Mal McCallion has an infectious grin and evangelical manner. The owner of AI consultancy ModelProp helped kick-start PrimeLocation and Zoopla. So what Mal preaches about the impending damnation of property portals is worth absorbing.
Should portals be terrified by AI agentic search is the title of a 50-minute YouTube clip in which McCallion co-stars. “Agentic” as in being able to “tell” an AI engine your heart’s desire, rather be “shown” tick-boxed lists from portal after portal.
Last week, ChatGPT birthed two new search tools: OpenAI o3 and o4-mini. Names Elon Musk might choose for his offspring. Just two of a wave of dozens of “agentic” models like Manus costing from £20 a month. They all magic up listings by divining your wants. Room in the garden for trampoline? A pink bathroom, perhaps? Pictures as well as words are interrogated. Big Brother knows all about you and what you can afford. The listings will come not just from portals, but, critically, from agents resentful of paying portals.
You have it: agents now have agency. AI will scrape listings from their websites. That’s why portals should be terrified, says McCallion. “Why pay for premium listings when you can optimise your own website for AI?” The sums at stake are staggering. In 10 years, Rightmove made £2.44bn in profit, £273m alone in 2024, on income of £390m. “Rightmove will struggle to maintain its 70% margin,” said McCallion. “We are moving into a post-aggregator world.”
Cue a half-cheer from agents. The sector failed to capture billions in value from its own data during 25 years of aggregation. PrimeLocation, now part of Zoopla, was launched in 2001 by top-end agents, led by Knight Frank and Savills. In December 2005, the site was sold to the Mail Group for £48m. If only… Zoopla was sold to a US private equity house for £2.2bn in 2018. In 2013, agents tried again with OnTheMarket – a 10-year struggle that ended with a £99m sale to CoStar in 2023.
Most agents are working away on in-house AI solutions. But few see portals being disaggregated, feeling they are too firmly embedded. They only hope AI will weaken portals’ semi-monopoly powers to dictate prices. But, hey, cheer up. McCallion might be right. In the US, portal panic has just surfaced. Last week Zillow threatened agents with blacklisting if they delayed listing on Zillow, after posting on their own site.
Peter Bill is a former editor of Estates Gazette
