What should an estate agent website include?

A vendor needs your record, your reviews and a way to book

A vendor on an agency website is not looking for a house. They are deciding whether to let you value theirs. Rightmove’s own guide for sellers, updated in May 2026, tells them to consider first impressions of “an agent’s website, photography and property descriptions”, to read reviews across different platforms, to understand exactly what a fee covers and what tie in periods apply, and to expect an agent to explain a valuation using sales of similar homes nearby. That is a fair brief for the vendor side of the site. In our view it needs:

Your sold record, in your patch. Homes you have sold, recently, on streets the vendor recognises. “Local knowledge” is a claim; a list of sold homes three roads away is evidence.
Reviews, with their source. Dated, from the platform they were left on, and not only the five star ones. A carousel of first names and perfect scores reads as edited.
How your fees work. If you will not publish a figure, explain the structure, what it covers and when it is paid, because the vendor has been told to ask.
The people. Names, faces, and who actually comes out to value.
A valuation that can be booked on a phone, plus a plain account of what the visit involves and what the vendor gets afterwards. Why a form on its own loses vendors is set out in the template problem.

A buyer or tenant needs search that works and listings that answer questions

Most buyers start on the portals, and the agency site does not need to beat them at search. But the buyers who do arrive, usually after seeing a board or searching your name, should find:

Search by area, price, bedrooms, and sale or let, usable with a thumb, with results that load quickly.
Stock that matches the office. Listings should come from your CRM automatically, so a home that goes under offer says so on your site as soon as it does on the portal. National Trading Standards’ guidance says listings should be updated as soon as material information becomes known or changes, and names “an agent’s own website” alongside the portals.
Listing pages that are at least as complete as the portal’s: large photographs, a floor plan, the description, a map, the facts the law asks for (next section), and one obvious way to ask for a viewing.
For lettings: the rent, the deposit, the date the home is available, and a link to your fees.
A way to register for alerts, so a buyer who finds nothing today hears from you, not from the portal, when something comes up. That one is our view rather than a rule.

What the law says the website must show

This section covers England and Wales, and only what has to appear on the site. Scotland and Northern Ireland differ in places.

Company details. Under the Company, Limited Liability Partnership and Business (Names and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2015, every company must show its registered name on its websites (regulation 24), together with the part of the UK it is registered in, its registered number and its registered office address (regulation 25). A footer on every page does it.

The EPC rating. Regulation 11 of the Energy Performance of Buildings (England and Wales) Regulations 2012 says that where a building with a valid EPC is offered for sale or rent, its energy performance rating must be stated in any advertisement of the sale or rental in commercial media. National Trading Standards’ guidance puts it simply: EPC ratings should be included on a property listing, unless exempt.

Material information on every listing, including your own. Section 227 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 makes it a misleading omission to leave out “material information”, meaning information the average consumer needs to take an informed decision. Section 230 adds that an advert with a product and its price must not omit its main characteristics, its total price or the trader’s identity. These took over from the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 on 6 April 2025. National Trading Standards’ 2023 guidance for sales, written under those older regulations, sets out what it means for a listing, and says all residential listings are covered, “property agent websites” included:

Part A, on the first page of the listing: council tax band (or domestic rates), asking price and tenure.
Part B, no more than one click away: property type and construction, the number and type of rooms, electricity, water, sewerage, heating, broadband, mobile signal, and parking.
Part C, where relevant: building safety, restrictions and rights, flood and erosion risk, planning permission or proposals, accessibility adaptations, and coalfield or mining areas.

The practical test is whether your listing page has a place for every one of those, and whether your CRM feed actually fills it. If the portal shows the flood risk and your own site does not, your site is the weaker listing.

Letting agents: fees, redress and client money. Section 83 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 requires a letting agent with a website to publish its list of fees there, each one described and priced including tax. In England the list must also name the redress scheme and, if the agent has to belong to one, the client money protection scheme. Regulation 4 of the Client Money Protection Schemes for Property Agents Regulations 2019 adds a copy of the protection certificate on the website.

What Trading Standards look at. Powys County Council publishes the checklist National Trading Standards’ agency team uses for online checks. It asks whether redress information and the right redress logo are on the website, whether the limited company details are correct, whether the agency really belongs to the bodies whose logos it shows, whether material information is missing from listings, whether listings give information on the total price of the purchase, and whether portal microsites are up to date.

What Google and AI assistants need

Start with the phone. Ofcom’s Online Nation 2025 report found smartphones accounted for 77% of all the time UK online adults spent online in May 2025, so the phone version is the site.

A good page experience. Google says Core Web Vitals are used by its ranking systems, and its self-assessment asks whether pages are served securely, display well on mobile and avoid intrusive interstitials. A valuation pop-up that covers the page on arrival is exactly what that last question is about.
Your facts in text. Name, address, phone number, opening hours and the areas you cover, written on the page and matching your Google Business Profile. Google says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and prominence, and prominence is partly how many websites link to you and how many reviews you have.
Structured data that matches the page. Google’s local business markup requires the business name and address and recommends more, such as telephone and web address. Note that Google recommends review and rating markup only for sites that collect reviews of other businesses, so marking up your own reviews is not a route to stars in the results.
Nothing special for AI, as far as Google goes. Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special files or schema.org markup are needed. A page has to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet; beyond that it lists the basics: crawling allowed, content findable through internal links, important content in text, and structured data that matches the visible text. What helps with the other assistants is on getting your agency recommended by AI.

What to leave off

Everything above earns its place. In our view, these rarely do:

A blog that stopped. The date on the newest post tells every vendor when the website was last cared about.
Stock photographs of keys, handshakes and smiling couples. Your own office, team and sold boards say more.
Logos of bodies you do not belong to, or an out of date redress logo. Trading Standards check both.
A pop-up on arrival, for the reason Google gives above.
A thinner copy of the portal. If a listing on your own site carries less than the same home on Rightmove, it is the worse advert and possibly the non-compliant one.

That is the work we do: bespoke websites for estate agencies, from £10,000 plus VAT, one agency per patch, and the website is yours. How we design estate agent websites shows what goes into one.

Sources

More guides for agency owners are on the guides page.

Questions

What must a limited company show on its website?

Under the Company, Limited Liability Partnership and Business (Names and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2015, a company must show its registered name, the part of the UK it is registered in, its registered number and its registered office address on its websites. Most agencies put these in the footer of every page.

Does material information have to be on an estate agent's own website?

Yes. National Trading Standards' 2023 guidance for sales says all residential listings should include material information, naming property agent websites as well as portals. It puts price, tenure and council tax band on the first page of the listing, and says the rest should be no more than one click away online.

Do estate agents have to show the EPC rating in adverts?

In England and Wales, yes, where the home has a valid EPC. Regulation 11 of the Energy Performance of Buildings (England and Wales) Regulations 2012 says the rating must be stated in any advertisement of the sale or rental in commercial media, and National Trading Standards' guidance says EPC ratings should be on a property listing unless exempt.

What do letting agents have to publish on their website?

Under section 83 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, a letting agent with a website must publish its list of fees there, with each fee described and priced including tax. In England the list must also name the agent's redress scheme and, where it must belong to one, its client money protection scheme, and the agent must publish a copy of its client money protection certificate on the website.

Does an estate agency website need anything special to appear in Google's AI answers?

Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special files or structured data are needed. A page has to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet, so the usual basics apply: crawlable pages, important content in text, and structured data that matches the visible page.

What an estate agent website should include.