AI for estate agents: what goes from the memo of sale into the chat
Most of the AI for estate agents that happens in a branch is nothing clever. It is a negotiator pasting the memorandum of sale into ChatGPT to tidy the email to both solicitors, a sales progressor wanting a polite chaser down the chain, or a lettings negotiator turning a tenant reference into three lines for the landlord.
Each of those opens with the same few lines. The memo carries the property address, the vendor’s and buyer’s names, their mobiles and email addresses. The AML file note adds a date of birth, a passport or driving licence number and a current address, and the tenant reference brings in the National Insurance number and the employer.
Those are the lines Nonimo covers before anything leaves the office. The price, the tenure, the chain and the mortgage in principle stay as you typed them, so the assistant can still write a sensible email. Picking the assistant itself is another matter, and the checks a UK firm should run before choosing one cover it.
Sale agreed: what ChatGPT receives once the key is pressed
Highlight the memo, press the key, and that is the whole routine. On the negotiator’s own computer, Mac or Windows, every detail Nonimo recognises becomes a placeholder such as PERSON_1 before the text goes. When the draft comes back, Nonimo puts the real names and numbers back on your screen, since only your computer knows who each placeholder is.
In the made-up memorandum of sale below, the property, the vendor, the buyer, both mobiles and both email addresses are placeholders. What the solicitors need to hear is still there: the agreed price, the tenure, a first-time buyer with nothing to sell, a mortgage in principle and ID checks done on both sides.
The same goes for an offer letter to the vendor or a chain update to three other agents. The details Nonimo swapped out were never sent, so the provider holds nothing of them. How OpenAI stores the rest of a conversation, and for how long, is laid out in our guide to what ChatGPT keeps.
Before: what gets pasted
Memorandum of sale, subject to contract Property: 0 Nowhere Lane, Nowhere ZZ99 3VZ Freehold, three-bed semi, agreed price £325,000 Vendor: Mr Joe Bloggs Mobile: 07700 900123 Email: joe.bloggs@example.com Buyer: Ms A N Other, first-time buyer, nothing to sell Mobile: 07700 900456 Email: a.n.other@example.org Mortgage agreed in principle, 10% deposit from savings ID and AML checks completed on both parties Please write a short email to both solicitors confirming the sale is agreed.
After: what the AI receives
Memorandum of sale, subject to contract Property: [ADDRESS_1] Freehold, three-bed semi, agreed price £325,000 Vendor: [PERSON_1] Mobile: [PHONE_1] Email: [EMAIL_1] Buyer: Ms [PERSON_2], first-time buyer, nothing to sell Mobile: [PHONE_2] Email: [EMAIL_2] Mortgage agreed in principle, 10% deposit from savings ID and AML checks completed on both parties Please write a short email to both solicitors confirming the sale is agreed.
What HMRC expects of an estate agent’s AML checks
Estate agents are relevant persons under regulation 8 of the Money Laundering Regulations 2017, supervised by HMRC, and HMRC’s guidance for the sector is plain about who the customer is: the buyer and the seller. Identity has to be verified before the business relationship starts, which for a buyer means by exchange of contracts at the latest.
HMRC even suggests the signing of the memorandum of sale as a sensible point to start those checks, so the memo and the ID documents land on the same desk in the same week. The sentence quoted here sets the other end: five years after completion, or after the sale falls through, the copies go.
If a passport number from that file was pasted into an AI chat, it ought to go from there as well, and whether it really has is not something your branch controls. Covering it first is simpler. Placeholders do not lift the memo out of the UK GDPR, though, and what stays identifiable once the names are gone explains why.
Lettings: tenant referencing, right to rent and what gets covered
Most lettings work sits outside the Money Laundering Regulations, since a letting agent only comes into scope where the monthly rent is £10,000 or more. The paperwork is just as personal. Tenant referencing brings the employer, salary, previous address and NI number, and in England a right to rent check means keeping copies of the tenant’s documents until a year after the tenancy.
What Nonimo does with each detail follows a fixed rule. Anything with an unmistakable shape is replaced without asking. Anything it recognises by the label in front of it, or by its place in the line, is replaced too, but marked with a short reason, and put back with one click if you want it. Better one placeholder too many than a name with the provider.
In a made-up tenant reference, the applicant’s name, date of birth, NI number, employer, previous address and passport number all became placeholders, while the salary and the outcome stayed readable for the landlord. Today the NI number is labelled as a reference; with the next version it gets a label of its own. What the app sends us is on our security page.
What Nonimo costs and where the branch starts
One computer in the branch is enough to start, Mac or Windows. Nonimo’s free plan stops at a set number of words each month. Leave an email address on our licence page and a free licence file comes back that removes the cap until 31 January 2027, with no account to set up. The download is at the top of this page.
Plenty of tools sell AI for estate agents, and Nonimo is not another one: it sits in front of whichever assistant the office already uses. It installs desk by desk. For a whole branch or group, your IT support rolls out a browser extension that covers text without the key, as the organisations page explains. Start with sales progression and lettings.
Your AML records, right to rent checks and data protection paperwork stay yours, in your own systems, and we sell no badge or seal to go on them. Nonimo makes sure the details it recognises are replaced before a text goes to the AI provider. None of your text comes to us, and you need no account to use it.
- Free today, on Mac and Windows
- With a monthly word allowance
- The free licence lifts it until 31 January 2027, no account needed
Questions from the branch
Can estate agents paste client details into ChatGPT?
Not without thinking first. Nothing bans AI for estate agents, but a vendor's mobile, a buyer's date of birth or an applicant's NI number is personal data under the UK GDPR, and the ID behind your AML checks must be kept five years and then deleted, which is hard to promise for a copy held by an AI provider. Nonimo replaces those details before the text is sent.
What ID checks does HMRC expect from an estate agent?
Customer due diligence on both buyer and seller, with identity verified before the business relationship starts: for a seller, when you take the instruction; for a buyer, by exchange at the latest, and HMRC prefers before the offer is accepted. Copies are kept five years after the relationship ends, then deleted. In a made-up AML file note, Nonimo covered the name, date of birth, address, passport number and driving licence number.
Does Nonimo cover the National Insurance number on a tenant reference?
Yes. On an applicant's reference the NI number becomes a placeholder before the text is sent; today it is labelled as a reference, like other national numbers, and with the next version it gets a label of its own. Name, date of birth, employer and previous address are covered too, and the salary stays readable, because the landlord's summary needs it and on its own it identifies no one.
Does Nonimo see our vendors' and applicants' details?
No. All the work happens on the computer at the desk, and nothing from the text about your vendors, buyers or applicants reaches us, not even the terms on your own list. Once a day the app sends us a usage count: how much of the allowance has gone, the version and the operating system. It cannot be switched off, as our security page explains. There is no customer account.
Our branches are in Scotland. What changes for us?
Less than you might think. The Money Laundering Regulations and HMRC's supervision run across the UK, although solicitors' property centres in Scotland answer to the Law Society of Scotland for AML. Right to rent checks are an English rule, and north of the border a sale is tied up by missives between solicitors rather than a memorandum of sale. What Nonimo does on the computer is the same in Aberdeen as in Exeter.