Learn how this leading estate agent moved to Alto and saved the equivalent of up to three full-time roles, cut listing time by 75% and enabled its team to get back to what they do best: making deals.
Few industries have been shaken up as dramatically in recent years as estate agency.
Established in 1992, Hunters has navigated every market shift and built a reputation as one of the UK’s largest and most respected estate agency franchise networks. But the pressures facing agents today are unlike anything that has come before.
“The world has been completely turned on its head for estate agents,” says Robert McCarthy, Head of Auctions, Commercial, Land and Compliance at Hunters Bradford.
“When I started 15 years ago, we were selling houses by putting a photograph in the window.
“Now we’re dealing with huge pressure from compliance and reform. Agents are trying to outdo each other. AI’s come in and is changing everything. It’s a lot.”
In a market that throws this many curveballs, having the right operational infrastructure is everything, and that means implementing the right CRM.
Making the right move
After going through three separate solutions, including Reapit, Hunters made the move to Alto and finally found a platform that could keep up.
Robert says: “We tried Reapit but Alto is so much better, especially for a large estate agency like us.
“We switched because The Property Franchise Group (TPFG), which owns several estate agency franchise brands in the UK, including Hunters, was bringing Alto on board and we’d heard great things from other branches. TPFG know what they’re doing. Ultimately, it’s about making money and Alto was clearly a system that could help us do that.”
Understandably, switching CRMs felt daunting at first for the team at Hunters Bradford, but Alto’s unique approach to onboarding is designed to remove that risk.
Most customers go live in around four weeks, with some multi-branch agencies fully onboarded in as little as 16 days. The entire process is fully supported, with no additional data migration charges and data accuracy of up to 99.9 percent.
A dedicated migration team manages the transition from start to finish, backed by structured training and ongoing UK-based support, so teams can get up and running without disrupting day-to-day business.
Robert says: “The team that did the data migration for us was brilliant. The whole process felt smooth and straightforward. There were a few small tweaks required, but the team took care of it for us without fuss.”
Intelligent by design
Alto now sits at the heart of the agency’s everyday operations. As the UK’s leading CRM for estate agents, it manages everything from listing creation and applicant matching to sales progression, compliance tracking and client accounting.
Sales, lettings, reporting and documentation all run through one central system, giving Robert and the team full visibility across the business.
That foundation is strengthened by Alto’s industry-leading AI-native approach. Instead of bolting AI on as an afterthought, Alto has rebuilt its workflows from the ground up so intelligence runs through every workflow, supporting how modern agencies actually operate.
Robert says “I’ve been really impressed with the pace Alto is moving at with AI. It’s clearly built into the core of the product.
“Compared to some of the other CRMs we’ve used, especially Reapit, Alto feels significantly more advanced. A lot of systems simply aren’t progressing at the same level.”
At Hunters Bradford, the move to more automated, intelligent and connected workflows has delivered major time savings.
Listing creation has reduced from three to four hours per property to just 25 to 30 minutes.
That represents a saving of around two and a half hours per listing or 75%. With roughly 30 listings going live each month, it equates to more than 75 hours reclaimed every month on listings alone.
Sales progression has also become significantly more efficient, with up to two hours saved per sales case each week. Across the sales pipeline, that quickly adds up into dozens of additional hours saved.
Tracking down major time savings
Within the Hunters team, there’s a real, tangible sense of having more time than before as tasks like sending valuation letters, follow-up emails and property matching now run in the background.
Robert says: “Fridays look very different for me now. I used to spend up to 14 hours every Friday creating new property listings and uploading them to portals. Now I’m only in the office until midday and I spent the rest of the day meeting clients and doing deals.
“Across the whole team, it’s helped massively. Switching to Alto has saved us the equivalent of two to three full-time people every month. That’s not to say we’ve cut our team, it just means our team is freed up to do what we do best.”
Beyond the time savings, the team at Hunters Bradford has reshaped how the business runs by embracing Alto across its core workflows.
Compliance is a clear example. AML checks, property documentation and audit trails now sit in one central system, replacing manual records.
Alto will soon flag certificates that are expiring and keeps a clear history of activity against each property. That means the team can see what needs attention straight away, without cross-checking systems or worrying that something has been missed.
The matching system has also become faster and more effective. It is now much easier to connect the right people to the right properties, with follow-ups and applicant emails far less manual than before.
Keeping everything in sight
Hunters also have access to Alto Prospecting. On average, Alto users win 3-4 more instructions monthly, translating into significant additional revenue.
Robert says: “As an industry, we’re under huge compliance pressure, so having everything in one place makes a big difference. We were always keeping manual records before, but now everything is managed on Alto.
“One feature I really love is the property information form that we send via Alto to vendors before a property goes live. It’s absolutely fab. It lets us capture much more detail upfront, so instead of finding out later that there’s a restricted covenant or something that affects a buyer, we know before we send them to view.
“Even things like shared utilities or solar panels, details you won’t necessarily put in the listings on the portals, are right there in Alto for us to access. It means we can have better conversations with customers straight away.
“It’s allowing us to sell properties more accurately than we did previously.”
Less desk, more deals
With Alto as its CRM, Hunters has fundamentally shifted how the team operates. Less time is spent on repetitive admin and more time is spent in front of customers.
In a challenging market, that makes all the difference. Hunters don’t win business by sitting behind a desk. They win by being in front of clients, building relationships, spotting opportunities and closing deals.
Robert says: “Without Alto, we’d probably need another three people in the office and we’d still be what I call ‘admin people’.”
“Alto gets our teams out of the office and out doing what they do best. We don’t make money by doing admin. We make money by talking to people and doing deals, and Alto means we do a lot more of that.
“It drives more revenue for the business and more commission for our agents. For me personally, I’m having a kitchen extension. I wouldn’t be doing that if Alto wasn’t as good as it is.
“There’s no way we’d be without it now.”
