The "Return on Investment"

A growing number of property professionals are being shortlisted, or overlooked, before anyone has picked up the phone or visited a website. Google's new Search agents now scan the web continuously on behalf of users, assembling recommendations without a query being typed.

This article looks at what that means for commercial property firms, why the sector faces a specific exposure, and what to do about it.

AI search is reshaping how property firms are found, and the pace of that change has caught most of the sector off guard. At the end of 2025, I set out a view of what 2026 would bring.

Six months in, some of that view has held up well and some has not. This follow-up looks at what's actually happened, what was missed, and what property firms should be preparing for as 2027 comes into view.

Property firms investing in trade press PR are starting to ask a sensible question. If most of the leading trade titles operate behind paywalls, are those placements still doing work in an AI search environment?

The standard advice says no. A closer look at the data, and at the seven leading UK property titles, suggests the picture is rather more nuanced.

In advance of the Shedmasters conference in Lisbon, I was listening to a podcast discussing Global Navigation Satellite Systems, which made me think about how such technology could impact supply chains and logistics real estate.

The podcast started with an observation we all recognise - when we’re driving somewhere familiar, and the SatNav App pipes up: "We've updated your route to save you ten minutes." Mildly useful, mildly irritating, mostly forgettable. But now scale the question. What happens when that same intelligence is applied not to one driver, but to a thousand trucks, each with delivery windows, driver-hour limits, dock slot constraints, and a network of urban spokes feeding off motorway-served regional hubs?

Most commercial property search still works the way it always has. Filter by size, location and price, add a few keywords, and hope the right asset appears. It is a system built on the assumption that the person searching already knows what to ask for. Spatial AI, a field that teaches machines to understand the physical world rather than just read about it, is beginning to challenge that assumption in ways that will matter to anyone who finds, markets or advises on commercial property.

I was recently interviewed by Influence, the magazine of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, about AI search and what the rise of large language models means for online visibility. The article is behind a paywall for the time being, but the conversation got me thinking about something I have believed for a long time and can now point to evidence for: trade press is not a secondary option in a media strategy. In an AI search environment, it may be the most valuable placement you can get.

There is a concept gaining serious traction in the technology world that most people in the property industry have not yet given much thought to. It is called vibe coding, and if a recent research report from Arcano Research is anything to go by, it is not a passing trend. It is a structural shift in how software gets built, and its implications for real estate, for PropTech in particular, are worth considering now rather than later.

AI search now works in a way that is both impressive and slightly unsettling. When someone looks up your business or the services you offer, the systems do not just read your website. They pull information from a mix of sources and blend it into a short answer. That answer is often the first impression people get of you.

This creates a simple question that most businesses are not yet asking. How consistent is the language that surrounds your brand across the web?

Sitting on the balcony of our 30th-floor Airbnb apartment, looking out across the fabulous Dubai Marina, I had a feeling of Déjà vu. While I was a first-time visitor, the view was familiar. Then it struck me, it was almost exactly like the player’s perspective in SimCity 2000, the city-building game that quietly swallowed many hours of my time as a younger man.

Sim City always began the same way. A blank map. A clean grid. A sense that everything was possible if you put the right things in the right places. You zoned land, built housing, added schools and hospitals, laid roads and railways, constructed marinas, ports, international airports and set taxes. You hoped the city held together. From above, urban complexity felt manageable.

A few weeks ago I bumped into an old friend from my days in agency. We started talking about the market and shared some “I heard that…” stories and rumours (some strong, others less reliable) about what was going on, who was doing what, and where the momentum was shifting. Remarks that quietly edited my sense of where the market might be heading.

Anyone in property knows these moments. They are small, often throwaway, yet they sit alongside the formal data points we use to make decisions. We pretend to rely on reports, indices, spreadsheets, and structured briefings, but most of us still operate with a parallel feed of informal intelligence. Information passed across at lunch, murmured in a corridor, hinted at in a marketing meeting or over the phone.

We call it gossip, although most of it is closer to an early-stage market signal than tittle-tattle or scandal.

