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AI property search is no longer a future concept reserved for abstract conversations at industry events. It’s already here.

Across the industry, property portals are launching conversational search, free-text queries, and AI agents that allow users to search in their own words rather than through rigid filters. Platforms like TravelTime customers Jitty and Homes.com (part of CoStar Group) are already redefining discovery by using NLP to understand property hunters’ true intent, not just tick-box criteria.

Instead of ticking filters, users can now say what they actually mean: “A two-bed in East London, max. £500k, near green space, close to a station, and within 40 minutes by public transport to work.”

This shift is powerful. But despite the progress, most AI property searches are still missing a critical ingredient: time.

Beyond Filters: Property Search Shifts to Real Discovery

One of the biggest changes AI has brought to property search is its ability to serve people who don’t yet know where they want to live.

At Zoopla, more than 20% of property seekers don’t know their desired location at the start of their search. Historically, portals had no real way to support these users — they had to leave, research, and come back once they’d narrowed things down.

As Ben Amos, Senior Product Manager at Zoopla, explains:

“For a very long time, we just had to hope that these users would do their own research and come back to Zoopla to perform this final search. Now, with TravelTime, we can help these users much earlier on in their property search journey, providing a more personalised discovery process based on what they need to be near, how long they want to travel, and by what transport mode.”

AI property search is particularly powerful in early-stage discovery, allowing users to build a picture of their ideal property in a way that suits them. But this discovery only works if the AI understands what shapes people’s decisions. And more often than not, a key factor is real-world, time-based proximity.

People Don’t Think in Distance

When people talk about where they want to live, they don’t think in miles or postcodes. They think in minutes.

10 minutes’ walk to a park
15 minutes to the nearest station
40 minutes to work by public transport
< 2-hour drive to Mum’s house

Time is how people evaluate convenience, safety, routine, and lifestyle. This is reflected in Jitty's user data where travel time is one of the most requested elements in their free-text property searches.

Two homes can be equally “close” on a map when using distance but feel completely different in reality. This makes intuitive sense. Proximity is about independence, daily lifestyle choices, flexibility, and access to the things that really matter.

As the Jitty team puts it: “TravelTime is at the heart of how people discover places in a truly natural, human way, and it [TravelTime API] works brilliantly.”

Time is not an edge case. It’s central to how people imagine their lives in a new place.

Hidden Weakness in AI Property Searches

Most property portals already have strong foundations for AI search.

They have existing data including, bedrooms, price, property type, addresses, and years of historical filter behaviour. AI models can be excellent at mapping free-text queries onto this data.

But when it comes to vital insights into real commute times, walkability, and transport access, many portals fall short. A common ‘fix’ is using straight-line distance to approximate the journey times.

Distance is a poor substitute for time. It ignores:

Transport networks
Mode of travel
Walking routes
Congestion, peak vs off-peak conditions, and service frequency

The result? Search that may seem intelligent on the surface but returns results that don’t align with how people actually live.

This is exactly the problem AI search leaders are trying to solve. As Andy Florance, Founder and CEO of CoStar Group, explains:

“Too many users struggle with clunky filters and rigid forms that make finding the right home more difficult than it should be. We intentionally built Smart Search to remove those barriers – to allow people to simply ask for what they want, in their own words, and see accurate, personalized results instantly.”

Accuracy is the key word here. Without real, up-to-date journey time data, personalisation has a ceiling. And the promise of personalisation via AI search which returns poorly matched results creates user frustration and increased site exits.

That's not good for anyone.

Why Time Is the Missing Piece in AI Property Search

AI property search is fundamentally about understanding intent to deliver well-matched results that convert. And a huge proportion of intent is time-based.

Using time as a key factor in property hunting:

Grounds AI search in real life
Enables meaningful trade-offs (space vs commute, price vs access)
Helps users imagine daily routines and lifestyle
Turns location from static to dynamic and experiential

When AI understands time, it stops asking “Is this property nearby?” and starts answering “Does this property fit this person’s life?”

Powering Time-Aware AI Search with TravelTime

TravelTime provides the missing infrastructure that allows AI property search to work the way users expect.

The TravelTime API delivers accurate, real-world journey time data for walking, cycling, driving, and public transport – calculated in an instant across real transport networks, not straight-line distances. And TravelTime delivers unlimited responses for one fixed cost.

For property portals and AI agents, this means:

Millions of journey time calculations in delivered milliseconds for all of your users, globally
Fixed-cost pricing that scales predictably, so you can build without compromise
Seamless integration into AI search, ranking, and recommendations

Jitty Co-founder and CTO, Daniel Cooper, shares the power of TravelTime H3 endpoint:

“With TravelTime H3, we went from rendering complex polygons to a simple, elegant hex grid that clicks with users. It's easier to process, easier to filter, and way faster to display.”

Learn more about TravelTime H3 and our other endpoints.

Time-based discovery that reflects how people actually move. This is why TravelTime is already powering discovery on leading portals - enabling greater engagement, better personalisation, and more confident decision-making that converts users.

Join The Future of AI Property Search

AI has transformed how people search for homes. But intelligence without context and accurate, user-centred underlying data can only go so far.

The next generation of AI property portals won’t just understand what users type and speak. They’ll understand what users value. And a critical part that shapes that is time.

Why Travel Times Are the Missing Piece in AI Property Search