According to a press release, the update is the most comprehensive overhaul of Zillow's listings pages in five years. The redesign does away with scrolling on Zillow's desktop version and offers a wider layout.

"The new design delivers a fun and efficient way to browse homes on the Zillow website, making it easier for home shoppers to navigate and process information," said Jenny Arden, chief design officer at Zillow. "We introduced a wider layout for images, larger fonts for the most important facts and a clearer articulation of what makes the home special to help our users quickly understand if the home is right for them."

Zillow's listing pages are also getting a makeover on the iOS version of the company's mobile app. Again the idea is to limit scrolling with users presented with a layout with sections marked "What's Special,"' "Market Value," "Monthly Cost" and "Neighborhood."

Real Estate Works (REW), a property portal operating in the west of Canada, has put that idea to the test with the most innovative branding exercise to hit the portal world since Purplebricks coined the word 'commisery' in 2016.

At an average cost of $24,000 per episode, REW's new series, RealTours, consists of 14 episodes published for free on YouTube—with Series 2 already in production.

The numbers look good. Four episodes are live, they have generated 700k views, four million impressions, and 95% of viewers watch episodes through to the end.

But what makes this show so fascinating is that it is funded by the agents that appear in it—indeed, REW reports that Series 1 of RealTours actually turned a profit.

How did they do it? And how can agents replicate the concept of the show in their own market?

Online Marketplaces spoke to REW's President Simon Bray and VP  of Branding Justin R. Melville (pictured above) at the Property Portal Watch conference to find out more.

What has REW been working on?

Simon: We have a large real estate search platform, but we believe the home-seeker experience is more than just listings and inventory—it's about insight, commentary, and content that helps people make better decisions and builds confidence in their real estate journey.

What we've tried to do to meet that need is to build out an original content series from our own in-house production team and specialist realtors to make that happen.

What is RealTours?

Justin: RealTours looks like 14 episodes of Netflix-quality television, but what it really is, is a content universe that's powered by the people and places that most home seekers are interested.

It offers the opportunity to create a living resource for all home seekers that serves our partners well and takes our brand to the masses.

REW has managed to get realtors to pay for the production of the RealTours show—how did you manage this?

Simon: It's a good question.

It will depend on each of the realtors who got involved, but at the core of this idea is that realtors themselves want to build their brand with home seekers in the markets that matter to them.

These realtors want to be seen as the local experts and celebrate that with our large consumer audience. That's the value they get out of partnering with us for this show.

Meanwhile, I think the way we packaged the product was appealing to them; realtors know they will be involved in a high-production level that they couldn't achieve on their own. We're putting cameras on the front of cars, we drive around neighbourhoods, we use drones—this isn't a project that a realtor can easily put together on their own.

Justin: I can think of more than one realtor who signed up who told us that they put zero money in marketing—they don't buy bus shelters, they don't take out ads. For them, this represented a $24,000 investment in their brand, as opposed to a sales driver. They wanted to be part of the experience itself, not just the output.

For them, being a part of Series 1 of RealTours was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; you can only appear in Series 1 once!

Series 1 is complete, Series 2 is on its way. What's your advice to any would-be copycats who want to try this format in their market?

Justin: It's doable. All we're talking about here is creating authentic, evergreen content that's useful and serving it in a place where it is useful and needed. It's a recipe that can be followed in pretty much any market.

However, if I can put our success down to anything, it's probably the extensive investment we put into understanding who we are, who we want to be, and how we see our partners and our product.

RealTours represents all of that work—beyond that, it's just a media asset at the end of the day.

I brought Gabriel Isserlis, CEO at PropTech startup Tutti—the "AirBnb for creative spaces"—into the conversation at this point. He asked the following question:

My portal is far smaller than yours—less budget for us, less budget for our users. What suggestions do you have for building a similar content marketing product that doesn't break the bank?

Simon: I don't think it's necessarily about replicating the partner-pays model. Tutti has unprecedented access to the creative industry, which was a great enabler for us, so I would lean on that—work with some great creators and put their names on the map. Working in the creative industry means there is a massively collaborative aspect to it. That's how I would approach it.

