Estate agents face mounting pressure to adapt as artificial intelligence, changing consumer behaviour and growing competition reshape the industry, delegates at Propertymark One heard.
Speaking at the conference, Reapit commercial director Dr Neil Cobbold argued that traditional agency models are being challenged by the increasing influence of property portals, the rapid adoption of AI by consumers and rising expectations for instant access to information and services.
Cobbold outlined what he described as the three key capabilities agencies will need to develop to remain competitive and grow in the years ahead, while also highlighting the role Reapit’s new AI platform, Reapit AI (RAI), is expected to play in helping agents respond to the changing market landscape.
“An estate agent’s model has never been under more pressure than it is at this moment in time.”
He explained that agents are increasingly operating in a marketplace where customers can search, connect and transact in new ways, which risks reducing the role of agents.
“You’ve got property portals going direct. Customers using AI to find their perfect property, and AI itself being set up for consumer searches,” he said.
This shift is not just changing the competitive landscape it is also exposing the limitations of how many agencies are currently set up to operate.
Many agents use systems built around isolated transactions, resulting in fragmented workflows, duplicated data and a lack of continuity when customer circumstances change.
As customers rent for longer, move more frequently and agents manage more complex property portfolios, agencies need one connected system to support this broader range of customer demands.
“Property is the last major life category still stuck in disconnected tools,” he argued.
Cobbold described three key capabilities:
+ Owning the lifetime relationship – maintaining continuous engagement with customers across renting, buying, selling and investing, rather than focusing solely on individual transactions.
+ Operating from a single data model – bringing together all customer, property and transactional data into one unified view to see the performance of an agency.
+ Applying intelligence to that data – using AI to understand behaviour, identify opportunities and guide agency decision-making to maximise revenue.
He continued: “You’re going to need to own the entire lifetime engagement of a client. Maybe they’re a tenant now, but they’re also a potential future buyer or a future landlord. You need to have one single data model supporting that lifetime relationship, a single data warehouse. If it’s in a single data warehouse, it means that your AI will be as intelligent as it can be.”
Without these elements in place, agencies risk losing visibility of their customers, missing opportunities and becoming disconnected as needs evolve.
Cobbold set out how delivering these three capabilities will require a fundamental shift in how agents work, enabled by AI. Rather than working through CRM step-by-step, successful agents will use AI tools that they can build themselves – tailored to their business, or trusted agentic AI agents that can operate across all of their PropTech tools to delegate activity to AI. This allows agency teams to focus more on maintaining relationships, managing data effectively and acting on insight.
“Estate agents stop operating software, and start delegating to it. RAI Copilot works with you on the road. You speak, it listens. It can bring you context where and whenever you need it. A CRM is a system of record. But with AI, it can become a system of action.”
