Utterly Indispensable Podcast for Estate Agents

You’re selling houses. The team is busy. Money is coming into the bank. So why does it feel as though there’s nothing left?

I put that question to Paul Miller, an accountant who has spent over 30 years running his own business. We talk about the gap between turnover, profit and cash in the bank, and why owners can work harder and grow their revenue without becoming any better off.

Paul also challenges us to look at the work we spend our days doing. Are we making time for the decisions that improve the business, or filling every hour with tasks someone else could handle? And with agency fees often arriving months after a sale is agreed, what could we change to get paid sooner?

Paul is preparing to hand his own firm over to his son, so this isn’t just theory. It’s a conversation about knowing your numbers, protecting your profit and building a business that works beyond you.

Connect with Paul on LinkedIn.

What does it take to build an estate agency that sellers actively seek out?

In this episode, I’m joined by Lisa Curran, owner of Currans Unique, a family estate agency that has served Chester and the North West for more than 36 years.

Lisa explains how Currans evolved from a traditional lettings business into an aspirational three-branch brand, known for distinctive homes, exceptional marketing and a very different approach to selling property.

We discuss:

How Currans moved from pushing for business to having sellers come to them

Why they can invest up to £3,000 marketing a single home before earning a penny

The difference between having company values and actually living by them

Why premium fees allow an agent to deliver a genuinely premium service

Creating bespoke campaigns rather than simply taking photographs and uploading them to Rightmove

Building a team that stays, grows and enjoys working together

The realities of running a family business

Growing through new branches and lettings acquisitions

Why authenticity, creativity and human connection will matter even more as AI develops

This is an honest conversation about playing the long game, protecting your standards and building an estate agency people genuinely want to instruct.

When Ric Dawson, CEO of Alto, last joined me on the podcast, Alto Intelligence had only just launched.

Five months later, AI has moved forward at a staggering pace, and so has Alto. But perhaps the most significant change isn’t simply what AI can do. It’s how we will interact with our CRM in the future.

CRM providers have spent years building powerful tools that many estate agents barely use. Not because the tools aren’t valuable, but because the systems are complicated, people work in different ways and, let’s be honest, most agents would rather get on with selling houses than learn another workflow.

AI could change that completely.

In this episode, Ric explains how Alto Intelligence 2.0 could replace endless screens, menus and clicks with a simple natural-language interface. Instead of learning how the CRM works, agents will be able to tell it what outcome they want, by typing or speaking, and let the system work out the most effective process.

We explore Alto’s new AI “skills”, intelligent property matching, automated sales progression and property management, and the ability for agents to build their own workflows simply by describing what they want to achieve.

We also discuss what this means for customer experience, data security, the broker model and the future role of people within estate agency.

The CRM has always had the tools. AI might finally enable agents to use them properly.

Robert May has spent much of his career spotting problems in the property industry before everyone else catches up.

He has influenced material information requirements, challenged unreliable property data, helped shape the technology that became Alto and built rummage4, which was later acquired by CoreLogic. Today, his attention is firmly on the next major shift: how AI will change property search and what estate agents must do to remain visible, relevant and valuable.

In this episode, Robert and I discuss why portal valuations can be dangerously misleading, how good agents distinguish between overvaluing and genuinely understanding a changing market, and why winning instructions means very little if those properties never complete.

We also explore contract-ready listings, material information, the absurdity of sales taking 19 weeks in an age of instant communication and how better preparation helped one agency increase its share of local completions from 19% to 37%.

Most importantly, Robert explains why he is no longer writing solely for humans. He is building the structured information that allows ChatGPT and other AI platforms to understand individual estate agents, their properties and the local expertise that makes them different.

Robert has also been incredibly generous with his time outside the podcast. When I need an honest view on property technology or data, he is my go-to person. He occasionally makes my brain hurt, but it is usually worth it.

Stephen Moss believes independent estate agencies are undervalued. So much so that Sourced Group expects to invest close to £10 million acquiring them by the end of the year.

But this isn’t simply about buying lettings books and bolting them onto a larger operation.

Through Sourced Living, Stephen is combining acquisitions with a franchise model that can fund 100% of the purchase for its franchisees. It’s an ambitious approach that has helped the network grow to more than 50 estate agency and lettings franchisees in just 18 months.

In this episode, Stephen shares his journey from taking a £10,000 pay cut to become a junior negotiator, to building a six-office agency with his dad, experiencing the consequences of the 2008 crash and ultimately creating Sourced Group, which now has more than 250 franchisees across property investment, finance, lettings and estate agency.

We discuss:

Why Stephen believes estate agencies are currently undervalued

Why buying an existing agency can make more sense than opening another branch

How Sourced funds acquisitions for its franchisees

Why people without agency experience must learn the business before taking one over

What is motivating owners to sell, including retirement, compliance and the pace of technological change

How AI is influencing some owners’ decisions about their future

Why estate agency is entering a period of rapid consolidation

Stephen’s ambition to grow Sourced to between 500 and 750 franchisees

This is a conversation about building, buying and eventually selling businesses, and what the next wave of estate agency ownership could look like.

Connect with Stephen Moss on LinkedIn.