Field Report · UK Deep Dive · 2026-05-01
The Jitty story —
and the UK battle map
In 2023, three Deliveroo alumni — formerly at Klarna and Wise — set out to take UK buyer attention back from Rightmove. Two years on they have 3M users, zero paid acquisition, and Sequoia and REA Group on the cap table. But the real UK AI home-search battlefield isn't only Jitty.
01 · Jitty Profile
30 months · zero to 3M users
Pre-seed to Seed took 23 months — a slow burn, but each product step is legible: NL search, then image search, then neighbourhood, then conversational agent. Last public release was the Homebuying Assistant beta on 2026-03-24.
Total raised
$5.8M
2023 pre-seed $2M (Gradient Ventures) + 2025 seed $3.8M (REA Group)
User base
3M
cumulative users at 2026-03 (six months earlier: 500K searches)
Paid acquisition
$0
fully organic · NL search drives 75% of behaviour
Three founders · all early Deliveroo
GP
Graham Paterson
CEO · Co-founder
Wise (formerly TransferWise) → Klarna product → Deliveroo. Henley Business School (University of Reading), 2010 O2 Scholarship.
JS
James Storer
CPO · Co-founder
Deliveroo / Freetrade / Habito / Klarna. Habito is the well-known UK mortgage-fintech — property + fintech double background.
DC
Daniel Cooper
CTO · Co-founder
Deliveroo Senior Engineer / Duffel / Hopin. All three came out of Deliveroo — classic same-tour founding team.
Funding + product timeline
2023-08-29
Pre-seed $2M · led by Gradient Ventures
Gradient Ventures (Google's AI fund) led, with follow-ons from
Sequoia · Atomico · True Global · ex-Zoopla COO and other angels. "Ex-Zoopla COO put money in" carried real PR weight.2023-09 mid
Public launch · NLP + LLM + floorplan CV
First-cut features: natural-language search, LLM parsing of listing descriptions, computer vision reading floorplans. LLM-first by DNA, not bolted on.
2025-01-27
Search by Photo · reverse image search
Upload an image, run nearest-neighbour visual matching across the UK property index. Product Hunt billed it as "the first AI-powered photo search for homes."
2025-03-24
Neighbourhood Features
Search by neighbourhood vibe + architectural style, with £/sq.ft area medians attached. Canonical query: "Within 90 minutes of Paddington, near a good primary, Victorian terrace."
2025-07-30
Seed $3.8M · led by REA Group
$3.8M / £2.8M, led by REA Group (parent of Australia's realestate.com.au), with Goodwater Ventures and Gradient following. CEO said the round would "accelerate rollout, expand partnerships, build the future home-buying experience." 23 months after pre-seed.2025-11-13
Milestone · 500K searches
25% MoM growth, zero paid acquisition; 75% of users on NL search rather than filters. Andrew Stanton noted that Rightmove does more than 500K daily — a 100×+ scale gap.
2026-02
Partnership with Keyzy · rent-to-own gateway
Plugged Keyzy's rent-to-own inventory into Jitty, beginning to fold "non-traditional purchase paths" into search results.
2026-03-24
Homebuying Assistant · conversational search beta
Crossed
3M cumulative users; opened a waitlist. Pitch: reduce fall-throughs by surfacing dealbreakers before viewings. The press never disclosed a fall-through delta number.User growth · 2025–2026
Note that media flipped from "searches" to "users" after 2026-03 — sanity check, not strict apples-to-apples
2025-08
250K searches
2025-11
500K searches
2026-03
3M users
Caveat · not findable on Companies House
No matching limited company surfaces on a public search
Searching "JITTY" against Companies House returns three hits, none of them this PropTech: 09119704 is an old Nottingham firm; 15117384 is a dissolved space transport SIC; 16312212 was registered 2025-03-12 at a residential address that doesn't read like VC-backed HQ. The PropTech may trade under a different holding or trading name. Serious diligence requires PitchBook / Beauhurst.
Business model · CEO direct quote
"We won't charge estate agents to list their homes, ever"
Jitty will never charge agents listing fees — the inverse of Rightmove and Zoopla's core revenue model. Stated revenue path: advertising + premium features (not specified). Existing agent partnerships include Nested, Meyers, Boardwalk, Keller Williams Scotland, Keyzy.
