# Real estate: when you ask AI for an estate agent, who does it recommend?

> When someone asks ChatGPT or Gemini for “an agency to sell my flat in Toulouse” or “someone to manage my studio in Montpellier”, does the AI name a network agency, an independent agency, a self-employed agent or a listing portal? We analysed nearly 13,500 answers to real estate questions that name no company: selling, valuation, buying, buy-to-let, renting and letting management.

Canonical page: https://directory.wispra.com/ai-barometer/real-estate
Edition: 1 · October 2026 · Answers collected from April 1, 2026 to October 5, 2026
All barometers: https://directory.wispra.com/ai-barometers

## Key figures

- 53–62% of answers to a local question recommend a specific agency first, network or independent (manual coding – automatic measure).
- 78% when people look for a professional, the AI names an agency first. When they look for a property, portals come first (69%).
- 53% of the agencies named by the AI are independent agencies.
- 1 in 4 only: the same question, asked again a week later, gives the same first recommendation.

## AI does not replace the estate agent: it replaces the shop window

On a local question, the first recommendation is a specific agency, network or independent, in 62% of answers according to the automatic measure (95% CI 59–65), and in 53% of a sample of 240 answers coded by hand. Portals and other online services come first in 26% of cases. It all depends on what the person is looking for.

What the AI recommends first, by what the person is looking for: 
- Looking for a professional: A specific network agency 45.9% · An independent agency 31.6% · A network, no agency named 2.9% · A portal or online service 14.9% · Another player or none 4.7%
- Looking for a property: A specific network agency 9.8% · An independent agency 11.5% · A network, no agency named 2.8% · A portal or online service 69.4% · Another player or none 6.5%
- Looking for information: A specific network agency 9.1% · An independent agency 15.4% · A network, no agency named 4.8% · A portal or online service 45.4% · Another player or none 25.3%

What the AI recommends first, by need: 
- Selling: A specific network agency 51.1% · An independent agency 25.7% · A network, no agency named 4.1% · A portal or online service 14.9% · Another player or none 4.2%
- Valuation: A specific network agency 38.0% · An independent agency 23.9% · A network, no agency named 4.3% · A portal or online service 30.4% · Another player or none 3.4%
- Buying: A specific network agency 28.7% · An independent agency 22.8% · A network, no agency named 2.8% · A portal or online service 36.8% · Another player or none 9.0%
- Buy-to-let: A specific network agency 28.4% · An independent agency 33.8% · A network, no agency named 2.9% · A portal or online service 27.3% · Another player or none 7.6%
- Renting (tenant): A specific network agency 37.7% · An independent agency 16.7% · A network, no agency named 2.5% · A portal or online service 35.2% · Another player or none 7.8%
- Letting management: A specific network agency 41.3% · An independent agency 31.4% · A network, no agency named 3.0% · A portal or online service 17.1% · Another player or none 7.3%
- Commercial real estate: A specific network agency 15.9% · An independent agency 36.9% · A network, no agency named 1.4% · A portal or online service 13.9% · Another player or none 31.9%

What the AI recommends first, by town size: 
- Large city: A specific network agency 36.3% · An independent agency 27.1% · A network, no agency named 4.1% · A portal or online service 22.7% · Another player or none 9.5%
- Mid-sized town: A specific network agency 36.0% · An independent agency 24.0% · A network, no agency named 2.8% · A portal or online service 29.6% · Another player or none 7.7%
- Small town: A specific network agency 36.2% · An independent agency 30.4% · A network, no agency named 2.7% · A portal or online service 22.6% · Another player or none 8.0%

## Independent agencies compete on equal terms with the networks

At least one specific agency is named in 82% of local answers, 3.4 on average. And the AI does not reserve that place for big brands: 53% of the agencies it names are independent agencies.

- Independent agencies: 66.6% (first 26.0%)
- Agency networks: 63.0% (first 32.3%)
- Listing portals: 38.3% (first 14.6%)
- Online valuation: 26.5% (first 9.1%)
- Online letting & management: 15.3% (first 3.2%)
- Property managers: 14.0% (first 3.7%)
- Self-employed agent networks: 9.6% (first 1.4%)
- Banks & brokers: 7.1% (first 1.4%)
- Insurers & services: 3.4% (first 1.1%)

## Estate agency networks: cited branch by branch

Orpi is the most cited network, in 41% of local answers, and stays first outside the questions built from its own agencies (39.5%). When the AI cites a franchise, it nearly always names a specific branch; when it cites a self-employed agent network, it usually stops at the brand.