Meanwhile, it's about framing the creative opportunity differently. The platform is fantastic, with interesting and unusual real estate that is accessible to the market in a novel way. Showing your real estate in the light that it is intended to be used is equally fascinating. It's not just about the property, it's about imagining an event, a film shoot, or a music video—it's a great starting point for a successful YouTube channel, which is where we publish RealTours.

My advice to other proptechs is not to rely on the partner-pays model as your primary motivation—just look for great collaborators.

Justin: Inspiration is a currency in the creative space, and creative spaces are a canvas.

As a business, you want people to acquire your canvas for their own needs. It's therefore about making your target audience imagine the possibilities and potential of the creative spaces on your portal.

If I were creating a content machine for creative spaces, I would want to participate with creatives who make great art—if you can connect them to your customer, and use them as a portal to inspiration, that currency will gain inherent value over time.

Goldman Sachs and Apollo Global Management Inc. are working with a group of four other companies—including U.S. lenders Sixth Street, HPS Investment Partners and ICG Capital—to prepare the loan that will reportedly be used by the Permira and Blackstone consortium to buy out Adevinta.

Bloomberg noted that the deal would be Europe's largest-ever direct lending deal.

The Adevinta takeover story, which became public in September, represents what appears to be the first step of an influx of American investment in the multi-trillion European real estate industry.

Europe's online classifieds industry is looking increasingly attractive for U.S. companies. Should the takeover go ahead it would represent the second large deal made for U.S. money to take over European portals in a short space of time.

Breaking news today confirmed that US-based CoStar is set to acquire British number three portal OnTheMarket for a reported $100M—a matter of weeks after CEO Andy Florance told the Property Portal Watch conference that he was eyeing up an overly fragmented European market.

According to a report by Reuters which quoted anonymous sources, the activist investor recently bought shares in the Murdoch-controlled media company.

Starboard has a history of pushing for changes at the companies it invests in and was one of the loudest voices behind eBay's sale of its classifieds division to Adevinta in 2020.

Newscorp's market cap currently stands at around $12.5 billion with Starboard said to value the company's portfolio at closer to $20 billion. A Wall Street Journal article said that the hedge fund values Newscorp's crown jewel, the Australian portal company REA Group, at $8 billion alone.

The other Newscorp real estate asset under scrutiny is Move, Inc. the parent company of Realtor.com. In January the portal was almost sold off to CoStar for a reported $3 billion. Since then CoStar has invested heavily in organically building up its own real estate portal asset, Homes.com and recently claimed that it has taken the number two spot from Realtor.com.

Starboard is not the only Newscorp investor that would like to see a change. Reuters reports that Irenic Capital Management last year pushed News Corp to spin off its real estate assets and Dow Jones, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal. Any spin-off or outright sale would almost certainly need approval from the Murdoch family who own 39% of Newscorp's voting shares.

In a blog post, DelPrete showed how the percentage of an agent's commission Zillow takes for houses that transact for more than $500,000 has been raised from 35% to 40% in six regional markets.

At the end of the 2021 financial year, Zillow CEO Rich Barton told investors that he expected the company to be making $5 billion in revenue at a 45% EBITDA margin by the end of 2025. The Flex price hike seems to be a small step towards that lofty goal as the U.S. housing market continues to be sluggish.

The price increase appears to have occurred quietly in September in the Denver, New Haven, Cape Coral, Reno, Oklahoma City, and Greenville markets.

Under Zillow's Flex program selected agents don't pay the portal upfront but do pay the company a success fee if and when a lead transacts. At the time of writing, there were 11 so-called 'enhanced' regional markets where Zillow only uses its Flex model.

The model is very different from the company's main breadwinner, its Premier Agent product, which sees agents pay the portal for buyer leads.

Zillow has been progressively rolling out Flex in more markets and the model is seen in some quarters as Zillow's insurance play against two pending lawsuits which could impact its Premier Agent business.

