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 Portals Choose To Disclose
11:29 How Long Can You Keep Squeezing The Lemon?
18:40 Why No Zillow This Week?
20:23 Are Traffic Claims Worthless?
24:09 Zillow Q3 Teaser
25:22 PPW Madrid Debate: Should Portals Open Up To AI Agents?
29:11 PPW Madrid Debate: Will AI Disrupt Portals?
36:16 Quick Hits: Leboncoin, Soho & The REA Board
38:36 Zillow's $212.5m iBuying Settlement
44:04 PPW Bangkok & Wrap

Realtor.com, CoStar, REA & Scout24
Realtor.com revenue rose 5% to $160m while unique users fell 8% and leads 11%. CoStar's residential business turned a profit for the first time after the Homes.com inside sales team was cut from 655 to 267. REA Group grew revenue 11% to AUD 450m as buyer enquiries fell 33%, and Scout24 grew 19.7% with Spain contributing about half of that. Ed looks at what each company chooses to highlight, and Simon asks how long portals can keep squeezing the lemon.

Are Traffic Claims Worthless?
Only 8% of the 4,100 traffic claims in the OMP database name an arbiter you can check them against. Simon on who actually cares about traffic numbers, and why a results release is a marketing exercise aimed at investors.

PPW Madrid: The Disagreements
Should portals expose their data to AI agents, or risk becoming just another data provider? And is the disruption risk from AI close to zero, as analyst Giles Thorne argued? Simon is firmly on the minimal disruption side. Harvey sits on the fence.

Quick Hits & Zillow's Settlement
Leboncoin revives A Vendre A Louer, Eduardo Saverin backs Soho, Tracey Fellows leaves the REA Group board with Damian Eales taking her seat, and Zillow settles a shareholder lawsuit over iBuying for $212.5m.

PPW Bangkok runs from 2 to 4 March 2027, with a special Startup Day on 2 March. Get your tickets with the podcast discount.

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/

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 business models?
09:21 Favourite presentations
12:31 Has AI raised the standard of presentations?
14:59 Pitch club winner
15:53 Thanks to the sponsors and PPW Bangkok 2027

AI is starting to show real results
With AI now through full product cycles, the conversation has moved on from language features to internal efficiency, user behaviour and perception models. The team also look at how fast new products now ship, from an app built during the conference to IMMOunited launching a full marketplace in Austria in under six months.

Is the industry worried enough?
Fear feels lower than at the last two conferences, but the panel argues the real risk is not one seismic shift. It is death by a thousand cuts, with agentic search chipping away at the core business.

Business models over technology
Consumer monetisation, pay-per-use buyer's agent AI, the end of above-inflation price rises flagged by Jefferies analyst Giles Thorne, the move towards end-to-end transaction platforms, and why mortgage businesses that buy portals tend to do better than portals that move into mortgages.

Favourite talks
Shout-outs for Sarah Wood of realestate.co.nz on brand, marketing and culture, Tilen Pigac's opening poem, Malcolm Myers' scene-setting keynote and Lukas Rose of ProperBird. Plus a theory: has AI raised the standard of conference presentations?

Pitch club and what's next
The team congratulate pitch club winner Rumi, thank the sponsors and announce PPW Bangkok on 2 to 4 March 2027 at the Carlton Hotel.

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 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 Compass Sues CRMLS
10:42 MLS vs Broker: Who Controls The Listings?
13:36 Zillow Launches A Claude Integration
14:51 Ed Tests Zillow In Claude
17:41 Simon's Live Test
23:40 Can A Portal Be A Trusted Companion?
28:08 PPW Madrid 2026
29:37 HouseCanary, Google Listings And Side
32:41 Who Is Paying Who?
36:10 Is HouseCanary A Threat To Portals?
38:10 Jitty Tests Paid Home Buyer Reports
43:10 Will Buyers Pay For Property Reports?
47:37 Wrap

Hemnet Q3: Numbers Down, Shares Up
Hemnet'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 CRMLS
Compass 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 Claude
Zillow'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 Listings
A 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 Reports
AI 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/