Network: cited · agency named · cited first · conversion · cited outside the network's own questions (local questions)
- Orpi: 41.0% · 37.0% · 13.1% · 90% · 39.5%
- Laforêt: 31.7% · 29.3% · 6.4% · 92% · 29.8%
- Century 21: 21.7% · 19.5% · 3.1% · 90% · 21.7%
- Nestenn: 18.2% · 17.0% · 2.9% · 93% · 18.2%
- Guy Hoquet: 10.6% · 9.9% · 1.1% · 94% · 9.5%
- Citya: 9.3% · 7.2% · 2.2% · 78% · 9.3%
- L'Adresse: 7.1% · 6.6% · 1.3% · 93% · 4.2%
- Arthurimmo: 5.0% · 4.7% · 2.2% · 93% · 0.7%
- Foncia: 4.2% · 3.0% · 0.9% · 72% · 4.2%
- ERA Immobilier: 3.4% · 3.1% · 0.4% · 91% · 3.4%
- Solvimo: 2.9% · 2.3% · 0.1% · 81% · 2.9%
- Imop: 2.7% · 0.4% · 0.3% · 16% · 2.7%
- Capifrance: 2.7% · 1.4% · 0.3% · 51% · 2.7%
- Square Habitat: 2.7% · 1.9% · 0.6% · 72% · 2.7%
- IAD: 2.5% · 0.6% · 0.4% · 24% · 2.2%
- Human Immobilier: 1.9% · 1.8% · 0.4% · 92% · 1.9%
- Nexity: 1.9% · 1.2% · 0.2% · 60% · 1.9%
- Stéphane Plaza Immobilier: 1.8% · 1.5% · 0.2% · 86% · 1.8%
- Engel & Völkers: 1.7% · 1.6% · 0.3% · 94% · 1.7%
- Barnes: 1.5% · 1.2% · 0.3% · 77% · 1.5%

Conversion = share of answers citing the network that also name one of its agencies or agents. “Outside its own questions” = presence measured only on questions built from agencies of other networks or from independent agencies.

The questions are built from the towns and services of a panel of agencies, including agencies of the Orpi, Laforêt, Guy Hoquet, L'Adresse and Arthurimmo networks: these networks are cited more often there. The last column removes that effect. {b3} and {b4}, third and fourth, are almost absent from the panel.

## In each town, the AI knows 7 networks and 13 independent agencies

Share of towns where the network has a regularly named agency (At least 3 local answers name one of its agencies · towns with at least 20 local answers): 
- Laforêt: 92%
- Orpi: 91%
- Nestenn: 84%
- Century 21: 83%
- Guy Hoquet: 46%
- Citya: 46%
- L'Adresse: 36%
- Foncia: 34%
- ERA Immobilier: 31%
- Solvimo: 31%

- The towns studied are those of the panel's agencies: the networks present there are favoured. No result is published town by town.

## Selling, renting, letting management: each need has its winners

The three most cited players for each need: 
- Selling: Orpi 52% · Laforêt 37% · Century 21 29% · Independent agencies 72%
- Valuation: Meilleurs Agents 50% · Orpi 40% · SeLoger 32% · Independent agencies 65%
- Buying: Orpi 32% · Meilleurs Agents 31% · SeLoger 30% · Independent agencies 56%
- Buy-to-let: Orpi 37% · Laforêt 28% · Meilleurs Agents 24% · Independent agencies 72%
- Renting (tenant): SeLoger 45% · Orpi 40% · Laforêt 34% · Independent agencies 55%
- Letting management: Orpi 47% · Laforêt 43% · Manda 23% · Independent agencies 80%
- Commercial real estate: CBRE 27% · BNP Paribas Real Estate 27% · SeLoger 22% · Independent agencies 74%

## Price per m², valuation, notary: the AI looks for benchmarks

- 22% of answers give a price per m², and 38% of buying answers.
- 29% of answers mention the notary, and 55% of buying answers: the notary is presented as the neutral judge of value.
- 55% of valuation answers cite an online tool; yet a specific agency still comes first in 62% of local valuation answers.

## What the AI reads before recommending an agency

ChatGPT cites 7.4 sources per answer on average. Network agency pages appear in 54% of answers, and public and notarial websites make up 18% of the sources cited.

- Public sites & notaries: 18.3%
- Independent agency sites: 17.3%
- Network branch pages: 16.2%
- Listing portals: 9.1%
- Network national sites: 9.0%
- Valuation & price data: 4.3%
- Documents (PDF, fee schedules): 4.3%
- Media & guides: 3.4%
- Online management & agencies: 2.6%
- Directories & reviews: 1.7%

How often the cited network is recommended first (Depending on what the AI read from it before answering): 
- Its agency page: 24.8%
- Another page of the network: 16.1%
- No page of the network: 10.4%

This is a correlation: the AI also reads the page of the agency it has chosen. The gap remains outside the networks whose agencies were used to build the questions (19% against 10%).

## Gemini cites more independents, but without addresses

Gemini cites at least one independent agency in 94% of its answers, against 66% for ChatGPT. It gives an address in only 5% of cases, against 34%, and more often puts a network first without a specific agency (15.5% against 2.7%).

Gemini has been observed since July 31, 2026, on more than 500 answers: these gaps are signals, to be confirmed in the next edition.

