Property Marketing
The UK completed nearly 1.2 million residential transactions in 2025—the highest level in three years. Monthly volumes have averaged around 101,000 since June 2025, approximately 3% above the five-year average. The December 2025 UK House Price Index recorded a national average of £270,000, up 2.4% annually, though monthly prices dipped 0.7% as seasonal patterns took hold.
How property professionals can leverage portals, video, AI, and answer engine optimisation to win more instructions
UK estate agents face a pivotal moment in 2026: the market has stabilised at 1.2 million annual transactions, but the digital landscape is fragmenting fast. Rightmove dominates with 85% of consumer time, yet AI search tools, tightened regulation, and rising portal costs are reshaping how agents win instructions. Nearly half of agents now use AI tools, 74% employ generative AI for listings, and answer engine optimisation has emerged as the next competitive frontier.
Regional divergence remains stark: Northern Ireland led growth at 7.5%, whilst London fell 1.0%. The stamp duty threshold reductions on 1 April 2025 drove a March transaction spike and subsequent April dip, but the market absorbed the shock quickly. Four Bank of England rate cuts brought the base rate to 3.75% by year-end, with average mortgage rates settling around 4.91%.
39%
First-time buyer share of all sales
23%
New listings above 10-year average
185-205
Average days to completion
1.5-4%
Forecast price growth for 2026
Available stock sits at ten-year highs, creating a buyer-friendly environment where accurate pricing matters more than ever. Properties take an average of 185–205 days from listing to completion, with Scotland fastest at 145 days and inner London slowest at 222 days. Forecasters broadly expect modest price growth of 1.5–4% in 2026, with Zoopla projecting 1.18 million transactions.
The portal landscape is shifting, though Rightmove retains overwhelming dominance—85% of consumer time on property portals, approximately 125 million monthly visitors, and responsibility for more than 7 in 10 vendor instructions. Rightmove's average revenue per advertiser (ARPA) reached £1,524/month in 2024, with fees now consuming up to 13.5% of a typical agent's sales commission.
Zoopla draws around 55 million monthly visitors and is investing heavily in consumer brand campaigns. OnTheMarket, acquired by CoStar Group in December 2023, has seen website visits rise 55% and sales leads surge 94% since the takeover, though CoStar is moderating its UK spend by $300 million in 2026 amid investor pressure.
| Portal | Monthly visitors | Market share | Key developments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rightmove | ~125 million | 85% of consumer time | 27 AI initiatives; ChatGPT integration |
| Zoopla | ~55 million | Second position | Heavy brand investment; Alto CRM integration |
| OnTheMarket | Growing rapidly | +55% visits YoY | CoStar ownership; 94% lead growth |
Perhaps the most significant digital shift: 48% of Rightmove consumer time now occurs on its app (up from 38% in 2023), with app users generating 2x more sessions, 3x more leads, and 60% higher retention. Total mobile usage—including mobile web—likely exceeds 70% of all property search activity. Rightmove processes approximately 20 million searches per day across its platforms.
The most robust UK-specific social media dataset comes from a study of £449,794 in ad spend across 186 property campaigns (Rex Reach/ValPal Network, May 2025). Facebook feed ads delivered a remarkable 12.45% click-through rate at an average cost-per-click of just £0.06. Instagram Stories and Reels both exceeded 10% CTR.
Female audiences outperformed males (11.39% vs 8.99%), and the 55–64 demographic achieved the highest CTR at 12.12%. Crucially, 1 in 5 Facebook vendor leads resulted in an instruction—a conversion rate that justifies significant ad investment. Broader industry data confirms social media's central role: 79% of UK estate agents actively use social media for promotion, 65% of UK homebuyers use social platforms to discover properties, and 51% of buyers prefer agents with an active social media presence.
403%
more enquiries for listings with video—yet only 9% of agents consistently create listing videos. This represents the single largest performance gap in estate agency marketing.
