The 7 AI tools we recommend to UK estate and lettings agencies in 2026

We get asked the same question on nearly every assessment intake call: which AI tools should we actually buy? After running assessments for UK estate and lettings agencies over the past year, this is our shortlist. Seven tools, each picked because the agencies using them keep using them, and each ranked by where it sits in a normal agency workflow.

1. ChatGPT (or Claude, or Gemini): for descriptions and emails

Pick one of the three big general-purpose chatbots. Don't try to use all of them. Most agencies pay £20 per user per month for whichever they choose, train the team on a shared prompt library, and recover an afternoon per person per week.

Best for: property descriptions, draft emails, meeting summaries, the bottom 80 per cent of the writing you do every day.

Cost: £20/user/month.

2. Otter or Fireflies: for viewing summaries

Recording calls and viewings, then getting a clean summary with action items, is the highest-impact workflow we see in lettings. Otter is the most popular in the UK; Fireflies is comparable and slightly cheaper for teams.

Best for: landlord viewings, valuation calls, internal team meetings.

Cost: £10 to £15/user/month.

3. Chatbase: for website chat triage

Plug your listings, FAQs, and tenancy criteria into Chatbase, embed the widget on your site, and let it answer the 60 per cent of inbound enquiries that don't need a human. Set escalation rules carefully and review the conversation logs weekly for the first month to catch any drift.

Best for: out-of-hours enquiries, repeat questions about availability and viewing slots, qualifying buyers and tenants before they get to a negotiator.

Cost: £19 to £99/month depending on volume.

4. DESCRIBLY: for property descriptions at scale

If you're writing more than 30 descriptions a week and the two-prompt ChatGPT workflow is taking too long to copy and paste, DESCRIBLY is purpose-built for property and integrates with most UK CRMs. Less flexible than ChatGPT, faster for high volume.

Best for: agencies handling 100+ listings a month who want a one-click flow rather than a prompt template.

Cost: from £29/month.

5. Calendly: for viewing booking automation

Not strictly AI, but the AI integrations on top of Calendly are what make this worth recommending. It removes the back-and-forth on viewing scheduling and the latest features auto-suggest slots based on your team's calendar and the property's location.

Best for: cutting the time-to-book on hot leads from 24 hours to under 30 minutes.

Cost: £8 to £12/user/month.

6. Gamma: for landlord pitch decks

Punch in a property address and a few key facts, get back a presentable proposal deck for landlord pitches in two minutes. Rough but usable starting point. Most agencies use it for the first draft, then polish in PowerPoint.

Best for: lettings teams pitching new landlords or block management contracts.

Cost: free tier, paid from £10/user/month.

7. Reapit AI features: for agencies already on Reapit

If your CRM is Reapit, the AI features baked into the platform (description generation, email draft, contact summarisation) are worth turning on before you buy any third-party tool. They're already in the price you pay for Reapit. The depth isn't as good as the dedicated tools above but the integration is tight because it's built in.

Best for: agencies who want to start with what they already pay for before adding new vendors.

Cost: included in Reapit subscription.

What we wouldn't buy yet

• AI valuation tools that promise an automated home report. Compliance and accuracy aren't there yet for the UK market.
• Standalone "AI for estate agents" platforms that bundle everything into one subscription at £200+ per user per month. Almost always cheaper to assemble the equivalent stack from the tools above.
• Voice cloning tools. The use case for agencies is genuinely narrow and the regulatory ground is moving.

Where to start

If you adopted only two of the above, you'd capture most of the value. Pick the general-purpose chatbot first, add the call summary tool second, and let the team get comfortable with both before you add anything else.

For a tailored recommendation specific to your agency, including what to test first and what to ignore for now, the AI Opportunity Assessment is £19 during the pilot and delivered within 24 hours.