Selling privately, without hosting the viewings
Selling without an agency means the viewings become your job — your weekends, your calendar, strangers in your house. Walkthrough runs them for you, on a property that is empty and ready to show.
What selling privately actually asks of you
Going without an agency starts as a decision about money. The commission on a sale is a significant number, and an owner who is confident about their price and willing to handle the paperwork is entitled to ask what that number is buying.
A large part of what it buys is attendance. Somebody has to open the door, stand in the hallway for an hour, and be there again for the buyer who wants a second look on a weeknight. That work does not disappear when the agency does — it moves to the seller, along with the calls, the rescheduling and the buyers who do not turn up.
The consequence is quieter than the inconvenience. Because you are the constraint, the property can only be seen when you are free, which is usually a couple of hours at the weekend. Every buyer who cannot make that window — shift workers, people with young children, anyone buying from another city — is filtered out by your schedule rather than by their interest in the house.
How a viewing runs when you are not there
Walkthrough separates the viewing from your availability. You set when the property can be visited, and a verified buyer books a window inside that and lets themselves in with a PIN that works only for their booking. An AI guide trained on that specific property answers their questions while they walk around, so nobody needs to be standing there to explain the heating or point out which schools are nearby.
Opening the property that way does not mean losing hold of it. Availability is configured down to the day and hour, so the house is only ever open when you have said it can be. Any individual visit can be supervised rather than self-guided if you would rather meet a particular buyer in person. And a one-off event can be created for a specific person — a building inspector, a valuer, a family member coming to look — without opening the property to anyone else.
This is built for a property that is empty
Worth being direct about, because it decides whether the rest of this page applies to you: Walkthrough is designed for vacant properties. It is not recommended for a home you are still living in.
The reason is what self-guided actually means in practice. Buyers walk through unaccompanied and at their own pace — opening wardrobes, looking in cupboards, checking the water pressure, spending as long as they like in every room. If the house is still full of your furniture, your paperwork and everything you own, that is not a reasonable thing to hand to a stranger, however carefully that stranger has been verified.
Where it fits is a property that is already empty: one you have moved out of, an investment property between tenants, a new build, or a house being sold as part of an estate. If you are still living in the house, the sensible order is to keep viewings supervised until you have moved, and to open the property for self-guided visits once it is clear.
Who is walking into your property
Letting someone into your property while you are somewhere else is the first thing anyone asks about, and it is the right question. The answer is that access is conditional at three separate points rather than granted broadly.
Identity is verified before a PIN exists: Walkthrough uses Didit, a third-party identity verification provider, to check a government-issued identity document, and no credential is issued until that check passes. The PIN itself is scoped to the booked window and expires afterwards, so it cannot be reused on another day or passed on to someone else. And every entry is logged with a timestamp, the buyer’s identity and the property address, with those access logs retained for at least twelve months.
Smart locks and cameras are both installed when the property is set up, so the physical layer and the audit trail arrive together. You never hand over a key, never have one copied, and never have to be alone in an empty house with someone you have not met.
Pricing and negotiating on evidence
The part of selling privately that is genuinely harder is knowing where you stand. An agent forms a view from doing this repeatedly across many properties. A private seller has one property and whatever people said politely on their way out of it.
Walkthrough gives you the record an agency would normally be holding: a live activity feed for the property, how long each buyer spent inside, how often individual buyers came back, and the questions they put to the AI guide during their visit. Those reports are exportable, so the data is yours rather than something you have to remember.
What makes those signals useful is that they are behavioural. Enthusiasm at the door is unreliable; forty minutes in the house and a second visit the following week is not, and it tells you which buyer to call first. The questions are worth as much — when several buyers in a row ask about the same wall, the same roof or the same boundary, you have learned what your price is actually meeting resistance on before you are sitting in a negotiation about it.
Questions about this
The questions that come up most often on this topic.
Can I use Walkthrough without a real estate agency?
Yes. A private seller can onboard directly and gets the same setup an agency does. Walkthrough helps install compatible smart locks and cameras, gathers the details needed to build the listing, trains the AI guide on the property and its neighbourhood, and configures the access schedule you agree to. From there you run the listing yourself.
Can I use it while I am still living in the house?
It is not recommended. Self-guided viewings mean buyers walk through the property unaccompanied, and an occupied home still holds your furniture, documents and belongings. Walkthrough is built for vacant property — one you have moved out of, an investment property between tenants, a new build, or an estate sale. Until you move out, keep viewings supervised.
How do I know who is walking into my property?
Every buyer completes identity verification before any access is granted. Walkthrough uses Didit, a third-party identity verification provider, which checks a government-issued identity document. A PIN is issued only once that check passes and works only during the booked window, and every entry is logged with a timestamp, the buyer’s identity and the property address.
What is involved in getting my property listed?
Setup is measured in days rather than weeks. Walkthrough helps install compatible smart locks and cameras, gathers the details needed to build the listing, trains the AI guide on that specific property and its neighbourhood, and configures the access schedule. After that the property accepts bookings at any hour without you being involved in each one.
What do I know after a buyer has been through?
A record rather than an impression: how long that buyer was inside, whether they had visited before, and the questions they asked the AI property guide while they were there. It appears in a live activity feed for the property and can be exported, so you can decide who to follow up and what your price is meeting resistance on.