'Homes AI': for the few?

I don't know - you wait years for traditional property portals to launch AI search then two come along in the same week ...

This week, CoStar - owner of OnTheMarket here in the UK - joined Rightmove from a few days before and launched a feature called 'Homes AI' on Homes.com in the States.

Conversational search. Voice and text. No more filters. AI that adapts to the person, not the other way round.

Sound familiar?

This is exactly what we've been building with MyPorta. And what I've been telling anyone who'll listen - across 100 stops (and counting) on the 'Rightmove Resistance' / 'AI in EA' tours - for the past year.

Filters are dead. The portal as we have known it is over. That's not just me saying it anymore - Andy Florance, CEO of the second-largest property portal in America, agrees.

The "wow" phase of AI in property search is arriving. But the next phase won't be about wow. It'll be about trust.

Because once an AI is helping you choose where to live - and what to pay, who to use, what to believe - small nudges matter:

→ which homes get surfaced 

→ what agents get framed as "best" 

→ how "value" is explained 

→ when you're quietly steered towards a listing or agent who's paid more to be there ...

Homes AI keeps everything inside CoStar's (and soon OnTheMarket's) walled garden. Their data. Their ecosystem. Their terms. Agents get leads - as long as they pay to play. And CoStar has been crystal clear that it intends to get to profitability via agent fees in the next two years ...

This is where MyPorta is very different.

Our focus is simple: trust. Property and agent discovery stays neutral. No sponsored answers. No pay-to-rank. Free listings. Free leads. Revenue from serving consumers well, not from extracting fees from agents.

If you're an agent thinking about paying for this visibility, it's worth asking: what is CoStar's AI hiding inside its black box? And is it really - really - going to be of long-term benefit to you?