Over the festive break I’ve had a chance to do nothing for a week (if you count Christmas with 6 kids and 3 birthdays as nothing). However as they say, a change is as a good as a rest.

It has given me a chance to reflect on where we are at as an industry and what questions interest me as a someone who is an active participant both from a people and techonology point of view.

Estate agency has always been a people business.
That remains true.

What is changing rapidly, is how much of the customer experience is delivered by people, and where human effort creates the greatest value.

Over the next few years, agency leaders will not be deciding whether technology plays a larger role. That decision has already been made for them by consumers, cost pressures, and competitors.

The real decision is where human effort should be deployed when digital becomes the default.

There are two very different futures emerging.

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Step 1: More of the customer experience will be digital — whether we like it or not

This is the least controversial part of the argument.

A growing proportion of estate agency interactions are already digital:

• Portal enquiries
• Viewing bookings
• Viewing feedback
• Marketing performance reporting
• Milestone updates

These are typically:

• High-volume
• Repetitive
• Time-sensitive
• Low-judgement interactions

Consumers increasingly expect these interactions to be:

• Immediate
• Available outside office hours
• Consistent
• Low-friction

At the same time, the economics of traditional agency models are tightening:

• Staffing costs rise faster than fees
• Portal Costs are rising
• Profits are under pressure in a slower market in some parts of the country

Digital service delivery — particularly with agentic AI — allows scale without proportional cost. That alone makes increased digital delivery inevitable.

The real question is not if digital grows, but how far it goes.

Will the future look something like this?

Step 2: New entrants will go further than most incumbents are comfortable with

Most established agencies will land somewhere around a balanced future:

• Digital handles the volume
• Telephony becomes exception-based
• Face-to-face is preserved for high-value moments

But not everyone will stop there.

New entrants — unburdened by legacy processes, office footprints, or historic staffing models — will push much further.

A plausible digital-led competitor looks like this:

• 80% digital
• 10% telephony
• 10% face-to-face

In this model:

• Enquiries are handled instantly by AI
• Appointments are booked without human intervention
• Updates are automated
• Progression is system-led
• Human involvement is rationed and intentional

This creates a business that is:

• Structurally lower cost
• Always-on
• Highly scalable
• Difficult to compete with on speed or price

It will not suit every customer.
But it will suit enough customers to be commercially disruptive.

Ignoring this future does not prevent it from emerging — it simply ensures you are reacting to it rather than shaping your response.

Step 3: Where you deploy people becomes the defining leadership decision

This is the crux of the next 24 months.

If digital absorbs more of the volume, then people must absorb more of the value.

That means being deliberate about where human involvement genuinely matters:

• Valuations
• Marketing strategy and updates
• Offer negotiation
• Complex advisory conversations
• Trust-building moments where judgement matters

These interactions:

• Are low volume
• Are outcome-critical
• Justify premium fees
• Differentiate brands

The risk for agency leaders is not digital transformation itself.
The risk is misallocating human effort.

If highly paid, highly skilled people are consumed by:

• Chasing feedback
• Booking appointments
• Repeating information
• Managing process rather than outcomes

Then margins compress, morale erodes, and differentiation disappears.

Doing nothing is still a strategy, just not a great one

Many agencies will try to hold the middle ground without making explicit choices:

• Some digital
• Some people
• Some automation
• Some legacy processes

That usually leads to the worst of all worlds:

• Cost structures that assume people
• Customer expectations shaped by digital-first competitors
• Teams stretched thin across low-value activity
• No clear strategic identity

By contrast, the agencies that win will be explicit:

• Digital is the operating layer
• Telephony is for exceptions
• Face-to-face is premium, intentional, and outcome-driven

This is not about removing people from estate agency.

It is about protecting the parts of the experience where people matter most by not wasting them everywhere else.

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The decision ahead

Over the next 24 months, agency leaders will make hundreds of small operational decisions:

• What to automate
• What to standardise
• What to centralise
• What to leave human-led

In my last article here – I suggested a framework for considering this.

Collectively, those decisions determine which future you end up in.

The question is no longer whether estate agency becomes more digital.

The real question is: Will your people be overwhelmed by volume — or focused on value?

That is the defining leadership challenge of the next phase of this industry.

I have a series of four more articles being released through January that will explore what steps I believe the agency’s of the future will take to win in the next era of agency. If you would like to read more about them, please feel free to subscribe below