It was a small detail on a regional agent’s website that caught my eye. A firm with several offices had a single news story sitting proudly on its homepage. It covered a high-profile deal in one, specific location, nothing unusual.

The surprise came later when I checked how an AI summary interpreted the site. It described the business as if it operated only in that one place, narrowing the entire brand to a hyper-local niche.

One prominent story had become the defining signal.

Most commercial property marketing is still built on a simple assumption: that a person is doing the searching.

An agent or broker creates a listing. A marketer might refine the copy. It gets uploaded, and someone on the occupier side scrolls through a portal and decides what to click. Images, wording and calls to action are all designed for a human audience, moving at a human pace. That assumption will not disappear overnight. But it will weaken.

Over the coming years, a growing share of commercial property decisions will be shaped by software acting on behalf of occupiers. Not replacing people, but filtering, ranking and shortlisting options long before a human ever sees them.

This is the shift from B2B (Business to Business) to A2A (Agent to Agent) marketing.

Technology research does not usually make its way into property investment committees.

It should.

The 2026 technology outlook published by Arcano Research is framed as a view on technology and geopolitics, but its underlying message is about control, scarcity, and resilience.

Those are themes commercial real estate understands well.

The biggest shift in commercial property marketing in 2025 wasn't a new platform, it was a new search environment. Driven by Google’s wider access to AI Mode and the continued rise of tools like ChatGPT, the internet quietly drifted toward an answer-led reality. Where a high ranking used to mean a click, today, it means being the trusted source that shapes the AI-generated summary.

These summaries, which now appear on roughly half of all searches, have become a client’s first impression, but they are drawing directly from established press, specialist publications, and companies with rock-solid, structured information.

It was a small remark at Expo Real that set the tone for this piece.

During one of the numerous conference sessions, someone commented steel prices had been oddly quiet this year. Not rising, not falling, just still. It felt unusual after four years of constant movement.

A few developers and construction businesses have echoed the same thing. Their cost conversations have become calmer, almost settled, in a way few had experienced since before the pandemic.

You might think of your homepage as a static mix of text and pictures. Increasingly, it is also a script - and it's being read aloud by AI.

A new, small feature on Android phones, Chrome's "Listen to this page," now uses an AI playback mode to turn any web page into a short, podcast-style audio overview.

Crucially, it doesn’t draw on external data or brand context. It simply reads what's there and decides what matters. Here’s the catch: if your homepage isn’t clearly structured, the summary won't be either, and that’s where the risk for your brand starts.

Once upon a time, if someone wanted to understand the commercial property market, they asked an expert. They picked up the phone to an agent who knew the town, the street and often the very building they were interested in. They trusted the people who walked the estates, collected the data and talked to occupiers every day.

That still happens. It just no longer necessarily happens first, and the first question often goes somewhere else: a search box, often resulting in an AI summary appearing above the links. And unless the artificial intelligence has already learned from what you know, it cannot, will not, reflect your insight.

AI will give an answer, but you may not be part of it.

Google recently compiled 101 real-world generative AI use cases drawn from across a broad spectrum of industry sectors, and it is clear that Artificial intelligence has moved well beyond the lab.

Looking at that list through a commercial property lens, several stand out. These aren’t futuristic ideas, but examples of how AI is already improving how developers, investors, agents and property managers operate day to day.

Google’s latest update limits what the web can see.
On paper, it’s a small technical change, but over the past few weeks, Google quietly changed the way it shows and measures search results.

The knock-on effects are being felt well beyond the marketing world, as it may have big implications for how visible your business is online, and how easily people (and even AI systems) can find you.

Instagram posts for deal announcements, project updates, and corporate content are no longer just for your followers - they're now showing up in Google and Bing search results.

For property professionals, this is potentially a game-changer, creating new opportunities for visibility while also requiring careful thought about what you post (and what you have posted in the past).

AI tools are quickly becoming part of everyday business. They help us find information faster, create content at scale and even answer questions about brands. But with that comes a new risk: "Brand Drift".