02 · Other UK Players
Jitty isn't alone,
but no one's on the same axis
Nine AI PropTechs have raised in the UK, but none of them is doing consumer buyer-side discovery on the same axis as Jitty. Most are B2B for estate agents; the rest play in investor / lettings / shared ownership. That's a clean opening for wheretolive.
Six others that have raised
Stairpay
UK · 2024
Automation for shared ownership staircasing — buying additional equity in a home you already part-own. Partners with Clarion, Places for People, Share to Buy. Their AI is process automation + valuation data, not LLM-first.
£750K Pre-seed · 2024-07-30 · vs wheretolive: not competing; possible partner channel
Martello
Bristol · 2024
AI environmental risk reports for the conveyancing stage — flooding, subsidence, contamination. Sells to law firms, intervenes mid-late in the deal. Risk dimensions overlap with wheretolive, but distribution is completely different.
£1.2M Seed · 2025-05-15 · vs wheretolive: methodology source we can publish back
Property Sense
Stockport · BTR
Lease-up acceleration software for the BTR (Build-to-Rent) industry. Self-serve platform + CRM/PMS integrations. Marketing says "ML," but specifics aren't disclosed. Sells to BTR operators, no consumer touchpoint.
£2M Series A · 2025-08-27 · vs wheretolive: no overlap
Rentr
UK · lettings
End-to-end app for landlords and tenants: Rightmove + Zoopla syndication, Equifax referencing, e-contracts, automated rent collection, AI damage reporting (photo → report), AI Q&A.
$2M Seed · vs wheretolive: no overlap, lettings side
Lendlord
UK / IL · BTL
BTL portfolio management plus real-time deal analysis on listings, BRR/flip GDV estimates, cash-flow snapshots. The "paste the asking price → get yield" surface is a strong template if wheretolive ever ships a BTL mode.
$2M Seed · 2021-08 · vs wheretolive: borrow the deal-analyser UI
Conduit
UK / Global · YC W24
Not a buyer agent. An AI operating system for short-term rental and multi-family operators — leasing / onboarding / scheduling / retention via voice + SMS agents. B2B PMS shape.
$3.1M Seed · vs wheretolive: different surface
B2B for estate agents · not competitors, observation set
Reapit (RAI)
UK · legacy PMS + AI
Legacy estate agency PMS bolting on AI "digital colleagues." Early 2026 saw a Listing Concierge launch plus predictive lead scoring. Internal agency tooling.
B2B agency · not consumer-facing
Street.co.uk Cortex
UK · AI agency tools
AI customer conversations for estate agencies — auto-drafted emails, auto-booked viewings. The Negotiator called this lead-gen interface a "game-changer."
B2B agency workflow
Yield
UK · young team
AI conversation harvests valuations / mortgages / conveyancing leads back to agencies. Plays the agency lead-gen funnel.
B2B lead gen
Coadjute
UK · AML digital human
First UK estate-agency "digital human" focused on AML — automating client compliance.
B2B compliance
03 · Regulation Map
Three pieces landing at once ·
the window is opening
RRA Phase 2 in force today, RICS AI standard in force March, ICO AI Code in force 5-12. Whichever AI home-search startup ships transparency / opt-out / audit-trail first owns the "regulator-ready" differentiator in the UK.
Renters' Rights Act 2025 · rollout roadmap
Royal Assent on 2025-10-27, phased over five stages. Note: the Decent Homes Standard does not extend to PRS today — the timeline runs to at least 2035.
2025-12-27Phase 1
Core-clause prep window opens · government publishes draft secondary legislation · landlord compliance consultation
2026-05-01Phase 2 · Today
Main reforms in force:
- Section 21 "no-fault" eviction · abolished
- All existing ASTs convert to Assured Periodic Tenancies (APTs)
- No more fixed terms; tenants can leave with monthly notice
- Section 8 requires lawful grounds (with new ones added)
- Rent increases capped at once every 12 months, at market rate
- Bidding wars / asking-above-list banned
- Mandatory acceptance of pensioners / benefit recipients / families with children / pets
Late 2026Phase 4 pilot
Private Rented Sector Database regional pilot (mandatory registration + annual fee)
2027Phase 4 full
PRS Database rolls out nationally
2028+Phase 3
Mandatory PRS Landlord Ombudsman
~2035Phase 5
Decent Homes Standard extended to PRS (year still under government review, possibly 2037)
RICS AI Standard
in force 2026-03-09
Binds all RICS-registered surveyors and regulated firms. Four duties: sufficient understanding / data governance policy / professional oversight on material AI output / written notice to clients of AI use, with opt-out.
