News Roundup 02/10/26: Zillow In Court, REA Backs Distilled, Hemnet's Free Tier & Rightmove Activist

In this week's news roundup, Ed, Harvey and Simon cover four big stories from four big companies: Zillow's latest legal setback, REA Group's return to Europe, Hemnet's free-to-list pivot and an activist investor at Rightmove.This episode is brought to you by Fusion 4 Ventures.Zillow loses its dismissal bidA judge has rejected Zillow's motion to dismiss the Dupuis class action, brought on behalf of agents in its Preferred and Flex programmes, so the case now moves into discovery. The suit alleges Zillow pressured agents to sell Zillow Home Loans products at the risk of being dropped from its programmes.REA Group buys into DistilledREA Group has agreed to take a 35% stake in Distilled, owner of Daft.ie and PropertyPal. Simon explains why a minority stake in a vendor-paid advertising market makes sense, and what it could mean for Hemnet. Plus: Daft's Marcus Hartwall moves to Hemnet as chief commercial officer.Hemnet goes free to listWith challenger Booli showing far more listings, Hemnet is introducing free-to-list tiers and aggregating listings from agency websites to reach full market coverage. The team discuss Hemnet's average revenue per listing and Similarweb data showing Booli now ahead on traffic.An activist at RightmoveUS activist investor Sachem Head has taken a 6% stake in Rightmove, whose shares have fallen around 40% in the last year.PPW Europe 2026 is less than a month away. Get your tickets: www.ppweurope.comPresented by:• Edmund Keith: LinkedIn• Harvey Hancock: LinkedIn• Simon Baker: LinkedIn

Harvey Hancock hosts Simon Baker and Malcolm Myers for a wide-ranging conversation about portals, AI, agents, M&A and brokerage, ahead of Malcolm's keynote presentation at the upcoming PPW Conference in Madrid.0:00 Intros and PPW teasers02:25 the four challenges facing property portals03:50 business models problems vs perceptionproblems13:09 Relevance as the lifeblood16:55 Brokerage and Rollups26:47 Consolidation in Europe?31:47 where should portal budgets go next?34:58 lead quality and operational efficiency36:07 Malcolm’s case for AI enablement and automated back offices44:53 unique listings and content as differentiators49:30 Closing remarks

In this week's news roundup, Idealista lands its first big agency partner in France, Compass puts serious marketing money behind its exclusive listings, and a wave of leadership changes sweeps through the portal world.Chapters:00:00 Intro04:09 Idealista Signs Orpi In France15:43 Compass Launches See It First27:27 Portal Leadership Shake-Up37:13 Do Portal Leaders Need Portal Experience?Idealista Signs Orpi In FranceBarely a month after hiring a former Leboncoin executive to run France, Idealista has signed its first major partnership there with Orpi, a cooperative of 1,250 agencies. Simon Baker explains how Idealista built its position in Portugal and Italy, how long it could take to start charging French agents, and why smaller, lower funded players should be the most worried.Compass Launches See It FirstCompass has rebuilt its website and launched See It First, a brand for listings marketed only on Compass, backed by millions of dollars of consumer advertising. The team looks at the thin margins behind Compass's $11bn in revenue, why unique listings are the only real moat, and who should be worried: smaller brokerages first, then Zillow, Homes.com and Realtor.com.Portal Leadership Shake-UpA new president at Homes.com, a new head of real estate at Swiss Marketplace Group, a new MD at ImmoScout24, Rich Hayes leaving Zoopla, board changes at Rightmove and a new CEO at Boligportal, all in about ten days. Is it panic, fatigue or coincidence? Plus why the Homes.com search took two years, and whether you need to have run a portal to run one.Presented by:• Edmund Keith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-keith/• Harvey Hancock: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvey-hancock/• Simon Baker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stbaker/

Maxim Bours co-founded Huispedia in 2018, after he and co-founder Ramon, both then working in IT at KLM, each tried to buy a house and found a Dutch market where listings were well served but decision-making was not. Eight years on, the company calls itself a data intelligence platform rather than a portal. It carries agents' listings for free, takes no advertising money from agents, and charges consumers a subscription instead.That model is why it can do something almost no listings site does. Huispedia sits on the buyer's side. It tells people when an asking price has been set deliberately low as a bidding tactic, and its coach will advise you not to view a house, or not to bid at all. Ed has been arguing for months that portals need to move towards the buyer. Huispedia is already there, and this conversation is about what that costs and what it makes possible.Simon Baker works through the mechanics: where the listings come from, how an automated valuation model builds a flywheel the way Zillow and Zoopla once did, what churn looks like when a buyer becomes an owner, and why a portal whose revenue depends on selling leads to agents cannot follow Huispedia without biting the hand that feeds it.Chapters:00:00 Intro01:43 Founding Huispedia in 201803:32 What makes the Dutch housing market an outlier05:54 Free listings, subscriptions and why Huispedia isn't a portal07:59 Inside Huispedia Plus and the personal coach12:01 Where the listings come from, and the valuation flywheel18:27 Renovation scenarios and the data they unlock21:34 What Huispedia does with the data it collects25:18 Freemium conversion and hitting the paywall27:15 Churn when a buyer becomes an owner31:49 Why aren't Dutch agents complaining?36:24 Should portals become independent buyer advisers?39:47 Why lead-generation portals can't follow43:44 Lessons from eight years on the buyer's side