## An AI recommendation is never secured

- 25% of cases only give the same first player as a week earlier.
- 5% of cases only give the same top three.
- 26% of the players cited reappear from one week to the next, on average.
- 29% of first recommendations go to the three players most often cited first: recommendations are widely spread.

## Five levers for an agency or a network

1. **A complete page per agency** — Address, opening hours, team, services, area covered, reviews: it is the source that most often comes with a first-place recommendation.
2. **Clear, comparable information** — Address, phone, published fees: the AI picks them up and compares agencies, especially in letting management.
3. **Make each agent identifiable** — For self-employed agent networks: one local page per agent, with their area, sales and reviews, to go from the brand to the person.
4. **Publish price benchmarks by neighbourhood** — Price per m², time to sell, rents: the AI looks for figures and cites the ones it finds.
5. **Measure every week** — The first recommended player changes from one week to the next: only a continuous measure, town by town, shows where to act.

## How this barometer was built

- The corpus. Nearly 23,500 AI answers collected from April 1, 2026 to October 5, 2026. Nearly 13,500 are retained, on nearly 3,500 distinct questions and more than 250 towns; nearly 12,500 answer a local question.
- The questions. They are written like real requests from individuals and professionals: selling, valuation, buying, buy-to-let, renting, letting management, commercial real estate. Each question is asked again every week. Each one was classified one by one, with the help of an AI: main need, local or not, looking for a professional, a property or information, individual or professional. Mortgages, works, property surveys and holiday lets are excluded.
- No company in the questions. We excluded every question that names an agency, a network, a portal or a person (26% of search questions), as well as all brand comparison and brand perception questions.
- The AIs queried. ChatGPT through the OpenAI API (gpt-5-nano with web search, located in France). Gemini through the Google API (Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite with Google Search grounding), since July 31, 2026. Calls are made without an account or history: answers are close to those of the consumer apps, without being identical.
- How a player is counted. A player is “cited” if it appears in the text of the answer or, for ChatGPT, in a cited source, and “first” if it is the first player named in the text. Networks, portals and platforms come from a dictionary of more than 160 brands in 11 families. Blind manual coding of 240 randomly drawn answers gives a precision of 98.5% and a recall of 99.4% on brands.
- Specific agency. A network agency is “named” when the answer points to a specific branch: agency name, town, address, phone or agency page. For a self-employed agent network, only an identifiable agent counts. Manual check: precision 93.8%, recall 95.1%. The share of answers that recommend a specific agency first is 60% with the automatic measure and 53% with manual coding of the same sample: we publish the range.
- Independent agencies. They are identified among the entities named in each answer (name and website), excluding institutions, media, directories and neighbouring trades (notaries, surveyors, mortgage brokers). This is the least precise measure: figures on independents are orders of magnitude.
- Towns and margins of error. Town size comes from official population figures (geo.api.gouv.fr). 95% confidence intervals are computed by resampling clustered by panel agency, since answers from the same territory are not independent. No result is published below 200 answers.
- Limits and panel bias. The questions are built from the towns and services of a panel of agencies, including agencies of the Orpi, Laforêt, Guy Hoquet, L'Adresse and Arthurimmo networks, and independent agencies. These networks are therefore cited more often: the ranking also publishes their presence outside the questions built from their own agencies. The results describe these territories, not the whole of France. No agency-level data is published. Wispra appears in 0.1% of ChatGPT answers and 4.4% of Gemini answers; it is excluded from the rankings.
- Next edition. January 2027.

To cite this barometer: Wispra, AI Real Estate Barometer, edition #1, October 2026. https://directory.wispra.com/ai-barometer/real-estate

## FAQ

**Does AI recommend estate agencies or portals?** Both, depending on the question. On a local question, the first recommendation is a specific agency, network or independent, in 53–62% of answers. When people look for a professional, that share rises to 78%; when they look for a property, portals come first in 69% of cases.

**Does the network ranking depend on the choice of questions?** Partly. The questions are built from a panel of agencies, including agencies of the Orpi, Laforêt, Guy Hoquet, L'Adresse and Arthurimmo networks, which are cited more often there. That is why the ranking also publishes each network's presence outside the questions built from its own agencies: Orpi stays first (39.5%).

**Can an independent estate agency be recommended by ChatGPT?** Yes: 53% of the agencies named by the AI are independent agencies, and 68% of local answers cite at least one. AI does not favour big brands; it cites the agencies it can read and locate.

**Why does AI rarely cite the agents of self-employed agent networks?** When the AI cites IAD, it names a specific agent in only 24% of cases, against at least 90% for the top four agency networks. It knows self-employed agent networks by their brand, rarely by their people: one local page per agent is the most direct lever.

**Do ChatGPT and Gemini give the same answers?** No. Gemini cites at least one independent agency in 94% of its answers, against 66% for ChatGPT, but almost never gives an address. And from one week to the next, the same question gives the same first player in only 25% of cases.

**How can I find out whether AI recommends my agency?** Wispra measures every week where each agency stands in AI answers, town by town and against its local competitors, and helps improve it. Book a meeting to see the measure for your agency or network.