Listings with video sell up to 31% faster, and agents using video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users. The ROI case is overwhelming: 88% of real estate video marketers report positive returns within six months, and video on listing pages increases time-on-site by an average of two minutes. According to Wyzowl's 2026 State of Video Marketing report, 91% of businesses now use video as a marketing tool, and 93% of marketers report positive ROI.
Virtual tours have reached meaningful adoption: 72% of UK estate agents now include them in their marketing, and properties with virtual tours receive 87% more views. Matterport dominates the technology space (acquired by CoStar for $1.6 billion in 2024), with UK providers charging £150–400 per property. Agents report 40–50% reductions in unproductive viewings and significant time savings.
For agencies looking to integrate video marketing with their B2B marketing strategy, the key is connecting video performance data back to your CRM for proper attribution.
Nearly half of UK estate agents (48%) now use AI tools, up from 38% just months prior, with another 19% experimenting. The Alto 2026 Agency Trends Report, surveying 250 UK professionals, found 52% plan to adopt AI tools for listings, lead generation, and marketing in the coming year. Adoption skews heavily toward larger agencies—approximately 90% of larger firms plan AI implementation in 2026—whilst a third of independents describe themselves as "nervous" or "unsure."
Generative AI for property descriptions has become the most widespread application, with 74% of UK estate agents using LLMs to create written content. Street.co.uk's AI Property Description Generator, Nesti.Chat (launched August 2025 as the first UK-agency-specific free AI assistant), and direct ChatGPT usage are the primary tools. AI virtual staging is also gaining traction, with companies like Virtual Staging AI generating 500,000 images monthly.
AI chatbots and live chat represent a proven ROI channel. Yomdel, the dominant UK provider serving over 2,500 property companies, handles approximately 50,000 live chats monthly. The company reports that 35% of live chats convert to leads, with a 50% increase in website visitor-to-valuation conversion rates and aggregate ROI of 18:1. Response times average 25 seconds.
Automated valuation models present a nuanced picture. Hometrack (owned by Zoopla) delivers results within 5% accuracy for standard residential properties and powers estimates for over 26 million UK homes. A University of Manchester study (December 2025) achieved over 96% accuracy using AI, versus 70–85% for traditional methods. Yet estate agents remain sceptical: 87% say AVMs routinely undervalue homes, and 28% regularly increase AI valuations by £10,001–£20,000.
WhatsApp is emerging as a critical communication channel, achieving 90%+ read rates on delivered messages versus 20–25% for email. However, only 15% of property businesses using WhatsApp have adopted the Business application—77% use personal accounts, creating GDPR exposure, since 60% of property professionals' opt-in consent does not specifically cover WhatsApp communications.
Rightmove itself has 27 AI initiatives in development, including conversational search, vendor prediction models, and AI-powered valuations. In February 2026, Rightmove integrated property search directly into ChatGPT—a signal of how seriously the portals are taking AI-driven discovery.
For agencies exploring AI consultancy and implementation, it's crucial to develop governance policies alongside adoption to manage risk.
The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 represents the most significant regulatory change for estate agents in years. Its unfair commercial practices provisions came into force on 6 April 2025, replacing the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008. The CMA now holds direct enforcement powers with fines up to £300,000 or 10% of global turnover—whichever is greater—without requiring court proceedings. Officers of non-compliant companies face up to two years' imprisonment.
The material information landscape is in flux. NTSELAT withdrew all its guidance (Parts A, B, and C) on 8 May 2025, coinciding with the DMCCA replacing the CPUTRs. The legal obligation to disclose material information persists—and the stakes are now higher—but the detailed Part A/B/C framework has no formal replacement. Currently, only ~35% of listings contain adequate material information.
The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, which became law on 19 June 2025, brought the biggest update to UK digital data laws since Brexit. For estate agents, the critical change is that PECR maximum fines increased from £500,000 to £17.5 million or 4% of global turnover—aligned with UK GDPR penalties. This dramatically raises the stakes for non-compliant email marketing, phone calls, and electronic communications.