In this week's news roundup, regulators and courts take centre stage: REA Group settles with the ACCC, a Chicago judge hands MRED and Compass a win over Zillow, Hemnet's activist investors reshape the board and pause the buyback, and Schibsted appears to be lining up to take on its own former marketplaces business in Norway.Chapters:00:00 Intro01:34 REA Group Signs ACCC Undertaking Over Listing Clauses13:38 Are Regulators Cracking Down On Portal Pricing?17:39 Zillow Loses Injunction Bid Against MRED & Compass23:35 Who Portals Really Serve: Buyers & Sellers29:54 Hemnet Pauses Buyback After Board Shake-up33:20 Why Hemnet's New Board Went Local38:03 Can Hemnet's Share Price Recover?40:20 Schibsted Media, Polaris & Amedia Team Up To Take On Finn48:00 Vend At PPW Madrid & WrapREA Group Vs ACCCOn 14 September Australia's competition regulator accepted a court enforceable undertaking from REA Group over contract terms that, between 2013 and 2025, required or rewarded agencies for listing all or most of their properties on realestate.com.au. From 1 January 2027 agencies can move at least 25% of eligible listings to cheaper tiers, and the undertaking runs for three years. REA stressed there was no finding of wrongdoing. Simon explains why agents such as BresicWhitney want to hold listings back for their own sites, why this is marketing fuel for CoStar-owned Domain, and why rising portal costs against falling sales volumes mean regulators from Switzerland to Sweden and Spain are taking a closer look.Zillow Vs MREDA US judge has refused Zillow a preliminary injunction in its Sherman Act case against Chicago MLS MRED and Compass, and ended the temporary order that restored Zillow's listings feed. In the court's words, transparency is not, standing alone, a goal of the antitrust laws, and opacity is not an anticompetitive effect. Harvey read all 54 pages so you don't have to (selected quotes are on onlinemarketplaces.com), and Simon takes it back to basics: the buyer and the seller are the only essential parties, and a portal that loses listings loses relevance.Hemnet Vs BuybackAn extraordinary general meeting called by Vor Capital and Sprints Capital replaced most of Hemnet's board, with former REA and Rightmove executives making way for directors with deep Swedish market experience. The share buyback has been paused, with around SEK 189m already spent, as Hemnet enters what it calls a transformative phase. Simon, who has sat on boards on both sides of that debate, explains why local knowledge wins, why an 80% share price fall will take many quarters to recover from, and why "transformative" probably means an acquisition.Schibsted Vs Schibsted?!Schibsted Media, Polaris and Amedia have formed an equal three-way joint venture that looks set to take on Vend's Finn in Norwegian classifieds. Simon on why starting from zero against a dominant number one is so hard, the three-headed dog problem of media joint ventures, and why Vend should keep an eye on it without letting it become an anchor.The PPW Conference is in Madrid from 28 to 30 October. Get your tickets at ppweurope.com.Presented by:• Edmund Keith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-keith/• Harvey Hancock: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvey-hancock/• Simon Baker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stbaker/

Simon Baker and Harvey Hancock are joined by Christian Schwarz Lausten, founder and CEO at Landfolk, for a peek behind the curtain of an increasingly AI-first vacation rentals marketplace that has expanded from its native Nordics into Europe, including a proprietary AI intelligence layer called PAX...00:00 intros00:54 What is Landfolk?07:25 Context, Business model and monetisation13:31 Awareness, engagement, and bookings for the properties?20:20 AI at Landfolk, and introducing PAX24:42 AI goosebumps and AI Trustability34:18 Christian's question for Simon

In this week's news roundup, Zoopla breaks cover with a full set of FY2025 numbers, and that sets up a longer argument about the cheapest growth lever in the portal business: the story you tell about yourself. Chapters:00:00 Intro00:48 Zoopla Publishes Its FY2025 Financials11:56 Will Silver Lake Sell Zoopla, And To Whom?14:32 The Perception & Narrative Lever18:26 When Number Two Actually Overtakes Number One23:24 Inside The Claims Ledger: 19,300 Portal Claims32:11 Simon On Making Claims As A Portal CEO39:25 PPW Madrid Preview Zoopla Opens The BooksZoopla is no longer a public company and does not have to tell anyone anything, but it sent the market a press release anyway. Revenue of £83.2m for FY2025, down 1% year on year. Profit of £20.7m at a 16% margin. Homeowners tracking a property on the site up 39% to more than six million, and Prospect Plus seller leads converting to listings at 43%. What it did not disclose was agent or customer numbers, which is what the UK trade press led on. Simon reads a decade of roughly flat revenue as the honest picture of life as number two to Rightmove, and reckons the release is Silver Lake, eight years and around £2bn in, telling the market it is profitable and open to offers. His guess on the buyer: another PE firm rather than CoStar, Idealista or REA Group. The Narrative Growth LeverPaul Whitehead's comments to Harvey about customer perception set up the bigger question. Of the levers a portal CEO can actually pull, listings are hardest to move, traffic and product cost real money, and product has never once decided market leadership. Simon half agrees, and offers the two cases where number one genuinely fell: Casa losing Italy to Immobiliare, and Realtor.com losing the US to Zillow's Zestimate. Both needed the leader to slip at the same moment the challenger did something unusual. Claims Nobody Is CheckingWith 19,300 portal claims now in the OMP claims ledger, the question becomes who makes claims and why. Simon splits it four ways, leaders against attackers and listed against unlisted, and explains why he refused to make forward financial claims as a CEO, how survey-backed marketing claims really get made, and what to make of REA Group's disputed nine out of ten line. PPW Madrid PreviewThe conference runs 28 to 30 October. Around 300 of 500 places are already gone, Malcolm Myers and Mike DelPrete are on the strategic track, and more headline portal speakers are still to be announced. Tickets at ppweurope.com. Presented by:• Edmund Keith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-keith/• Simon Baker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stbaker/