Put simply, it’s when AI starts telling your story for you, but gets it wrong.

In an announcement at the end of July 2025, Google launched its AI Mode in the UK, and is set to transform search by prioritising answers over links.

For PR professionals, marketers, content creators, and anyone concerned about business development, this marks a major shift: your audience is now partly machine, and your content must speak to both humans and AI.

There’s a quiet shift happening in search. You might have seen it already in Google’s AI-generated summaries that answer questions right there on the search results page, no clicking required.

It’s convenient for users. But for businesses? It’s a problem hiding in plain sight.

The traditional SEO playbook – create helpful content, aim for high rankings, and await the clicks – is no longer delivering the same results. Increasingly, people are getting the answers they need without ever visiting a website. This makes it harder to measure your visibility and harder still to understand how people are forming impressions of your business.

But here's the thing: even if they don't click, they're still seeing something. The question is, what? And more importantly, is it you?

As the global race to lead in AI heats up, much of the focus has been on talent and technology. But there’s a quieter shift happening - one that’s more physical.

This blog explores how growing geopolitical tensions, especially in the US, are changing the way global firms think about infrastructure investment. It looks at why business certainty matters more than ever, and what that could mean for the UK and Europe - especially when it comes to data centres, office space and logistics.

If AI is the future, where it gets built will matter just as much as who builds it.

Every year, the MIPIM real estate conference in Cannes is a hotspot for industry optimism. Investors, developers, analysts, brokers, politicians, and local authorities all descend on the French Riviera to talk shop - and, let’s be honest, to soak up a bit of early spring sunshine. But this year, the atmosphere felt different. And no, it wasn’t just the three days of relentless rain dampening spirits.

The conversations at MIPIM 2025 had a more serious edge. Big deals were in short supply, and the shadow of economic uncertainty loomed over every panel discussion and networking event. Investors and decision-makers weren’t just talking about opportunities - they were carefully assessing risks. The big question hanging in the air? Is commercial real estate in a downturn, or are we just in the middle of a necessary market reset?

The commercial property market is undergoing a major shift, with occupiers increasingly cautious about committing to new leases. Economic uncertainty, hybrid working, and evolving business priorities have led to a slowdown in lettings - particularly for out-of-town business parks.

At the same time, town and city centre locations are becoming more attractive to occupiers, offering better accessibility, transport links, and a dynamic mix of retail, hospitality, and leisure amenities. This shift presents a growing challenge for business parks, which must work harder to differentiate themselves and demonstrate their unique advantages in an increasingly competitive market.

In 2025, John predicted AI would change everything - I didn’t believe him.

Now, in 2035, I’m writing from a City of London transformed beyond recognition. Offices have been automated, retail has evolved into seamless, AI-powered experiences, and only those who embraced AI-ready infrastructure have survived.

This is the world of tomorrow - are we ready for it?

The way investors, tenants, and property professionals search for commercial real estate information is changing. With the rise of AI-powered search engines, traditional SEO strategies are no longer enough to ensure visibility. Potential occupiers and purchasers are now receiving instant, AI-generated answers to queries like “best office locations for tech startups”, “industrial property market trends 2025”, or “average rental yield for logistics hubs” - often without needing to click on a website.

If your content isn’t optimised for AI-driven search, you risk losing leads to competitors who structure their information better for AI-powered search engines like Google's AI Overviews (AIO) and the Search Generative Experience (SGE).

The commercial real estate market is at a crossroads. With US-China tensions, rising interest rates, and shifting supply chains, investors and property professionals must adapt to an increasingly unpredictable landscape.

How will these global forces shape the future of UK and European real estate? Our latest newsletter, The New Global Economic Playbook: US-China Tensions and European Real Estate, explores the key trends you need to know. 

Geta sneak peek at what’s inside.

At Davos 2025, a panel of AI experts from Google, Meta, and Cambridge University explored the impact of open-source AI on business, innovation, and accessibility and discussed how open-source AI lowers costs, enhances transparency, and accelerates adoption across industries.

