What if the portal owned the price — not just the listing?
We price the most expensive purchase of our lives like we'd price a second-hand sofa.
Pick a number on day one.
Defend it for three months.
Cut it when the silence gets too loud.
All the while, the listing screams data at us. Views. Saves. Calls that came, or didn't. Viewings booked and no-shows. How fast comparable homes sold on the same street. We sit on all of it — and still treat the price as a decision frozen before any of that signal arrived.
Every other market stopped this years ago. Airlines, hotels, ride-hailing, e-commerce — all priced off live demand, in real time. Real estate is the one high-stakes market still run on a gut number and a slow, painful, manual discount.
Here's the idea I keep turning over.
What if the portal stopped being a notice board and became the thing responsible for the price?
It already sees demand a broker can only estimate. It could read the object, the street, the competition, how fast the area moves — and the part almost nobody prices: the latent potential. The flat that's worth more split in two. The layout a reconfiguration unlocks. The plot with zoning headroom nobody noticed. Not just "what's this worth as-is," but "what could it become, and what's that worth."
It wouldn't seize control on day one. I'd phase it.
First, it proposes — a full read of the object and a price — and the broker or owner approves. Nothing moves without a human yes.
Then, once there's trust, it manages inside a range they set. They keep the guardrails; it works the number against demand.
And then the uncomfortable part: auction logic. We already know starting below market can end above it — pull in a crowd, let competition do the lifting, engaged buyers carry the price up themselves. We know it works. We just don't trust ourselves to run it, so we leave money on the table almost every time.
But here's the catch I can't get past.
The moment a portal owns the price, it owns the result. And then it can't be paid for the listing — it has to be paid for the outcome. That's not a feature bolted onto a board. It's a different business, and a different balance of power. The portal gives up the comfort of being a neutral pipe. The broker hands over a piece of their craft. Somebody has to be okay with that.
So I don't have clean answers — just questions I keep stopping at:
Brokers — is pricing the part of the job you're proud of, or the part you'd hand to a machine tomorrow if you trusted it?
Sellers — if starting lower reliably ended higher, would you let an algorithm run your sale? Or is a machine pricing your home simply a line you won't cross?
And the quiet one I owe myself: is the data actually good enough yet — or am I describing 2030 and calling it today?
I'm not pitching anything. After enough years watching good homes go stale behind a stubborn number, I can't unsee it — and I'd rather be argued with than agreed with.
Tell me where this breaks.
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Comments from LinkedIn
Louisa Fletcher — PropTech Editor, Show House | Fractional CMO, CIO and Board Advisor | PropTech, estate agency and housebuilder brands | Strategy, compliance-led marketing | AI and digital transformation · 5d
Very interesting idea. However, due to consumer law in the UK, not viable (and with further reform planned around the UK buying and selling process, legislation is likely to become even more stringent in the next couple of years). That’s the short answer - very happy to have a virtual cuppa and explain the long version if useful 😊
Ziuljenas Galeckas (Author) — CEO | 22+ Years in Real Estate | Driving predictable lead generation and revenue growth for portals & real estate companies · 4d
Thanks Louisa Fletcher — I'd be glad to hear the long version. Your experience here clearly runs deep, so your perspective would be useful. I'll send you a message, and a virtual cuppa sounds good. 😊
Anand Chauhan — Helping podcasters & creators turn long-form content into 30+ viral clips/month | Founder @VizN Studio | DM me for a free sample edit · 1w
Comparing real estate to airlines or e-commerce misses the deep emotional attachment buyers have. Dynamic pricing models often struggle with such high-stakes, non-commoditized assets.
Ziuljenas Galeckas (Author) — CEO | 22+ Years in Real Estate | Driving predictable lead generation and revenue growth for portals & real estate companies · 1w
Anand Chauhan Thanks for this — fully agree that emotion is the hard part to price. But from experience, a large share of brokers don't get the price right either, so listings often don't sell, or sell too cheap. That's why I think the first step is collaboration: the broker stays in charge, but is empowered by data to make a well-argued decision. As for the future — we'll see, maybe AI ends up reading emotion better than most of us 😃
Anand Chauhan — Helping podcasters & creators turn long-form content into 30+ viral clips/month | Founder @VizN Studio | DM me for a free sample edit · 1w
Ziuljenas Galeckas totally agreed 👍
Edmund Keith — Head of Content | OnlineMarketplaces.com · 1w
The auction point is something that has been live on portals in Ireland for a while, and it's a mystery (to me at least) why it hasn't taken off elsewhere.
As for the bigger issue you're proposing, it sounds a little bit like what Zillow tried to do (and failed spectacularly) with passing iBuying control to the Zestimate (albeit with no balance sheet risk).
Ziuljenas Galeckas (Author) — CEO | 22+ Years in Real Estate | Driving predictable lead generation and revenue growth for portals & real estate companies · 1w
Thanks Edmund — really good points.
Zillow's the obvious parallel, but the big thing they didn't have back then was AI. And I'd keep the broker in the loop from the start, not hand the keys to an algorithm.
For me the real question isn't the mechanics — it's the principle: could a portal take on more responsibility for the result, and should it?
Healy Hynes — beagel.com · 5d
Agreed 100% Edmund Keith.
Vaidas Šukys — Minimalist Geometric Artist | Real Estate Investor · 1w
Hope the portals aren’t reading this... otherwise their revenues are heading straight to the moon. 🚀
Ziuljenas Galeckas (Author) — CEO | 22+ Years in Real Estate | Driving predictable lead generation and revenue growth for portals & real estate companies · 1w
Vaidas Šukys Ha — let them read it 😄 I think the window of opportunity really is opening. If portals go deeper and take more ownership of the actual outcome, growing revenue is very realistic. To the moon indeed 🚀