Hi everyone - we have reuploaded our interview with Mike as there was an audio dropout in the original episode. Sorry for this - it sounded great during recording and editing!Harvey Hancock is joined by Mike DelPrete and Simon Baker to unpack the war on portals.00:00 - intros00:52 - Mike's Madrid preview04:12 - The FTC's settlement with Zillow and Redfin07:19 - Why Rocket’s ownership of Redfin makes rentals strategically valuable09:01 - The “war on portals” and why portal pricing is under attack12:02 - Industry-wide self-inflicted wounds19:44 - Are mature portal businesses losing their entrepreneurial muscle?25:16 - Why unique inventory matters most38:24 - OutrosGet your tickets to PPW Madrid here! https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/ppw-e...

Harvey Hancock is joined by Mike DelPrete and Simon Baker to unpack the war on portals.00:00 - intros00:52 - Mike's Madrid preview04:12 - The FTC's settlement with Zillow and Redfin07:19 - Why Rocket’s ownership of Redfin makes rentals strategically valuable09:01 - The “war on portals” and why portal pricing is under attack12:02 - Industry-wide self-inflicted wounds19:44 - Are mature portal businesses losing their entrepreneurial muscle?25:16 - Why unique inventory matters most38:24 - Outros

In this week's news roundup, Ed, Harvey and Simon look at a portal share price recovery that's outpacing the market, the escalating Compass–StreetEasy standoff in New York, and Silver Lake's sale of Hometrack to Providence Equity Partners.Chapters:00:00 Intro01:00 Portal Share Prices Bounce Back13:43 Compass vs StreetEasy: The New York Standoff23:48 Silver Lake Sells Hometrack to ProvidencePortal Share Prices Bounce BackA composite of eight listed portals — Rightmove, REA Group, Scout24, Hemnet, CoStar, Zillow, Baltic Classifieds Group and Swiss Marketplace Group — appears to have bottomed out in mid-June 2026. Off that low the composite is up roughly 18%, with the median portal rising about 12% over three months against 2–5% for the benchmarks. The rebound is uneven: Hemnet and SMG around 29%, KE Holdings 26%, REA 22%, Rightmove 20%, Scout24 20%, CoStar 13%. Portals are still around 42% below where they were a year ago, while the S&P and FTSE sit at or near record highs. Simon's read: the sell-off had less to do with portal fundamentals than with capital rotating into AI stocks and a fear that LLMs would route around portals — while the businesses themselves kept posting strong numbers.Compass vs StreetEasy: The New York StandoffStreetEasy, Zillow's New York portal, has capped how many new agents can join its Experts programme from any brokerage already holding 20% of its user base — a threshold only Compass and its subsidiaries (Anywhere, Corcoran, Sotheby's, Coldwell Banker) meet. It follows Compass's autumn 2026 marketing playbook, whose first suggestion to agents was to delist from StreetEasy. With Compass controlling an estimated 80% of Manhattan listings by one study, Simon frames this as a battle over unique listings and a genuine existential question for StreetEasy — and asks whether the tit-for-tat response is for StreetEasy to become a brokerage itself.Silver Lake Sells Hometrack to ProvidenceHometrack, the AVM business inside Silver Lake's Houseful, is being acquired by Providence Equity Partners. Harvey's original read was that this signals Silver Lake gearing up to sell Zoopla; Ed's is that a data engine is now an easier asset to sell than a consumer-facing portal. Simon — a Hometrack director twenty years ago — explains why it's so defensible: decades of UK housing data, an AVM used by 16 of the 20 largest UK lenders, and a repeat-revenue model around quarterly loan-book revaluation that took the cost of a valuation from roughly £200 to £20. He's unconvinced a portal group loses much by selling it, and explains why putting an estimate next to an agent's asking price is a problem of its own.PPW Europe runs 28–30 October — https://ppweurope.comPresented by:• Edmund Keith — https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-keith/• Harvey Hancock — https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvey-hancock/• Simon Baker — https://www.linkedin.com/in/stbaker/