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2 September 2025

The Times Feature: Would you let ChatGPT find your next home? (1)

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A flurry of new apps is transforming the house hunt, offering curated shortlists and unprecedented detail about locations, schools and even interiors

By David Byers, Deputy Property Editor

The Times

Monday September 01 2025, 6.00pm

If you've tried to buy a property in a neighbourhood about which you're unfamiliar, you'll probably have been utterly daunted by the task.

You're likely to have experienced the tedium of sifting through several websites to gather information on a town's crime rates, schools and amenities, among other things, as well as collecting word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and trudging the streets.

Some of the hassle may soon be taken out of the process, however. In recent months and on a remarkable scale, artificial intelligence has transformed the way people gather information from the internet about pretty much anything. We can request collated answers to almost any question we can think of in one place, using tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot — albeit with health warnings about accuracy.

During this time, developers have been using the technology to work on a series of heavily tailored property apps that aim to provide specific and bespoke information about an area or property type in unprecedented detail, which should save you time.

As the house-search landscape changes rapidly, here are some examples of what's on offer for buyers, where to find the apps, and what these tools may be useful for.

🏠 Tick all the family's boxes

For those looking for family homes, a new tool developed by an Anglo-Indian entrepreneur should help to streamline the search.

HomeHapp AI, to be launched this month for buyers and renters, is already being used by estate agents and advisers. It allows the user to enter in a free-form box a detailed request for the type of property they are looking for, and then provides a specific list of collated responses that are tailored to their requests.

Initially the engine, created by the tech businessman Utsav Goenka, is being aimed at the high-end market, covering homes costing from £1 million to £150 million.

Key Features:

  • Data points providing information on last-sold prices
  • Ownership records
  • Planning permissions
  • Comparable listings
  • Home's renovation history

Agent Dashboard:

  • Real-time updates designed specifically for agents
  • Daily updates on new listings
  • Property price changes
  • Homes added to and withdrawn from the market
  • Market dashboards with price and rent heatmaps across London's most expensive area

The app is free for buyers, renters, sellers and professionals, although a soon-to-be-launched premium service will come with a charge taken on a monthly or token basis, similar to AI models such as ChatGPT. A public launch is scheduled for later this month via HomeHapp.com, but it has already been rolled out to professionals.

"AI is, for all practical purposes, just about two years old. Treat it like a baby, you know, but it's growing at the rate of getting ten years of wisdom every year, and knowledge every year. So AI is transforming itself all the time."
— Utsav Goenka, Founder of HomeHapp AI

🗺️ Get to know the lay of the land

For nerds who like maps, the Know Your Area tool, developed by the Anglo-Norwegian internet entrepreneur Lars Erlandsen, is a treasure trove. It harvests a huge amount of data from providers including:

  • Office for National Statistics
  • Government data
  • The police
  • British Geological Survey
  • Care Quality Commission
  • Ofsted
  • House of Commons

What it provides:

After you enter a postcode or place name, you're presented with a map on which you can overlay data about:

  • Local schools (including latest Ofsted ratings, number of pupils of each sex, proportion of students receiving free school meals)
  • Crime rates and most prevalent types committed
  • Infrastructure locations (prisons, windmills, solar panels, gas burners, nuclear facilities)
  • Demographics showing proportion of residents in particular age brackets
  • Flood risks from the Environment Agency
  • Future additions: Landfill sites

Users can also request an AI-generated, printable summary of any area they're keen on. The app is available now at a cost of £4.99 a month.

🔍 Go on a detail deep-dive

In the past when sifting through property portals, you had to click on myriad drop-down menus to input preferences such as the number of bedrooms you need or how far you are willing to live from a central location before you could assess a list of the homes for sale that fit the bill. Some properties would be far from what you were looking for. Now, however, you can go much deeper with less work.

At the end of last year, Zoopla added an AI search free-form box to its app, allowing you to write specifically what you're looking for in a property. It scours the web, providing results that are far more suitable and tailored to your needs, extracting from listing images and descriptions specified features such as:

  • Conservatory
  • En suite bathroom
  • Kitchen island

The company is now working on using the data better, to improve the quality of property recommendations it includes in emails and push alerts sent to would-be buyers.

"You'll get an email from Zoopla and it will say, based upon what you look for, here's a recommendation. At the moment it's usually quite binary or parochial. Soon, everything will become far more personal, far more relevant. And I think that's what we're on the cusp of right now."
— Rich Hayes, Zoopla's Chief Operating Officer

💬 Try the chatbot number-cruncher

Only a few years ago chatbots were a source of fury, associated with useless customer service departments that didn't bother to staff properly. These days, AI is making them vastly more effective.

The analytics company REalyse, which has been providing property data to some of Britain's largest developers, rental building operators and financial services companies since 2016, is opening to ordinary homebuyers and sellers for the first time — and it has trained a sophisticated AI tool to help them navigate the numbers.

Available metrics include:

  • Yield and capital appreciation for landlords
  • Schools and crime rates for homebuyers
  • Likelihood of achieving planning permission
  • Latest sales stats and facts for sellers

At a demonstration created for The Times this year, the chatbot found pages of two-bedroom properties for sale, all with similarly timed commutes and descriptions of how dog/vegetarian/cycling-friendly the location and property were. Five years' worth of data was also provided for sold property prices nearby and local planning information.

Initially the tool will be available through realyse.com, a smartphone-friendly website, and there are plans for an app to follow.

🎯 Key Takeaways

  • AI is transforming property search from tedious multi-site browsing to intelligent, conversational discovery
  • HomeHapp AI targets the high-end market (£1M-£150M) with comprehensive property intelligence
  • Free access for buyers, renters, and sellers on most platforms
  • Real-time data and AI-powered matching are becoming industry standards
  • The future is conversational - describe what you want in natural language, not dropdown menus

📰 Original Article Information

Publication: The Times

Author: David Byers, Deputy Property Editor

Published: Monday September 01 2025, 6.00pm

Original URL: Read on The Times website

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This article has been reproduced for informational purposes. All rights belong to The Times.