New portal by-passes agents and charges sellers to list

A new property website relying heavily on Artificial Intelligence allows sellers to by-pass estate agents and instead list directly for £14.99 a time.

Through a series of algorithms determined by the activities of the user, the site - Slam Ai Club - claims to be able to estimate the value of any property in the UK.

“Our portal is designed to make the house buying process more straightforward by making real estate data available to everyone rather than a select few giant property website or agents” explains David Surkov, the Slam Ai Club founder.

“We’re using an algorithm which takes into account a wide range of factors to predict prices including transaction data from Land Registry since 1995, geo-location data from Google and Royal Mail databases, financial markets data and records from the Office of National Statistics“ he adds. 

Buyers record properties they have visited and add descriptions, notes and photos; then the portal can also be used to create shortlists of properties sharing similar characteristics. 

Owners looking to sell or let a property can do so directly through the website - without an agent. 

But Kurkov says agents will still want to use his website “to add it to their exiting suite of customer services.”

The service is free to buyers while sellers and landlords are charged £14.99 for each property listing.

“It is an undeniable trend that every industry is moving towards a peer-to-peer model, trying to reduce reliance in intermediaries and thus reduce costs to all parties. It hasn’t yet happened in property industry, although success of Airbnb shows that it is possible” says Kurkov.