News Roundup 09/10/26: AI-first Portals, M&A Updates and Product Talk

In our last news roundup before PPW Madrid, Hemnet's shares jump despite falling numbers, Compass sues California's biggest MLS, Zillow launches inside Claude, HouseCanary adds a brokerage to Google's listings program while in Chapter 11, and Jitty tests paid reports for home buyers.Chapters:00:00 Intro01:20 Hemnet Q3: Numbers Down, Shares Up03:09 The Inside Game And The Outside Game07:48 Compass Sues CRMLS10:42 MLS vs Broker: Who Controls The Listings?13:36 Zillow Launches A Claude Integration14:51 Ed Tests Zillow In Claude17:41 Simon's Live Test23:40 Can A Portal Be A Trusted Companion?28:08 PPW Madrid 202629:37 HouseCanary, Google Listings And Side32:41 Who Is Paying Who?36:10 Is HouseCanary A Threat To Portals?38:10 Jitty Tests Paid Home Buyer Reports43:10 Will Buyers Pay For Property Reports?47:37 WrapHemnet Q3: Numbers Down, Shares UpHemnet's last results before its switch to a sell now, pay later model show paid listings down 30%, published listings down 13% and operating profit down around 30% year on year. Yet it beat consensus on its profit measures and the share price jumped around 10%. Simon explains the two games every listed portal plays: the internal game of operations and metrics, and the external game of managing market expectations.Compass Sues CRMLSCompass is suing CRMLS, the second largest MLS in the US, over rules that fine agents up to $2,500 per violation for marketing a home publicly outside the MLS, even when the seller instructed it. Compass says it will pay any fines its agents receive. Simon boils it down: this is an arm wrestle over who controls the listings, and so who holds the power.Zillow Comes To ClaudeZillow's new Claude integration brings listings, maps, home value estimates and affordability tools into the conversation, using Zillow's own MLS-approved listing display. Ed reran the difficult queries from his January test of portal integrations in ChatGPT and found this one adds real value, admitting what Zillow's filters can't do and flagging likely busts. Simon tests it live, finds the connection step clunky, and argues that AI will be a companion in the home search, not a replacement for it, with trust as the portal's biggest asset.HouseCanary And Google ListingsA year after Google started showing real estate listings in search via HouseCanary, the brokerage Side has joined the program, adding listings from its 600 partners in 19 states. HouseCanary is meanwhile operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Simon thinks it is playing an arbitrage game between listing sources and Google, and doubts the model is defensible.Jitty Tests Paid ReportsAI portal Jitty is piloting £5.99 home buyer reports covering comparable sales, property condition from photo and floor plan analysis, planning history and likely extra costs. Simon explains why, in his experience, consumers rarely pay for property reports in volume, and why one-off sales make the consumer hard to monetise.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/

In this week's news roundup, we dig into Hemnet's 16.8x price rise over a decade and what it has cost the Swedish portal, ask whether vendor-paid advertising is really the advantage portals think it is, and look at why a Sydney hedge fund is shorting REA Group.Chapters:00:00 Intro01:31 Hemnet's Tough Year03:23 Boiling The Frog: Hemnet's 16.8x Price Rise05:04 Booli Overtakes Hemnet On Similarweb11:29 How Hemnet Wins Back Hearts And Minds14:21 Is Vendor-Paid Advertising Really An Advantage?21:23 "If You're Strong, You Have To Be Nice"24:40 Finding The Real Buyers27:42 When Scout24 Doubled Its Prices Overnight31:12 Hedge Fund Shorts REA Group36:30 Should REA Hold Back On Price Rises In A Downturn?42:00 PPW Madrid 2026Boiling The Frog: Hemnet's Price RisesHemnet's share price is down around 70% in a year, with a paused buyback, four directors leaving, an overhaul of its revenue model and redundancies. Ed's analysis on onlinemarketplaces.com finds Hemnet raised its price per listing 16.8x between 2015 and 2025, far ahead of Rightmove's price per advertiser and of house prices in Sweden or the UK. Meanwhile bank-owned aggregator Booli now beats Hemnet on Similarweb, with the caveat that Similarweb does not count app traffic, which makes up 70 to 75% of Hemnet's visits. Simon explains why every intermediary in a property deal is sharing the same pie, and what Hemnet needs to do to win back agents' hearts and minds.Is Vendor-Paid Advertising Really An Advantage?Ed tests a theory: agents grumble but absorb price rises because they need the leading portal to win instructions, while sellers have a breaking point. Simon explains how, once vendor-paid fees become a meaningful number, rival agents can pitch "list with me and save $10,000" by skipping the big portals, as some Australian agencies already do. Harvey asks how a listed portal balances shareholder demands with keeping agents on side, and Simon tells the story of Scout24 doubling its prices overnight around 2007, losing a quarter of its customers and winning them back over three months.Hedge Fund Shorts REA GroupThe Australian Financial Review reports that Sydney-based Bristlemoon Capital is shorting REA Group, betting the portal has underestimated the impact of a slowing Australian housing market. Simon explains why per-listing upgrade revenue leaves portals exposed to listing volumes and time on market, and what the downturn conversation in the REA boardroom looks like.The PPW Conference is in Madrid from 28 to 30 October, with Startup Day on 27 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/

