Viewing automation for real estate agencies
Hosting open homes is the part of the job that scales worst: every viewing costs an agent hours on site, and produces almost no data. This is what changes when viewings run themselves.
What hosting viewings actually costs an agency
Every traditional viewing requires an agent physically present for its duration. Those are hours spent standing in an empty hallway rather than working the pipeline — and because the agent is the constraint, the property can only be open when someone is free to staff it. In practice that means a couple of hours on a Saturday morning.
That window excludes any buyer who cannot make it. Shift workers, people with young children, buyers in another city, anyone whose Saturday is committed — they are filtered out by the schedule rather than by their interest in the property.
The third cost is informational. When the viewing ends, the agency has a rough headcount and whatever impressions the agent formed. The vendor gets told the turnout was solid. Nobody can say how long anyone stayed, who came back, or what they were actually worried about.
What an agency runs instead
Walkthrough decouples the viewing from the agent’s calendar. The agency sets when a property is available, and verified buyers book themselves into those windows and let themselves in with a time-limited PIN.
The agency does not give up control to get that. Availability is configured down to the day and hour, so a property is only ever open when the vendor has agreed it should be. Any individual visit can be supervised rather than self-guided. And one-off custom events can be created for a specific buyer, another agent, or an external contact such as a building inspector — without opening the property generally.
Turning viewings into something to report
The vendor conversation is where the difference shows up most clearly. Instead of a headcount, the agency brings a record: a live activity feed for the property, time in the home per buyer, how often individual buyers returned, and the questions those buyers asked the AI guide during their visit.
Those signals are behavioural, which is what makes them useful. Stated interest at the door is unreliable; forty minutes in the house and a second visit the following week is not. The agent can use that to prioritise follow-up on the buyers most likely to make an offer, rather than working the whole list evenly.
Reports are exportable, so the data can go into a vendor update rather than staying locked in a dashboard.
Who is actually walking into the property
Unaccompanied access is the objection every agency raises first, and it is the right question to ask. The answer is that access is conditional at three 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 or passed on to a later visitor. 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.
What it takes to get a listing live
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 the vendor has agreed to.
Once that is done the listing accepts bookings at any hour without further intervention. The agency’s ongoing involvement is watching the engagement data and following up — not staffing the door.
Questions about this
The questions that come up most often on this topic.
Does Walkthrough replace the agent?
No. Walkthrough removes the requirement for an agent to be physically present for every viewing, not the agent. Agencies keep control of when a property is open, who can enter and whether a visit is supervised, and they gain engagement data — time in home, repeat visits, questions asked — to prioritise follow-up.
Can an agency still run a traditional open home?
Yes. Supervision is set per visit rather than per property, so an agency can attend some viewings in person and leave others fully self-guided on the same listing. Availability windows are configured by the agency, so a property is only open when the vendor has agreed it should be.
What can an agency give a vendor after a viewing?
A live activity feed for the property, the time each buyer spent inside, how often individual buyers returned, and the questions they asked the AI property guide. Those reports are exportable, so they can be attached to a vendor update rather than described from memory.
How long does it take to onboard a property?
Days rather than weeks. The steps are installing compatible smart locks and cameras, gathering the details to build the listing, training the AI guide on the property and its neighbourhood, and configuring the access schedule. After that the listing can accept bookings at any hour.