Jeremy Harford-Tapp, co-founder of Homeflow, recently joined David Mintz of Kerfuffle for a webinar covering the topics that matter most to estate agents in 2026: website performance, online valuations, lead management and AI. Here are the key takeaways, with the full video linked at the bottom of this post.
An estate agency website underpins everything else. Social media, email campaigns, SEO, GEO, portal links — all roads eventually lead back to it. And while portals generate higher volumes of applicant leads, the most valuable leads, from prospective vendors and landlords who are ready to act, are disproportionately likely to come from an agent's own site.
Jeremy distilled website performance to two levers: getting more people through the door, and converting more of them once they arrive. His conversion advice was direct: replace email addresses with visible on-page contact forms, and use contrast colours on call-to-action buttons. Simple, measurable, effective.
The data shows that adding an instant valuation product produces more valuations overall. The tools have also matured considerably, so accuracy has improved, user journeys are smoother, and the best implementations now handle the handover to human contact far more elegantly. For agents who remain resistant, Jeremy's argument was pragmatic: the economics are hard to argue with, and the objections are increasingly answerable.
Jeremy referenced a presentation he once titled Mind the Gap: the website is the platform, the CRM is the train, and significant value gets lost in the space between them. Research suggests up to 50% of agency enquiries never receive a meaningful follow-up. Good lead management doesn't have to be complicated — at its most basic, it means every lead visible in one place, with response times that can be measured and the highest-value enquiries directed to the right people.
Jeremy's framing was clear: AI isn't a feature to be adopted or declined, it's gravity. Drawing a comparison to the web 1.0 era, he described the current moment as something that dwarfs every previous wave of digital change, while urging agents not to abandon the basics in the rush to engage with it. The contact form still converts. The contrast-colour button still works. In lead management specifically, he pointed to content generation, email response assistance, chat agents and automated lead scoring as areas where AI is already arriving, with the consistent caveat that high-value transactions will always need a skilled human at the right moment.
Homeflow offers a free mini site doctor and benchmarking reports covering AI visibility — both without obligation.
And here's the full webinar with Jeremy and David:
