Q&A: How AI will create structural advantages for housebuilders

Q: Looking ahead 3 to 5 years, which parts of the home-buying journey do you think AI will transform most significantly?

A: 2 areas. First, the home-buying process itself, documentation, conveyancing and sales progression. There is a huge opportunity to increase efficiency here. 

Second, AI will change how buyers find homes, and new-build properties should benefit from that shift. 

Buyers don't always recognise the full value of new homes like lower running costs, warranties, energy efficiency and snag-free builds. AI-led search can surface new-build advantages naturally, alongside price. 

That presents a big opportunity for the new homes industry.

Q: What role can proptech play in speeding up transactions and reducing the risk of sales falling through?

A: Digitising documents and standardising the upfront information pack would take real time out of the transaction. 

However, a bigger issue for housebuilders is what happens once a sale is in a chain. Sales progression becomes opaque and cancellation risk goes up, especially when that chain includes resale homes. 

The industry needs a single source of truth for sales progression that is visible to the homebuilder, agent, lender and buyer.

Technology that brings transparency to the sales pack and the pipeline will shorten transaction times more than anything else.

Q: In an uncertain market, how can AI give buyers and sellers more confidence throughout the process?

A: Transparency is the single biggest trust lever. AI presents the opportunity to surface more information about every home: running costs, condition and value relative to the local market. 

The housebuilders who get ahead are those who share more upfront, rather than less. Factors like energy efficiency are genuine advantages for new build, and it’s crucial that buyers can see these benefits during the research phase. 

Q: What kinds of data sharing and integration between housebuilders, lenders and marketing platforms will drive the most growth?

A: Standardisation provides the biggest opportunity. We need tighter integration between housebuilder data, marketing partner audiences and lender affordability tools, done in privacy-safe environments. 

This will give buyers a much clearer picture of what they can afford on a specific plot, much earlier, and drive demand. 

Our mortgage calculator on Zoopla is an early example of where lender integration helps buyers make better decisions earlier in the journey. 

Ultimately the partnerships that win will be the ones that share data well.

Q: What does the latest data tell you about buyer intent and purchase timelines, and what does that mean for housebuilders' sales strategies?

A: Completion times are stretching, with recent data showing transactions taking longer to move to completion. 

On the demand side, 58% of new homes users on Zoopla tell us they want to buy within 6 months, and 93% of searches on Zoopla include new homes. So intent is there, but the path to completion is slower. 

Housebuilders should plan for longer sales cycles and engage buyers earlier in their journey. They should lean on data that shows where committed buyers actually are, rather than relying on top-of-funnel traffic alone.

Q: How does Zoopla help developers get in front of committed buyers before they've started comparing plots?

A: Yes, and this is where our data is genuinely different. The earliest signal that someone is in market is when they start tracking their own home's value more frequently.

More than 6 million homeowners now track their property on Zoopla, and 700,000 are serious sellers ready to move in the next 12 months.

That matters because many new home buyers need to sell before they can buy, with recent data showing that less than 30% of new-home buyers are first-time buyers.

We build audiences from that behaviour and intent-score users based on how actively they're engaging with the market.

For developers, that means reaching people earlier, before they've started shortlisting plots. They can achieve this through our remarketing solutions which enable builders to target highly engaged property seekers on external platforms like Google, Facebook and Instagram after they leave Zoopla.