Portals Earning More per Employee Without Shrinking Their Teams
Six of the world's leading real estate portals earn more revenue per employee than they did in 2022, driven by growth rather than cuts.
Why it matters: Revenue per employee is the simplest measure of how efficiently a portal turns its market position into money – and is a timely reality check on the effect of AI efficiency.
Most leading portals have converged on $600k-700k of revenue per employee, with Hemnet above that band and Zillow well below it.
The gap between Hemnet and Zillow is business model: Hemnet sells premium listings to home sellers with a team of 184, while Zillow sells leads to agents (plus rentals and mortgages) with about 6,500 people.
The biggest gains came where revenue growth far outpaced hiring: Australia's REA Group and Baltic Classifieds.
Hemnet earns the most per head but shows the smallest gain, because it grew its team by more than a third while its new "sell first, pay later" model delays revenue – on top of listings falling 22 percent in the first half of 2026.
Rightmove is the only portal earning less revenue per employee than in 2022.
Rightmove fell behind because headcount growth outpaced revenue growth, with headcount up 45 percent since 2022 and revenue up 32 percent.
Investment in new revenue streams doesn't come cheap, and most of Rightmove's new hires were technology roles supporting its "strategic growth areas," which still make up just seven percent of revenue.
Rightmove's hiring has slowed since 2024, so the drag now is slowing revenue growth rather than headcount.
Every portal has more people than it did in 2022, even as some portals are saying that AI is making them more efficient.
Hemnet told investors that "AI tools have notably helped us become more efficient," which may be the case, but in the same report it also reported staff costs grew faster than revenue.
Scout24 is the only portal to tie AI to its own headcount, reporting in August that employee numbers in its existing business fell "to some extent due to efficiency gains" from AI, while organic personnel costs have held flat since 2023.
Most portals are still hiring in the age of AI, and even Zillow, the biggest to cut, says AI isn't the reason.
Zillow is one of only two portals that have fewer people than in 2024, after two rounds of cuts this year, and told GeekWire the cuts weren't driven by AI.
Switzerland's SMG is the other, and credits nearshoring and offshoring with keeping personnel costs flat, though its CFO says AI is helping it avoid new hires.
The bottom line: Portals are likely getting more revenue out of every employee because of their pricing power, and so far AI appears to be a bigger story on earnings calls than in the numbers.
Improving financial efficiency comes from being a dominant marketplace that can raise prices faster than headcount, but Rightmove shows that market dominance alone isn't enough.
If AI were replacing people, teams would be shrinking – but every portal has a bigger team today than before ChatGPT launched.