From Portal Wars to the War on Portals
While the first half of the decade focused on portals fighting each other for dominance, the second half features portals facing a variety of outside threats, each poised to reduce their market power.
Why it matters: Real estate portals have operated as near-monopolies for two decades, but with credible threats mounting and stock prices down 50 to 80 percent from their 2025 highs, that may be changing.
It starts with pricing: Portals around the globe have incredible pricing power, and have become adept at flexing that muscle with consistent price increases – to the growing consternation of their customers.
In Sweden, a 2025 Nordea survey of 6,000 agents found that 69 percent viewed Hemnet's prices "unacceptably high,” and in the UK, a 2025 survey of 411 agents found that 65 percent viewed Rightmove as “somewhat” or “very” expensive.
For the leading portals across five global markets – Australia, Germany, Sweden, the U.K. and the U.S. – prices have increased an average of 14 percent each year.
In Sweden, after a 13x increase in the average revenue per listing since 2016, more homeowners started trying to sell their home before paying to list on the leading portal, Hemnet.
To quote Hemnet: “...a larger share of the sales cycle takes place on the pre-market…” and “Transactions on the platform decreased by ~5% in 2025…” – leading revenue growth to grind to a halt.
In the U.S., Compass has been attempting to claw back power from the portals by controlling inventory, and to some degree has succeeded in shifting the relationship between brokerages and portals.
The public markets reflect the changing power dynamics: by June, Compass's market cap surpassed Zillow's for the first time, and as of July it was $2 billion larger than Zillow.
And then Google gate-crashed the party, putting for-sale listings directly into search results – not an imminent threat to portals, but a new, credible distribution channel for listing exposure.
The pushback turned into legal action: agents and regulators on three continents came after how the portals make their money.
In May 2025, Australia's competition regulator opened a formal probe into REA's pricing, the result of an 18-month push by the state's agents.
In September 2025, a class action lawsuit was brought against Zillow's Flex and Home Loans program — with racketeering claims added for good measure in November.
And earlier this year, British agents hit Rightmove with a £1.5bn class action over years of "excessive and unfair" fees, the latest serious legal test of a portal's pricing power.
The bottom line: Portals have been raising prices for years without a perceived increase in value, greatly upsetting their paying customers – who have a palpable eagerness for an alternative.
Those customers have finally had enough, and now portals around the world are facing a flurry of headwinds: brokers fighting back, Google’s entry into the space, potential AI disintermediation, and legal action.
Perhaps, like so many things in real estate, the solution is relational: If your customers absolutely love you, they’re going to be a lot less eager to stop using your service the instant they can.