Harvey Hancock and Simon Baker break down the latest US portal results from Zillow and CoStar Group.

00:00 Intros

06:13 Zillow’s Q2 results and wider context

09:57 Zillow layoffs and the AI efficiency question

15:16 Realtor.com, Redfin, and the broader traffic trend

19:32 Turning tire kickers into qualified prospects

20:07 AI assistants as qualification and nurture tools

23:36 CoStar Group, Homes.com, and revenue mix

38:39 Depth advertising at Homes.com

43:11 Final conference reminder

Ed Keith is joined by Esteve Castells — former Head of SEO at Adevinta and founder of AI search visibility platform LLM Pulse — to work through what generative search actually means for real estate marketplaces.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:53 From Adevinta's global SEO lead to founding LLM Pulse
04:01 What running SEO across a portfolio that size was really like
05:59 Evangelising SEO inside a business that didn't believe in it
09:32 How LLM Pulse started, and what it does now
11:55 Executives vs operators: who's actually taking AI search seriously
13:10 Will portals lose the search phase to LLMs?
16:58 The strategic case for — and against — building ChatGPT apps
22:23 Real estate vs other verticals, and the unique inventory problem
26:15 Domain authority is out. What replaces it?
29:26 Why 96% of what an LLM sees about your niche is other brands
33:54 Scraped listings, attribution, and whether to block AI crawlers
37:38 Will ChatGPT pick a favoured marketplace in each country?
41:54 Ed's theory: portals will lose the consideration phase
45:00 What portals can actually do about disintermediation

The evangelist's job never really ends
Esteve joined Schibsted Marketplaces in January 2019 into an organisation with almost nobody working on SEO full time — a business that had grown on brand and TV without needing it. The hardest part of the job, he says, was never the SEO itself. It was getting resources and getting people to care. The eBay Classifieds Group acquisition brought a stronger SEO culture with it, and the team finally had a tailwind. He now sees the same cycle starting again with AI search, except this time nobody has the playbook.

The disintermediation question
The boardroom worst case is straightforward: ChatGPT serves every house on the market by going straight to the agency, and the aggregator in the middle disappears. Esteve points out that real estate is unusually exposed here because almost nobody has unique inventory — the same listing sits on the agency site, several portals and the meta-aggregators on top of them. Generalist goods marketplaces are far better protected, because they're the canonical source and they own payment and delivery.

SEO and GEO are the same ingredients, a different dish
Esteve's view is that SEO is the foundation for AI search, but the actions diverge. LLM Pulse data shows 96% of what an LLM sees when answering a query in your niche is about other brands, not yours — which pushes the work off your own site and onto third-party sources and PR. He also flags the brands that quietly went invisible because an IT decision blocked ChatGPT's crawler.

The attribution problem, and who ChatGPT partners with
Citation CTR is under 1%, so the marketplace that sourced an answer rarely gets credit for it. Esteve's research has found ChatGPT typically favours one media partner per country — Prisa in Spain — and the open question is whether that pattern extends beyond media. If it does, he argues it may favour the number two or three player rather than the incumbent, since the big marketplaces are the most hostile to partnering with OpenAI.

Guest:
Esteve Castells, Founder at LLM Pulse — LinkedIn

Presented by:
Edmund Keith — LinkedIn

In this week's news roundup, Ed, Harvey and Simon dig into Rightmove's £1.6bn class action and the "retaliation" row, Aurum PropTech's bold plan to make housing.com profitable, and a provocative question: should portals switch sides and go buyer-first?

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:57 Rightmove's £1.6bn Class Action & "Retaliation" Claims
12:42 Can Mature-Market Portals Keep Raising Prices?
18:00 Aurum PropTech Buys housing.com from REA India
27:24 Who Won the REA India Deal?
29:35 Ed's 18,000 Portal Claims Database
31:56 The Consideration Phase: Should Portals Go Buyer-First?
48:00 And Finally: PPW Europe, Madrid

