop at just finding the house. These smart assistants can instantly pull up neighbourhood data, accurate valuations, price predictions, and lifestyle insights. If house hunters start turning to AI first to do the heavy lifting, the traditional portal model suddenly looks incredibly old-fashioned.
Abrahmsohn thinks the writing might already be on the wall, noting that it could be exactly why certain portal share prices have taken a massive hit over the last year.
For high-street and independent estate agents, the big takeaway is massive. He hits the nail on the head with one final thought: “If agents can generate leads through their own AI-powered tools and websites, why keep paying ever-rising portal fees?”
It’s a massive wake-up call for the property industry, and potentially a huge win for buyers who are tired of the same old property search.