The new feature (pictured below) runs from the main search bar and is currently available on the portal's iOS app with the Android version expected to be launched by the end of the year and a desktop version slated for next year.

"Nearly one-third of home shoppers have children younger than 18, making 'search by school' an important feature on the Zillow app," said Nicholas Stevens, vice president of product at Zillow. "We understand the perfect home often extends beyond the property itself, and this feature makes it easy for shoppers to explore homes for sale or for rent in their desired school districts."

The introduction of the tool comes at a time when real estate marketplaces are slowly starting to realise that users often need to search by relative distance (or indeed time) from specific points of interest rather than the town or neighbourhood meta-data that has historically been the default search jump-off point.

Attendees of Property Portal Watch in Madrid last week heard how British portal Zoopla is integrating the services of TravelTime to let its users search for a home by the time it would take them to reach a certain location such as a workplace or school.

Zillow is somewhat late to the party with rivals Realtor.com, Redfin and even its sister site, Trulia having already introduced a school-based search feature.

CoStar alleges that Homesnap founder Guy Wolcott, who left the company in April, along with former Homesnap employees John Mazur, Thomas Goff, and Jeffrey Repanich gained knowledge of CoStar's inner workings to set up a similar platform named Happening Technology.

According to a document filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, CoStar accuses Wolcott of poaching its employees and leveraging knowledge that they gained after the Homesnap takeover, specifically around the CoStar Sync data-transfer system.

"At the time of their departures from CoStar, none of the Former Employees informed CoStar management of their future plans or where they would be working next, even when asked. As CoStar has recently discovered, however, all of the Former Employees eventually formed or joined Happening Technology, a new company that was incorporated in January 2023 with Wolcott as CEO, and did so with the apparent intention of repurposing the proprietary and confidential information they had access to and worked with at CoStar so that Happening Technology could offer competitive technology and services to CoStar’s competitors."

Wolcott denied the allegations in comments made to U.S. agent-facing publication Inman.com saying that he was confident that it would become clear that there was no misappropriation or copying.

Until it was sunsetted by CoStar earlier this year in favour of the Homes.com brand, Homesnap built software tools for agents and had a portal website. CoStar bought Homesnap for $250 million in 2020 and then went on to detach the platform from the Broker Public Portal program in 2022.

The New York Times broke the story this morning with an official post from Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman confirming the break a few hours later via a blog post.

The brokerage boss said that Redfin was quitting the influential industry association due to a disagreement on its rule that requires a fee for the buyer’s agent on every listing as well as "a pattern of sexual harassment".

The NAR is a powerful industry organization which collects dues from its member agents and brokerages in exchange for advocacy, lobbying and regulation services. Members must abide by the NAR's strict rules.

Redfin is one of the top ten brokerages in the United States by transaction volume. Thanks to the unique market dynamics of the North American housing market the company has become one of the United States' most popular portal sites in its own right.

A public disavowal from one of the industry's top companies comes at a poor time for the NAR.

The industry association is facing accusations of sexual harassment after a New York Times article exposed alleged aggressive and abusive behaviour from its President, Kenny Parcell.

The accusations seem to have been the final straw for Kelman, who wrote:

"We’d already been uncomfortable with the NAR’s positions on commissions when we read reports of sexist behavior and sexual harassment, by the NAR’s president and others, based on interviews with 29 former NAR employees."

The CEO went on to explain the disagreement with the NAR's rule that, he believes, stifles competition.

"In the many marketplaces governed by its policies, NAR still blocks sellers from listing homes that don’t pay a commission to the buyer’s agent, and it blocks websites like Redfin.com from showing for-sale-by-owner listings alongside agent-listed homes. Removing these blocks would be easy, and it would make our industry more consumer-friendly and competitive. "

The same NAR rule landed the portal and NAR member, Zillow in court. When it became an NAR member in 2021, the company was forced to show non-MLS listings on a separate tab on its results page, provoking a loss in traffic and leads to discount brokerages. One such brokerage, Texas-based REX, took Zillow to court over the issue with the matter finally settled this week in the portal's favour.