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 and Simon Baker unpack REA Group's exit from India, a big CFO move at CoStar, Dubizzle's push into rental protection, and why the real portal-vs-LLM fight is about consideration, not search.Chapters:00:00 Intro00:50 REA Group Sells Housing.com to Aurum PropTech20:19 CoStar Group's New CFO: Robin Rossman23:50 Dubizzle Group Invests in Takeem29:59 Portals vs LLMs: The Battle for ConsiderationREA Group Sells Housing.comREA India has signed a binding agreement to sell housing.com to Aurum PropTech for roughly A$68m — in Aurum shares, not cash — lifting REA's stake in Aurum from 5.5% to 24.9%. The expected loss on divestment is around A$110m, and India moves to a discontinued operation.Simon, a former REA Group CEO, argues the exit was always coming and puts it in the context of REA's long history of cross-border entries and exits. Ed digs into whether a traffic lead alone can ever pay in a market like India — housing.com hit 1.3x its nearest competitor, short of the 2x threshold former CEO Dhruv Agarwala said was needed for revenue to compound.CoStar Group's New CFORobin Rossman moves from MD of CoStar Group Europe to replace Chris Lown as CFO. Simon knows Rossman well and rates the mix of financial and operational experience — and doesn't rule out a long-term succession plan.Dubizzle Group Invests in TakeemDubizzle Group has taken a strategic stake in UAE rental protection platform Takeem, making Bayut and Dubizzle the exclusive portals for its rental guarantee product.Ed asks whether a portal should be carrying balance-sheet risk; Simon argues the pain points in emerging markets are simply different.Portals vs LLMs: The Battle for ConsiderationOff the back of Ed's article, the pair debate whether portals can build a genuinely neutral consideration engine when agents pay the bills — and Simon delivers a soundbite on whether portals can overcome the loyalty problem.Presented by:• Edmund Keith — https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-keith/• Simon Baker — https://www.linkedin.com/in/stbaker/

Ed, Harvey and Simon break down the week's biggest stories from the world of real estate portals: a Baltic classifieds giant borrowing to buy back its own shares, the escalating legal fight between REA Group and Domain over their marketing claims, and OMYHOME's unusual delisting back to its own founders for a single dollar. Plus, is the market overestimating AI's short-term threat to portals?In this episode:• Baltic Classifieds Group borrows ~€118m to buy back its undervalued shares (on 78% margins)• REA Group and Domain trade lawsuits over the "nine in ten" and Matterport marketing claims• Simon's confession about a certain "four times more views" claim from 2002• OMYHOME sold to its founders for $1, wiping ~$20m of debt• Enterprise vs consumer AI adoption, and why portals' AI-referral traffic is still under 1%Chapters:00:00 Welcome00:24 Baltic Classifieds Group: borrowing to buy back shares08:30 REA Group vs Domain: the marketing claims lawsuits20:55 Simon's "very expensive selfie" confession23:50 OMYHOME sold to its own founders for $127:55 Enterprise vs consumer AI adoption in real estate41:51 PPW Europe 2026 — Madrid, 28–30 OctoberHosted 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/

Ed, Harvey and Simon get together for an overdue rundown of the latest news in portals and proptech.0:00 Intros0:39 CoStar board member renewals and activist investors.15:00 CoStar Investment in Wikicasa18:27 Square Yards Fundraise27:10 Zillow + Google Gemini, and the Consideration Phase

Shawn Mullahy, newly appointed CEO at Zumper, joins Harvey for a conversation about taking over from Founder, Anthemos Georgiades, and moving towards a new business and revenue model that fills houses faster.

00:00 Intros and Zumper changes

04:35 Zumper's strategic shift under new leadership

10:08 AI Integration and Future Business Model

17:02 Challenges in Lead Attribution and Customer Engagement

22:01 Investor Perspectives on AI Innovation

30:13 Transition from CRO to CEO and Team Dynamics

36:00 Future Trends in Rental Markets and Closing Thoughts

Toby Chapman from OC&C Strategy returns to the PPW Pod for a follow-up on last year's debate around AI and real estate marketplaces. A year on from his "AI truck" prediction, Ed, Simon and Toby unpack why share prices are down 30-50%, whether portals are undervalued or were overvalued, and where the real existential risks actually lie.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:03 Has the AI truck hit? Investor markets vs operating performance

04:49 Undervalued today, or overvalued in the past?

07:54 OC&C research: where does the industry think the risk is coming from?

12:12 Integrate with the AI labs (Chat GPT etc.) or stay out like CoStar & Airbnb?

17:18 Why aren't portals shaping the AI narrative themselves?

21:01 Simon's pushback: are we having the wrong conversation entirely?

25:18 Will OpenAI build a vertical property portal? (Spoiler: probably not)

29:00 The whole property buying journey — portals' real battleground

31:01 Lead attribution, the trust dilemma & whose side is the portal on?

38:00 The generational shift — are portals built for the wrong audience?

42:29 Toby's counter: leaders double down, opportunity beyond search & discovery

44:15 Wrap-up — reconvene this time next year

Guest: Toby Chapman, Partner at OC&C Strategy Consultants — https://www.linkedin.com/in/toby-chapman-8a559a15/

Presented by:

- Edmund Keith — https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-keith/

- Simon Baker — https://www.linkedin.com/in/stbaker/