What Agents Actually Want From AI - And Why the Industry is Getting it Wrong

There is a version of the AI conversation happening in property right now that goes something like this: the technology is coming, it will transform everything, and the agencies that move fastest will win. The vendors promising it are confident. The headlines are dramatic. And most agents, if you actually sit down and talk to them, are quietly sceptical.

That scepticism is not ignorance. In most cases, it is experience.

I joined Lee Dahill on Property Podcast Today recently to talk through what AI actually means for estate agents, letting agents, self-employed brokers, and the businesses that support them. What follows is a summary of the key points from that conversation — including a few that I think the industry needs to hear more honestly.

Listen to the full conversation on Property Podcast Today with Lee Dahill, available on Spotify.

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The Gap Between the Hype and the Reality

When Rex spoke to around 80 agents over the past year — from large multi-office networks through to single-office independents and self-employed brokers — a consistent picture emerged. Nobody was asking for revolutionary technology. Nobody wanted a system that could generate a thousand valuations overnight or replace their judgement wholesale.

What agents actually asked for was help doing the simple things more consistently.

That is it. And I think it is the single most important insight in this entire AI conversation, because it is almost the exact opposite of how the technology is usually sold to our industry.

The gap between how AI is marketed and what agents actually need is not a small one. It is the difference between a product that gets shelved after three weeks and one that quietly becomes indispensable. The agents who find genuine value in these tools are not using them for dramatic transformation. They are using them to stop things falling through the cracks.

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The 90% Problem Every Agency Principal Should Think About

Here is a number worth sitting with. When a business migrates its data to a new system — any system — it is common to find that roughly 90% of that database has not been contacted in the last six months. Not called. Not emailed. Not touched in any meaningful way.

If your agency has 50,000 contacts, that is approximately 45,000 relationships sitting cold.

Somewhere in that 90% are people who will move in the next six months. They are making decisions, having conversations, and quietly wondering whether their current agent — or any agent — is actually thinking about them. And the uncomfortable reality is that if you are not talking to them, one of your competitors probably is.

Most agencies are genuinely excellent at working the top 5%. The hot buyer. The fresh enquiry. The motivated seller who called this morning. But that is responding, not prospecting. The real opportunity — and the thing AI is genuinely well-suited to — is helping agents work the other 95% with some structure and consistency. Not by replacing the relationship, but by making sure it actually happens. Surfacing who to speak to, why it is worth speaking to them now, and what to say when you do.

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Raising the Floor, Not Just the Ceiling

If there is one idea that captures what good AI implementation looks like in an estate agency, it is this: the goal is for every agent in the business to operate at the level your best agent hits on their best day. That might sound ambitious, but it is actually more modest than it appears.

It is not about making average agents suddenly brilliant. It is about making sure that the things your best people do instinctively — the follow-up that happens without being chased, the note logged after every call, the email sent at the right moment — happen consistently across the whole team, not just when someone remembers.

Our industry has historically not been strong on structured training. There are no mandatory qualifications at most levels. A lot of agents learn primarily by proximity — absorbing habits from whoever sits near them. That produces wildly variable outcomes depending on who you started near and how long ago.

AI, implemented well, can quietly close that gap. It raises the floor without capping the ceiling. And in a business where margin is tight and consistency is often the difference between a vendor choosing you or the agency down the road, that is a bigger commercial advantage than any single product feature.

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‍Does AI Replace the Negotiator?

No. And I think it is worth being straightforward about this, because the anxiety is real and the question comes up in almost every conversation.

AI enhances the negotiator. It does not replace them. Property transactions — particularly residential sales — are built on trust, on human judgement, and on relationships formed over time. That is not going to change. When someone is selling the most valuable asset they own, they are going to want a person in their corner.

What changes is what surrounds that relationship. The admin. The guesswork around when to follow up and what to say. The time spent logging notes instead of making calls. If those things get handled automatically and accurately, the agent gets more time for the human parts of the job — which is precisely where they add the most value and, for most agents, where they find the most satisfaction too.

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For the Sceptics

If you have read this far and still feel more fatigue than excitement about AI, that is a completely reasonable place to be. The technology has been bolted onto everything for the past two years, and plenty of what has been sold as transformation has turned out to be a feature rebranded with a new name.

The advice I would offer is simply this: get curious rather than getting ready. You do not need a strategy before you start experimenting. Open one of the mainstream tools and use it for something small and low-stakes. Draft a follow-up email. Think through how you would handle a difficult vendor conversation. You might surprise yourself.

When it comes to measuring whether it is working, treat AI the same way you would treat any other investment decision. Define what success looks like before you start, actually measure it, and give it time. The tools that get abandoned are almost always the ones that people gave up on before they had a chance to become useful habits.

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Where This Goes Next

My honest expectation is that over the next few years, agencies become genuinely sales-led again. The operational overhead — the admin, the scheduling, the database management — gets handled by the systems. Agents get back to what they are actually good at: more conversations, more time in front of people, more business won on the strength of real relationships.

That is the future worth building toward. Not AI doing the job. AI giving us back the best parts of it.

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About Mark Hinkins

Mark Hinkins is Commercial Director at Rex Software, working with independent estate agents, letting agents and brokers across the UK. Listen to the full conversation on Property Podcast Today with Lee Dahill, available on Spotify.