Another gripe that Redfin has with the NAR is that membership is required to obtain access to MLS listings databases. In some areas, agents must be members of NAR to have access to listings, something both Zillow and Redfin want to see changed.

"We’re asking NAR to decouple local access to these tools, including the listing databases known as Multiple Listing Services, from support for the national lobbying organization. Agents shouldn’t have to underwrite policies and legal efforts that hurt consumers when most of us got into real estate to help consumers. Redfin’s mission after all is to redefine real estate in consumers’ favor."

Whether Redfin's shunning will be enough to incite change at the NAR remains to be seen but the negative headlines seem set to continue as it is a defendant in two legal cases which allege that its policy of mandatory seller commission is anticompetitive.

“The partnership is another milestone in providing our members with the most up-to-date resources and tools they need to best serve the South Florida market, said BeachesMLS and Broward, Palm Beaches & St. Lucie Realtors CEO Dionna Hall

Nestfully is a consumer-facing portal endeavour launched earlier this year by two regional MLS players (California Regional MLS and Bright MLS) in partnership with tech provider, Constellation1. The portal's development and upkeep is paid for by the dues of participating MLS members.

The site is designed to be a simple, advert and call-to-action-free interface for consumers. In contrast to portals like Zillow, the information of the listing agent is displayed prominently on all property pages and leads are provided for free.

The U.S. market does supposedly have an industry-backed challenger to the profit-seeking, public company behemoth that is Zillow. Realtor.com has some level of support from the National Association of Realtors but, since it monetises in the same way as Zillow, many agents and brokerages have become disillusioned with the Murdoch-owned number two portal and in recent years endeavours like Nestfully and OneKey in New York have sprung up.

The move sees Realtor introduce a paid subscription service for agents to enhance their listings' presentation and boost their visibility on the portal's results pages for the first time. The new suite of products represents a notable shift in the company's business model and will be widely interpreted as a mirroring of similar features introduced early this year by rival, Zillow.

To quote a company press release, the new selection of products and features available to agents on Realtor.com includes:

• "Featured branding to connect with more sellers: Get in front of motivated sellers who are actively seeking agents by amplifying your agent profile and getting higher placement in search results on Realtor.com's pay-at-close seller leads platform.
• Enhanced listing presentations: Master your listing presentations with local market data and buyer intel from Realtor.com plugged directly into pre-listing tools from Cloud CMA by Lone Wolf.
• Promoted listings in Realtor.com search results: Showcase your listings to buyers on the first page of Realtor.com's search results for relevant market searches.
• Find the right buyer for your listing: Lift close rates by uncovering local buyers searching Realtor.com with matching budgets and home preferences, and communicate directly with their buyer's agent about your listing."

The features are collectively known as 'Listing Toolkit' and are already available to agents across the United States. Commenting on the release of Listing Toolkit, Blake Elmquist, Realtor.com Vice President, Seller Category said:

"To succeed in the current market, brokers and agents need a strong partner like Realtor.com, who can help them attract and communicate with the millions of soon-to-be sellers who visit our site each month. Compared to the competition, a higher portion of our audience is ready to find an agent to help them buy and sell,"

"Leveraging the insights and tools in our new Listing Toolkit can help agents get in front of and wow seller prospects, beat out the competition for listings and seamlessly close deals and sell homes faster. The comprehensive toolkit is just one of the many ways Realtor.com is aggressively innovating to drive results for listing agents and helping to grow their business."

Whereas in most European markets, portals charge agents to list on their website and app, in the United States residential real estate portals have typically made money by charging agents for leads rather than on a pay-to-list or premium placement basis.

With Zillow's introduction of its 'Listings Showcase' in June and now Realtor.com's 'Listing Toolkit' the landscape has shifted for agents.

Previously a selling agent would be unlikely to pay a real estate portal as all listings are included in the portal's results pages free of charge via the MLS. Now with the advent of Zillow and Realtor's new products and the rise of Homes.com's premium visibility model, selling agents may find themselves in an arms race to make sure their listing gets enough exposure.