Fourteen commercial property agencies launched Go To Commercial on Tuesday, bringing 1,100 listings to a platform born from what its founders call years of frustration with existing search tools.
The rebellion started in Leeds.
While residential property buyers have spent two decades scrolling through Rightmove and Zoopla, commercial agents across Yorkshire say their sector has been left patching together fragmented platforms, many of them repurposed residential systems that miss how business property actually trades. Rising portal fees and rigid long-term contracts pushed the frustration to breaking point.
Andrew Steel watched it happen from inside Michael Steel & Co, his Leeds surveying firm. Conversations with other agents kept circling back to the same complaint. No single platform understood commercial property search.
“The platform grew out of conversations we were having with other agents about the frustrations of using existing portals,” Steel explained. “There was a clear gap in the market for a platform built specifically around commercial property, rather than trying to adapt systems designed for residential use. The focus has been on creating something practical, intuitive and genuinely useful for the industry.”
The coalition backing Go To Commercial spans West Yorkshire’s established commercial specialists. Carter Towler signed on. So did Walker Singleton, Bramleys, Smiths Chartered Surveyors, and Holroyd Miller. Mark Brearley & Co joined. Woodheads, Harvey Burns & Co, and Atkinson Associates committed. Eleven others followed.
That’s significant weight behind a single platform.
The listings cover office blocks, retail units, industrial warehouses, investment opportunities, and development sites. Nick Bone, who directs Bone Consulting and co-founded the platform, framed the problem as unnecessary friction between agents and clients searching for space.
“The aim was to remove unnecessary friction from commercial property search,” Bone noted. “We wanted to create a platform that reflects how people actually look for and assess commercial property, using tools that are headache free and easy-to-use.”
Behind the search interface sits a database designed to capture listing data over time. The founders suggest this could feed market intelligence as more agencies join, though the immediate pitch centres on simplicity and transparency rather than analytics.
Ian Greenwood has run Carter Towler long enough to recognise when agents talk past the problem. For him, the appeal comes down to industry expertise shaping the tool from the start.
“The key to the new website is its foundation based upon commercial property agent expertise at the industry coal face,” Greenwood said. “Agents understand the property search and identification process and the need for access to the largest cross section of the regional market in one place.”
The language matters. “Coal face” suggests hard-won knowledge, not boardroom theory.
Go To Commercial positions itself as a transparent alternative to established portals, though the founders haven’t disclosed pricing details or contract terms publicly. What’s clear is the pitch: agents built this for agents, without adapting residential models or locking firms into arrangements that don’t fit commercial property’s rhythm.
The platform launched regionally, but the ambition stretches beyond Yorkshire. Steel and Bone are inviting agencies in other regions to join, banking on the logic that a commercial-only national platform gains value as the network expands.
Whether agents outside Leeds and West Yorkshire share the same frustrations—and whether they’ll invest in an unproven alternative—will determine if Go To Commercial becomes a national resource or remains a Yorkshire solution to a Yorkshire problem.
Steel acknowledged the platform’s effectiveness depends on industry uptake. “The early support from agents in Leeds and West Yorkshire has been encouraging, and the platform’s effectiveness will come from the industry itself, and as more agents join, its value as a national commercial property resource will continue to grow.”
For now, fourteen agencies are betting their listings—and their reputations—on a platform that didn’t exist a month ago. By year’s end, the network will either have expanded into neighbouring regions or the founders will be explaining why commercial property professionals weren’t ready to abandon the systems they’ve spent years complaining about.
The 1,100 listings provide the foundation. What happens next depends on whether agents in Manchester, Birmingham, and Bristol decide Yorkshire got this one right.