Anti-money laundering enforcement has intensified. HMRC issued 170 penalties totalling £835,842 to estate agency businesses in the six months to September 2025—nearly half of all AML penalties across all supervised sectors. From May 2025, mandatory sanctions checks became obligatory for letting agents.
Looking ahead, the Renters' Rights Act takes major effect on 1 May 2026, abolishing Section 21 no-fault evictions and requiring all tenancies to become periodic. EPC minimum standards will rise to band C for all tenancies by 1 October 2030, with a new energy assessment methodology (HEM) replacing SAP from October 2029.
The UK estate agent CRM market is dominated by property-specific platforms, not generic solutions like HubSpot. Reapit leads by scale, serving over 60,000 users across 12,000+ branches, with clients including Savills, Knight Frank, and Winkworth. It launched AI capabilities in early 2026 and offers an open API platform (Reapit Foundations) enabling PropTech integrations.
Street.co.uk is the fastest-growing challenger, winning Best Overall Supplier at the 2025 and 2026 industry awards, with AI-generated property descriptions, image enhancement, WhatsApp/SMS integration, and an AI-driven prospecting tool called Spectre. Alto (Zoopla-owned) serves 6,000+ agencies and 25,000+ users, benefiting from deep portal integration. Jupix, also Zoopla-owned, is popular with smaller agencies managing up to 5,000 properties.
HubSpot has limited direct penetration among traditional high-street agents but shows promise in adjacent use cases. Accommodation.co.uk, a "next-generation letting agent," automated 92% of its lettings process using HubSpot, achieving 1,200+ monthly landlord leads and 100% five-star Trustpilot reviews. The platform suits larger developers, commercial firms, and digitally native lettings operations more than traditional agencies. For businesses exploring this approach, HubSpot onboarding services can significantly accelerate time-to-value.
WordPress remains the dominant website platform for estate agents, powered by the Property Hive plugin (4.9-star rating, 3,000+ active installations) which imports listings from 20+ CRMs and exports to all major portals. Specialist agencies build WordPress sites from £165/month.
Attribution and analytics remain a significant gap. Most agents rely on simple last-touch models within their CRM's lead source tracking. The most sophisticated approach comes from Moneypenny's partnership with Ruler Analytics, which tracks calls back to specific marketing sources, campaigns, and keywords. Call tracking providers (Infinity, Clear Ring, Call360) report that agents implementing phone tracking see up to a 60% rise in quality of incoming calls through better attribution insights.
For agencies struggling with attribution, Whitehat's SEO services include full attribution tracking from organic search through to revenue—so you know exactly which keywords drive business, not just clicks.
Perhaps the most forward-looking development for estate agent marketing is the rise of answer engine optimisation. 82% of American consumers now use AI for housing market information (Realtor.com, August 2025), with ChatGPT (67%) and Gemini (54%) as the primary platforms. ChatGPT now processes approximately 2.5 billion queries daily with over 700 million weekly users, and is projected to overtake Google search volume by 2027.
In the UK, 93% of property searches begin online, and Jitty—an AI-powered UK property search app—passed 500,000 searches in November 2025, with 75% of users preferring natural language search over traditional filters.
Semrush's analysis of 10+ million keywords found fewer than 3% of real estate queries trigger Google AI Overviews, and Stepps research recorded just 0.14%—the lowest rate across 20 industries. Google already satisfies property demand through local packs, map results, and ads, leaving less room for AI-generated summaries. This provides a temporary buffer but not permanent protection.
Zero-click searches now account for over 54% of UK Google searches, and AI Overviews reduce position-1 CTR by approximately 58%. However, real estate's transactional and local intent means agents are relatively insulated—AI Overviews appear in only about 7% of local searches. The greater AEO opportunity lies in being the source that AI systems cite when users ask questions like "Who is the best estate agent in Devon for country estates?"
