We often hear about AI taking over our jobs. In estate agency, they already have, just not in the way most people think.
By 2035, artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation won’t have replaced estate and lettings agents. They’ll have refined them. The agents who survive and thrive will be those who stop competing with machines and start collaborating with them.
The Great Automation Shift
Across the UK property sector, AI is on track to automate around 37% of current estate agency tasks by 2030, resulting in billions of pounds in savings on operational costs. That doesn’t mean fewer humans; it means smarter ones.
The mundane will disappear first: data entry, lead scoring, CRM updates, appointment scheduling. Even valuations and marketing copy will be handled by algorithms that never sleep. Traditional CRMs will be replaced by intelligent systems that listen to conversations, learn from outcomes, and quietly nudge agents when a prospect’s online behaviour signals they’re ready to move.
Marketing, once a creative art, will become an exact science. Generative AI will write listings, craft email campaigns, and optimise ad spend in real time, with more accuracy than any intern and far less ego.
But automation isn’t just a cost-saving story. It’s a time-creating one. And what agents do with that time will define their future.
What Technology Can’t Replace
Buying or selling a home isn’t a transaction. It’s an emotional reckoning. It’s the story of leaving one life behind and starting another. No algorithm can yet hold someone’s hand through that. Many property professionals can’t either.
The agents who’ll matter in 2035 won’t be those with the best tech stack. There’ll be those who use technology to amplify their humanity, empathy, negotiation, intuition, and local knowledge. When the data says one thing but the client’s body language says another, it’s still the human who seals the deal.
Negotiation will remain an art form. So will crisis management. No chatbot can talk down a panicked seller after a bad survey or resurrect a collapsing chain on a Friday afternoon. Certain aspects, such as discretion, trust, and persuasion, inherently resist automation.
A New Industry Hierarchy
High street, self-employed, hybrid, online? All a distraction. The agency landscape will splinter into three tiers: