Ten Questions with Cassandra Humbert, Co-Founder of drifthome

What better way to learn what users like than by having them swipe?! That's the theory behind a new real estate portal in the UK aiming to take on incumbents like Rightmove and Zoopla.

Founded earlier this year, London-based drifthome describes itself as an "AI-powered property platform that connects homebuyers and estate agents through a simple, swipe-based mobile app".

We caught up with co-founder, Cassandra Humbert (pictured below), to find out more about the startup's plans...

What does drifthome do?

drifthome is building the all-in-one property ecosystem. It's a platform designed to finally work for buyers, sellers, and agents alike.

The current system is broken. Agents spend heavily on the big portals, paying ever-increasing fees for leads that are often low quality. Buyers are forced to trawl through endless listings, with little personalisation, poor user experience, and no real guidance to help them through the process. Sellers lack clarity on which agent to use, with no transparent way to compare options or understand market demand for their property.

drifthome changes that. For buyers, we make discovery faster and smarter with an AI-powered swipe experience that learns what they value, not just budget and location, but style, layout, and finish. Alongside this, our in-app AI education agent can answer questions, provide tips, and guide them step by step.

For sellers, we give transparency: the ability to compare agents, see insights on their property, and choose who to work with more confidently.

For agents, we remove the paywall. Listings are free, and agents can directly search for and message active buyers and sellers, ensuring better-quality leads and less wasted spend.

We’re uniting buyers, sellers, and agents in one ecosystem - bringing the property market into the 21st century with smarter search, clearer insights, and stronger connections.

What’s the story so far?

We started out wanting to challenge Rightmove and Zoopla by building something better, smarter, more personalised, and more aligned with what people actually need.

Since last year, we’ve been building drifthome as the alternative. An AI-driven, lead-generation platform designed to connect all sides of the market. Along the way, we’ve had dozens of conversations with agents and investors, and that feedback has shaped our journey. Each pivot has brought us closer to the real pain points, and it’s become clear what the industry actually wants: agents want better leads, users want a more intelligent experience, and sellers want more trust.

That’s what drifthome is - not just another portal, but the solution to everyone’s frustrations in the property market.

What’s the business model? Is it pay-per-lead, pay-per-listing, subscription or something else?

drifthome is free to list properties, and free for users. Allowing agents to list for free is vital for us as we want to give all agents an equal chance to reach users, and the more properties we have on the platform, the better the experience for users. We charge subscriptions to agents to access buyer and seller leads.

Sign up. Search for leads. Send them a message on the platform. Match with them. It’s as simple as that.

We’ve seen challengers adopt the ‘swiping’ principle before. Why go down that route, and what makes drifthome’s functionality different?

Swiping is familiar, fast, and engaging, but most challengers have treated it as a gimmick. Our version is powered by AI. Every swipe trains the system to better understand what a buyer actually values; not just location and price, but micro-preferences around style, layout, and finish.

We learn what you want, so the app shows you properties you are actually interested in, and so that agents can send buyers properties that match those preferences. We’re not just making property search more fun; we’re making it smarter.

How does drifthome get its listings, and how do you ensure you have enough listings coverage for an area?

We’re connecting directly to agents' CRM's. We want to ensure the best data for users and the highest ease of use for agents. It’s going to take time, but we want to get it right. No scraping or clever API’s, we’re building something to last.

We need to onboard agencies quickly; that's the challenge! But the great thing about drifthome is you don’t need to swipe on hundreds of properties to find your dream home. Simply sign up, add your preferences, and agents can come to you with properties from day one.

So the platform learns what users like as they swipe. How many taxonomies does drifthome collect signals for?

We want to train the AI across dozens of property taxonomies - from the obvious (budget, bedrooms, location) to the more nuanced (layout, finish, design style, outdoor space). Over time, this expands into behavioural signals - what users save, shortlist, or enquire about - so the system can anticipate preferences even before the buyer articulates them. It’s early day,s but we will perfect it over time.

Give us one thing that’s been easier than expected so far and one that’s been more difficult than you imagined.

Easier: Getting agent buy-in. Once we explained what we’re building, agents wanted to be on board! They’re crying out for alternatives to the big portals.

Harder: Building fast enough. We have agents queuing to be on our platform, but as we’ve been bootstrapping drifthome to date, we cannot build fast enough to keep up with the onboarding. We just need some funding to keep up.

Which other portals or other businesses have you looked to for inspiration?

To be honest, there haven’t been too many property portals we have taken inspiration from. I feel we are building something quite unique, which means there aren’t many companies in the industry to benchmark against.

Outside of property, Tinder (for swiping), Citymapper (for its location-based approach), and LinkedIn (for its user search).

How is the business funded, and are you looking to raise money?

We’re currently founder-funded and have secured some very small SEIS commitments. We’re preparing to raise our pre-seed round later this year to scale the tech team, accelerate agent onboarding, and drive user acquisition. We’ve had some really interesting conversations with investors who similarly believe the industry is in need of a shake up. With the presence of AI, the frustration from agents, and the expectation from users for more, there’s never been a better time.

What’s next on your to-do list for drifthome?

Three things: Onboarding our first agents and agencies onto the platform, raising our first round of funding and continuing to develop all the features we want to roll out. 

From there, it’s expansion to other UK and global cities, and continually advancing the AI to deliver the most intelligent property platform on the market.