AI systems disproportionately cite FAQ sections with schema markup, structured answer-first content, comparison tables, and original local data. For estate agents specifically, the winning formats are:
Reddit citations in ChatGPT have increased 87% since July 2024, and AI-surfaced URLs are 25.7% fresher than traditional search results—rewarding agencies that update content regularly.
Technical foundations matter enormously. RealEstateListing schema markup on every property page, consistent NAP data across Google Business Profile and all platforms, FAQ schema on content pages, and clean mobile-fast architecture all improve AI discoverability. Properties with schema markup see a 15–30% increase in organic CTR. Google Business Profile optimisation is especially critical: the local 3-pack appears in 93% of searches with local intent, and 42% of local searchers click on map pack results.
No documented UK estate agent AEO case studies exist yet—this is genuinely emerging territory. The closest parallels come from B2B companies: Go Fish Digital achieved a 3x increase in leads with AI referral traffic converting at 25x higher rates than traditional search over 90 days. AI systems recommend the same brands 87% of the time for a given query, suggesting early movers in AEO will gain a compounding advantage.
For agencies ready to explore this frontier, Whitehat's answer engine optimisation services combine technical SEO foundations, citation-ready content architecture, and off-site authority building specifically designed for AI citation.
The digital marketing landscape for UK estate agents in 2026 is defined by three tensions:
First, between portal dependence and direct marketing. Rightmove's dominance persists but its rising costs (up to 13.5% of agent commissions) and CoStar's aggressive investment in OnTheMarket are creating genuine competitive dynamics for the first time in years.
Second, between AI enthusiasm and professional scepticism. 74% of agents use generative AI for content, yet 87% distrust automated valuations, and a third of independents remain nervous about AI adoption.
Third, between regulatory burden and marketing freedom. The DMCCA's direct enforcement powers, material information obligations without clear guidance, and PECR fines now reaching £17.5 million demand that every piece of marketing content meets higher compliance standards.
The agents best positioned for 2026 are those investing in video content (the 403% enquiry uplift against only 9% adoption represents the single largest performance gap), optimising for local search and AI citation through structured area guides and schema markup, leveraging WhatsApp and social media for direct client communication, and building attribution systems that connect marketing spend to actual instructions.
Answer engine optimisation—whilst early-stage and lacking UK property case studies—represents the next competitive frontier, particularly as ChatGPT integrates directly with Rightmove and conversational property search moves from novelty to norm.
Video marketing delivers the highest ROI, with listings containing video receiving 403% more enquiries. Yet only 9% of agents consistently create listing videos, representing the largest performance gap in the industry. Facebook advertising remains the workhorse for lead generation, achieving 12.45% click-through rates and converting 1 in 5 vendor leads to instructions.
Rightmove's average revenue per advertiser (ARPA) reached £1,524/month in 2024, with portal fees now consuming up to 13.5% of a typical agent's sales commission. Despite rising costs, Rightmove retains 85% of consumer time and generates more than 7 in 10 vendor instructions, making it difficult for agents to reduce dependency.
Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is the practice of structuring content to be cited by AI systems like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity. With 82% of consumers now using AI for housing market information and ChatGPT projected to overtake Google search volume by 2027, AEO represents the next competitive frontier. Early movers gain compounding advantage as AI systems recommend the same brands 87% of the time.
The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 gives the CMA direct enforcement powers with fines up to £300,000 or 10% of global turnover. Key requirements include upfront pricing (no drip pricing), prohibition of fake reviews, and full material information disclosure on all listings. PECR fines have increased to £17.5 million for non-compliant electronic communications.
Property-specific CRMs dominate the market. Reapit leads by scale with 60,000+ users across 12,000 branches. Street.co.uk is the fastest-growing challenger with AI features and industry awards. Alto and Jupix (both Zoopla-owned) offer strong portal integration. HubSpot shows promise for digitally native lettings operations and commercial property firms, particularly those wanting sophisticated marketing automation.
Whitehat SEO helps B2B companies—including property and professional services firms—connect marketing activity to revenue through SEO, HubSpot integration, and answer engine optimisation.
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