We Asked AI to Recommend Estate Agents in 10 Major UK Cities — Here’s What It Said

What We Did

We used TendorAI’s AI visibility testing system to ask three leading AI assistants — ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude — the same question:

"Can you recommend an estate agent in [city]?"

We repeated the query across 10 major UK cities: London, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cardiff, Liverpool and Nottingham.

Each assistant was prompted in a clean session to avoid memory bias. We did not ask for “cheapest fees” or “highest-rated” agents — just straightforward recommendations for a local estate agent.

The goal was simple: identify which agencies AI systems surface when a homeowner asks for a local estate agent.

What We Found

1. The Same 5 Agencies Per City

Across all three AI systems, recommendations clustered heavily around the same 5 agencies in each city.

In London, the overlap was striking. In Manchester and Birmingham, the pattern repeated almost identically. AI would name five agencies with minor variation in ordering, but rarely introduce lesser-known independents.

These agencies shared common characteristics:

• Propertymark or NAEA membership displayed on their website
• Active Rightmove and Zoopla listings
• Google Business profiles with high review volume
• Structured data on their websites
• Area guides, sold price data or market reports published online
• Clear fee or commission disclosure

The pattern was not random.

2. Smaller Independent Agents Were Invisible

In nearly every city, there were well-reviewed independent estate agents with strong local reputations that were not mentioned at all.

Many had:

• 4.8+ star Google reviews
• Hundreds of recent client testimonials
• Competitive commission rates and local market knowledge

Yet they did not appear in AI recommendations.

Visibility in traditional search results does not automatically translate into visibility in AI-generated answers.

3. Data Quality Beats Reputation

The strongest predictor of recommendation was not review volume or even commission transparency. It was data consistency and structured presence.

Agencies that were:

• Members of Propertymark with up-to-date directory listings
• Marked up with schema.org/RealEstateAgent structured data
• Listed on Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket with active stock
• Cited in local press, property market reports or industry awards

Were significantly more likely to appear.

This led to a clear conclusion:

"AI doesn’t recommend the best estate agent. It recommends the agent it has the best data for."

That distinction matters.

4. Portal Presence Was the Strongest Signal

Agencies with active listings on Rightmove and Zoopla were disproportionately represented in AI recommendations.

Property portals are structured, authoritative data sources that AI systems can easily parse. Each listing contains the agency name, location, contact details and property data in a consistent format. That structured footprint feeds directly into the datasets AI models are trained on.

An agency that lists on portals generates hundreds of structured data points per month. An agency that relies on its own website alone generates almost none.

5. Corporate Brands Dominated Over Independents

National and regional chains — such as Purplebricks, Foxtons, Connells or Savills — appeared more frequently than independent local agents, even in cities where independents dominate the market.

This was not because they offer better service. It was because corporate brands generate vastly more structured data: press coverage, franchise directory listings, portal volume and regulatory citations. Each of these feeds into the datasets AI systems are trained on.

An independent agent with deeper local expertise and better client reviews was consistently less visible.

Why This Happens

AI systems like ChatGPT do not crawl the web in real time in the way Google Search does.

Instead, they rely on:

• Structured datasets
• Training corpora compiled from authoritative sources
• Property portal data (Rightmove, Zoopla, OnTheMarket)
• Industry body directories (Propertymark, RICS)
• High-trust publications

If your agency has:

• Propertymark or NAEA membership clearly displayed
• Active listings on Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket
• Published sold prices or market track record data
• Structured schema markup on your website
• Consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) data across directories
• Area guides or local market reports on your website

You are far easier for AI systems to identify and confidently recommend.

By contrast, an agency with a basic website and no portal presence may exist online — but it exists as unstructured text. That makes it harder for AI systems to extract and validate.

AI prioritises clarity, consistency and verifiability.

It does not interpret reputation the way humans do. It processes signals.

What It Means for UK Estate Agents

If You’re Not in the Data, You Don’t Exist

If your agency is not present in the datasets AI systems rely on, you are unlikely to be recommended — regardless of how many properties you sell.

This is not a reflection of service quality. It is a reflection of data visibility.

The Gap Will Widen

As AI-driven discovery grows, the agencies currently being recommended will accumulate more mentions, more citations and more secondary references.

That compounds advantage.

The agencies AI already “knows” will become more embedded in its responses. Agents outside that loop risk long-term invisibility.

Structured Advantage Is Time-Sensitive

There is still a window.

AI recommendation systems are not fully locked. Visibility patterns can shift. But as models retrain and reinforce existing citation networks, it becomes harder to break in later.

Waiting means competing against agencies that have already built structured authority.

How to Check If AI Recommends Your Agency

Most estate agents have no idea whether they appear in AI-generated recommendations.

You can check in 60 seconds.

Run a free AI visibility report at https://tendorai.com/aeo-report. No credit card required.

It shows whether ChatGPT and other AI systems recognise your agency — and where your visibility gaps are.

AI recommendations are already influencing how homeowners shortlist estate agents.

The agencies being surfaced today are not necessarily the best. They are the most structured, the most cited, and the most machine-readable.

That distinction is now commercially significant.