For wheretolive: not directly binding on the consumer surface, but if the goal is to white-label valuations to surveyors / agents, this standard is the product spec
ICO AI Code
in force 2026-05-12
Parliament passed the Code of Practice on AI & Automated Decision-Making rules on 2026-04-21. The ICO must draft a statutory Code; consultation, then final. Three asks: transparency, bias, redress.
For wheretolive: AI scoring = automated decision. Methodology must be documented, bias testing performed, appeals path published
Estate Agents Act 1979
where the line is
Discovery + evaluation = not regulated. Submitting offers / negotiating on a client's behalf = regulated, must join The Property Ombudsman or PRS redress. Jitty's "buyer agent" is brand voice — the product doesn't actually negotiate, hence not in scope yet.
Red line: the moment buyer representation ships, you join TPO/PRS
UK PropTech investment
Beauhurst data
Peak £507.5M in 2021 → £192.4M in 2024 → £230.4M in 2025. Total still well under half of peak, but AI-only sub-segments are gaining share annually — the dominant 2025-26 capital channel.
PropTech overall is cool; AI is the relatively warm sub-segment
04 · Battle Map
Four-way compare · pick your row
The real competitive grid Rightmove / Zoopla / Jitty / wheretolive form on the UK buyer side.
| Rightmove | Zoopla | Jitty | wheretolive | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traffic base | 140M MUV | ~50–70M MUV | 3M cumulative users | early stage |
| AI investment | £12M / year + ChatGPT app | OpenAI enterprise | LLM-first DNA · full-stack | scoring + recommendations |
| Business model | Agent listing fees | Agent listing fees | Never charges agents | user side |
| Core capability | Big-and-broad listings | Big-and-broad + deep data | Buyer discovery engine | Buyer-decision evaluation |
| "Should I buy" axis | None | Limited | None | 5-axis score + health check |
| RICS / ICO ready | Not disclosed | Not disclosed | Not disclosed | window of opportunity |
05 · Takeaways
Five decision inputs
i
Jitty isn't a competitor, it's upstream
Jitty does discovery ("which homes are worth a look"), wheretolive does decision support ("is this one good"). Complementary > competitive. Jitty already partners with 5+ agency networks but has
no evaluation layer — there's a partnership conversation to be had about embedding wheretolive scores on Jitty listing pages.ii
The real competitors are Rightmove + Zoopla
They've already absorbed AI into their traffic surfaces. wheretolive must differentiate on evaluation depth — they can't horizontally combine EPC + schools + crime + flooding + area trend, because they only have listing data, no
external risk + lifestyle data.iii
Regulation window: 2026-05 through year-end
RRA Phase 2 in force today (consumers re-evaluating tenure choices), ICO AI Code in force 5-12, RICS AI standard already live. Now is the moment to play the "AI transparent + regulator-ready" card — shipping
AI disclosure / opt-out / audit trail ahead of Jitty turns into a moat.iv
3M users isn't MAU · don't misread
Press flipped from "searches" to "users" without a reconciliation. Extrapolating from 25% MoM growth and a 500K search baseline, actual monthly active probably sits in 50K–300K (sanity-check estimate, not disclosed). Still order-of-magnitude smaller than Rightmove's 140M MUV.
v
UK B2C buyer-side: only Jitty is on the same axis
Of the nine UK AI PropTechs scanned, none does consumer buyer-side discovery on Jitty's axis. Stairpay (post-SO market), Martello (B2B legal), Property Sense (BTR), Rentr (lettings), Lendlord (BTL landlord), Conduit (PMS) all play next door. Reapit / Street / Yield / Coadjute are B2B for agents. Same axis = Jitty alone — both the good news and the warning: complement or differentiate, never go head-on with the same offer.