A quarter of homebuyers think AI search will become more important than portals
New research from UK Property Development (UKPD) suggests that artificial intelligence could be poised to reshape the homebuying journey, with a quarter of recent homebuyers believing AI-powered search will soon overtake traditional property portals as the primary tool for finding a home.
The findings come from a survey of 500 homeowners who purchased a property within the past 12 months, which explored how buyers are already using AI throughout the homebuying process and where they found the technology most valuable.
The results show that as it stands, AI adoption in homebuying is fairly limited. Just 15% of recent buyers report using AI tools such as ChatGPT or Claude at any stage during the buying process.
Among those already using AI, its primary application appears to be information gathering rather than property search.
The most common usage is sourcing and understanding information about the homebuying process (15%), while 11% of buyers who use AI used it for advice on submitting and negotiating their offer.
AI is, however, already proving useful when it comes to identifying and appraising suitable buying locations. Nearly a third (32%) of buyers who use AI say that the technology helped them narrow down their search location.
When comparing possible locations, buyers used AI to help understand crime rates (20%), local amenities such as restaurants, bars, and cafes (14%), local shopping facilities (12%), and transport links (10%).
When it comes to actually searching for suitable properties, 47% of buyers who use AI say the technology was most useful in directing them to specific property listings based on their stated criteria. 29% say they found potential properties on their own, but then used AI to appraise and compare them. 12% say AI directed them to the major portals, while another 12% say the technology pointed them towards specific estate agent or developer websites.
When asked how important they believe AI will become in the homebuying process, more than a quarter (26%) of buyers said it will become more important than the major property portals that currently dominate the space, while another 22% predict that AI will become equally important as the portals.
Andy Morrison, Director of UK Property Development, commented:
“Finding and buying a new home is such a vastly complex and winding journey that people are always going to welcome new tools and technologies that help simplify or demystify the process. This is how the portals came to dominate property search – creating a centralised listings marketplace.
This one-stop shop convenience has served the portals supremely well for a long time, but the rapid rise of AI capabilities and its promise to not only deliver results, but help appraise those results in the blink of an eye means that simply displaying a list of results based on geographical search criteria suddenly feels very dated indeed.”
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