The PPW Podcast

In this episode of the PPW Podcast, Harvey Hancock and Simon Baker sit down with Owen Redman and James Buck, co-founders of Roome and winners of Pitch Club at PPW Madrid 2026.Chapters:00:00 Intro01:14 PPW Madrid 2026 recap02:38 Meet Roome, the Pitch Club winners04:20 Universities, students and scale05:46 How Roome makes money08:59 Referral fees from student accommodation operators10:35 Co-branding...

In this week's news roundup, four of the biggest real estate portal operators report, and the story is the same everywhere: growth is coming from charging more, not from traffic or leads. Plus the disagreements hiding in the PPW Madrid transcripts, and Zillow pays $212.5m to put iBuying behind it. Chapters: 00:00 Intro 02:01 Realtor.com, CoStar, REA & Scout24: The Headline Numbers 06:48 What P...

Recorded live on stage at Property Portal Watch Madrid 2026, Edmund Keith, Harvey Hancock and Simon Baker take stock of two and a half days of talks in front of more than 460 delegates from around 50 countries. Chapters: 00:00 Intro: live from the PPW Madrid 2026 stage 01:20 Key takeaways: AI starts delivering real results 03:56 Is the industry worried enough? 05:23 Are we talking enough about bus...

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 Intro 01:20 Hemnet Q3: Numbers Down, Shares Up 03:09 The Inside Game And The Outside Game 07:48 Com...

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 Intro 01:31 Hemnet's Tough Year 03:23 Boiling The Frog: Hemnet's 16.8x Price Rise 05:04 Booli Overtakes Hemnet On Similarw...

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 sover...

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 Intro 02:03 The Rise Of AI-First Portals 04:31 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 Más 19:59...

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 bid A judge has rejected Zillow's motion to dismiss the Dupuis class action, brought on behalf...

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 teasers 02:25 the four challenges facing property portals 03:50 business models problems vs perception problems 13:09 Relevance as the lifeblood 16:55 Brokerage...

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 Intro 04:09 Idealista Signs Orpi In France 15:43 Compass Launches See It First 27:27 Portal Leadership Shake-Up 37:13 Do Portal Leaders Need Portal Experience? Ideal...

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 charg...

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 Intro 01:34 REA Group Signs ACCC Undertaking Over Listing...

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 intros 00:54 What is Landfolk? 07:25 Context, Business model and monetisation 13:31 Awarene...

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...

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 - intros 00:52 - Mike's Madrid preview 04:12 - The FTC's settlement with Zillow and Redfin 07:19 - Why Rocket’s ownership...

Harvey Hancock is joined by Mike DelPrete and Simon Baker to unpack the war on portals. 00:00 - intros 00:52 - Mike's Madrid preview 04:12 - The FTC's settlement with Zillow and Redfin 07:19 - Why Rocket’s ownership of Redfin makes rentals strategically valuable 09:01 - The “war on portals” and why portal pricing is under attack 12:02 - Industry-wide self-inflicted wounds 19:44 - Are matur...

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 Prov...

Harvey speaks with Rita Goh from Property Guru about the company’s “Moving Out” micro-drama campaign, a social-first marketing experiment that went viral in Singapore, and beyond! 0:00 Intros1:46 Property Guru context 3:34 What is this social first marketing strategy? 5:40 Moving Out in context 18:04 Storyboarding and Creative 22:19 Anonymous Vs Branded content 26:26 Gen Z demands and activities 3...

Harvey joins Simon for a fast-moving news roundup covering Idealista’s planned expansion into France, Zillow’s FTC settlement over its Redfin rentals deal, and results from KE Holdings and Swiss Marketplace Group. We discuss strategy, market structure, cross-border expansion, and where portals may need to evolve beyond pure advertising to stay relevant. 00:00 - Introduction and the news roundup fo...

Simon and Harvey get together for a roundup of this week's news stories, including Silver Lake's Housetrack divestment, new data on Redfin and Boneo, and a long conversation about international expansions. 0:00 sponsor messages and intros 1:04 Silver Lake and Hometrack 12:09 Redfin and Boneo 26:00 International Expansions

Simon and Harvey catch up on some financial results around the world, with some adjacent conversations including traffic, hirings, amortization, LLM traffic, legislation changes, going public, and more... 0:00 Intros and PPW Europe update 3:00 Rightmove HY 2026 results 11:30 Scout24 H1 and Q2 2026 19:25 REA Group FY2026 results 31:00 Idealista FY2025 results 42:00 Square Yards Q1 2027

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....

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 busine...

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 A...

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 Por...