Ryan Gallagher, Founder & CEO of iovox, joins Edmund Keith and Simon Baker to talk about what communications data really says about marketplace leads. He explains why swapping voicemail for AI agents took lead capture from 9% to 90%, why call volumes are rising rather than falling, and why a phone call is still the strongest signal of buyer intent. Also covered: the US Cloud Act and data sovereignty, why software is no longer a moat, and how emotion detection is changing call analysis.00:00 Intro01:42 What iovox does and who it works with02:54 Only 47% of phone leads get answered: the stats that surprise04:34 How fast AI calling has arrived06:15 Data privacy, the US Cloud Act and the EU13:26 Why iovox hosts and trains its own models16:25 Software is dead: what counts as a moat now18:59 Can AI replicate iovox?22:21 AI agents for bookings and replacing voicemail24:51 Whose problem is a missed lead: the portal or the agent?29:14 When AI talks to AI29:42 Are phone calls dying? Call volumes are up 25 to 30%31:50 How phone leads convert versus email and text33:07 LLMs and the consideration phase40:01 Emotion detection versus sentiment analysis42:57 Will AI replace salespeople?43:40 A decade of iovox and what comes nextGuest:• Ryan Gallagher, Founder & CEO at iovox: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryangllghr/Presented by:• Edmund Keith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-keith/• Simon Baker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stbaker/

In this week's news roundup, three AI-first portals launch in the UK and Australia, 360Latam and SeLoger both buy niche players, and we ask whether the industry talks too much about product.Chapters:00:00 Intro02:03 The Rise Of AI-First Portals04:31 How Do You Market An AI Portal To Wary Consumers?11:50 What Do The New Challenger Portals Really Want?18:13 360Latam Acquires Casas y Más19:59 SeLoger Acquires Ouest-France Immo21:04 Why Big Portals Are Buying Niche Players24:06 PPW Madrid 2026 & Startup Day28:26 Do Portals Talk Too Much About Product?35:26 Do We Actually Use Real Estate Portals?39:26 Speed To Market For Renters42:01 WrapThe Rise Of AI-First PortalsThree AI-first portals have launched in the past month. In the UK there's Mal McCallion's MyPorta, which says it has more properties than Rightmove and is free to list forever. In Australia there's SohoAI, which is free to list and has virtual staging, a chat interface, mortgage calculations and market charts built in. There's also a new buyer-focused AI platform for commercial property. With public feeling towards AI turning cautious, Harvey asks how you market a portal built on the technology consumers are wary of. Simon asks what the business model is and what problem is being solved. He thinks incumbents will cherry-pick the best AI features, and explains why buying a home is an emotional search rather than a transactional one.Challenger Portals: Shrinking Moats Or Lower Barriers?SohoAI founder Jonathan Lui says AI has already shrunk the moats around the biggest portals. Ed disagrees: the moat is brand and traffic, and what AI has shrunk is the barrier to entry. Simon goes through the three moats (listings, brand and audience, billing relationships) and explains why only the listings moat has really weakened.M&A: 360Latam And SeLoger Go Niche360Latam, owner of InfoCasas, has acquired Uruguayan platform Casas y Más, which built a strong audience on social media alongside its portal. In France, SeLoger has bought Ouest-France Immo, the regional market leader in western France, with 1.3 million monthly unique visitors and 3.5 million leads a year. Simon explains why portals are really a series of local games, and why small add-on acquisitions are cheap right now.Do We Talk Too Much About Product?Ed tests a theory from his PPW Madrid presentation: of all the levers a portal can pull, the industry over-indexes on product, even though no challenger has ever overtaken an incumbent on product alone. Simon and Harvey explain why product dominates the conversation. Then the team admits how often they actually use portals themselves, and why, in a tight rental market like Madrid, speed to market matters more than bells and whistles.The PPW Conference is in Madrid from 28 to 30 October, with Startup Day on 27 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/

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