This conversation gained even greater relevance with the recent breakthrough of DeepSeek AI, a Chinese-developed chatbot that has shocked the tech industry. Built at a fraction of the cost of models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, DeepSeek’s rise has disrupted global AI markets, challenged industry giants, and highlighted the power of open-source AI.

The global economy is at a turning point, with significant developments in the US reshaping financial markets worldwide. Recent US economic data suggests an overheating economy, characterised by strong job creation, rising interest rates, and a strengthening dollar. These trends have far-reaching implications for commercial property markets in the UK and Europe.

In this article, I break down the key insights covered in our recent LinkedIn newsletter and explore how these changes could impact investors, sectors, and regions.

The search landscape is undergoing a seismic shift. Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming how users discover information and how search engines deliver results.

For UK commercial property professionals - including letting agents, property developers, and asset managers - this presents extraordinary opportunities to elevate their property marketing and services but also introduces significant challenges.

It’s a familiar story that will be repeated up and down the country over the next few weeks and beyond.

Picture a property team preparing to launch its latest development or instruction, or a property company looking to sell a prime asset, or a consultancy looking to promote its latest research... They carefully draft a press release, send it out to the media, mention it on LinkedIn…and wait for the coverage to roll in...

Driven by technological innovation, changing tenant expectations, and shifting economic landscapes, the commercial property market is evolving faster than ever. For those responsible for the marketing and promotion of individual assets, property businesses and professional services within the commercial real estate sector, these changes present opportunities - but also new challenges that can’t be ignored.

As we head into 2025, understanding these emerging trends will be crucial for crafting campaigns that resonate with occupiers, investors, partners and other key stakeholders.

In the post-pandemic world, coworking has evolved from a niche offering for freelancers and startups into a critical solution for businesses, landlords, and building managers.

The widespread adoption of hybrid working has dramatically reduced the amount of space many businesses require, leaving occupiers with surplus office space and landlords seeking innovative ways to maximise occupancy.

Many years ago, on my first day as a trainee surveyor in Guildford, I was given two things to read: the firm's staff handbook and a copy of that week's Estates Gazette - a substantial publication, with over a hundred pages, full of news, views, features and adverts - lots of adverts - for properties of all types and sizes.

I can't tell you anything about the staff handbook...

Are you sitting comfortably?

Then I’ll begin.

Once upon a time, in a vast, virtual, digital realm, not so far away, where the great search engine, Algorithm, ruled - two domains were born...

AI is changing the way we search, and websites are feeling the impact. But does this mean websites are on their way out as powerful PR and marketing tools?

Our latest blog explores how AI-driven search is reshaping digital strategies and what brands can do to keep their websites relevant, engaging, and essential.

Discover why adapting to this new landscape is key to staying ahead.

Do you work in an office? If you do, you'll have a view on the "Return to the Office" debate. I recently heard of someone who was convinced that everyone has now returned to their desks and office life is now the same as it was before the pandemic. I have also met people who have said they have no intention of returning to the Monday-Friday, 9-5 routine ever again.

Whichever side of the fence you're on, one thing is clear, working patterns have changed since COVID-19, and this means the way that property professionals market and promote office space is also changing.

In the world of online PR, headlines are more important than ever. They serve as the first point of contact between your content and your audience - whether that’s potential clients, occupiers, investors, or the media. However, in the digital age, headlines must do more than just catch the eye; they must also capture the attention of search engine spiders and AI robots.

Efficiency is key to staying competitive in today’s fast-paced commercial property market. Whether you’re managing a portfolio of properties, negotiating deals, or promoting transactions, the ability to streamline your processes can have a significant impact on the bottom line.

In March 2024, internal documents from Google, that were accidentally published on GitHub, revealed fascinating insights into how the search engine is adapting to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), with implications for industries, such as real estate, where online visibility is critical.

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, it might be tempting for commercial property professionals to focus solely on online channels like social media, paid ads, and email marketing to boost their visibility.