Highlights include:

• Overall Prosus revenues increased 20% YoY to $399 million
• OLX's real estate segment continued its healthy revenue increases by 21% to $73 million
• Real estate margins increase to 36%
• Group EBIT improves from a loss of $113m in H1 2024 to a profit of $60m in H1 2025
• Owner Naspers records revenue increased of 23% YoY, to US$3.4 billion.

Prosus, owned by Naspers, operates a highly diversified set of marketplace businesses across horizontals including food, e-commerce, automotive and real estate in Europe, South Africa and Brazil. The company also has a 38% stake in the Dubizzle Group.

Prosus Classifieds Assets

It was a strong set of results for Prosus, highlighting increased profitability, early-stage investment in AI technologies, improved cash flow and cash reserves, and a claim that the business is ready to create "the next $100 billion in value".

Prosus noted how real estate and motors are the fastest-growing segments and the segments with the highest growth potential in the future.

OLX real estate, driven by Otodom in Poland and Property24 in South Africa, generated revenues of $73 million in H1 FY2025, up from $59 million in the same period last year before increasing to $62 million in the second half of the year.

In other words, half-year to half-year revenues increased by 5% from H1 to H2 2024, and 18% from H2 2024 to H1 2025.

Meanwhile, monthly ARPA continues to achieve double-digit growth year over year, at 11% for the half-year. However, this is slightly lower than recent half-year results (17%, 22%, and 12%, respectively, in H1 2022, 2023, and 2024).

Overall OLX listing revenues increased 230% YoY, though this includes non-real estate assets, namely automotive classifieds websites like AutoTrader.

OLX Brazil recently announced that it is introducing a buyer-paid model for its (non-real estate) horizontal marketplace.

This year, an early-stage real estate portal based in Egypt, Property Sorted, beat six other startups to claim the title of Pitch Club Winner at Online Marketplaces' autumn conference in Barcelona.

We caught up with the winner, CEO Abdelrahman Zohairy, for a wide-ranging conversation after the conference to dive deeper into his business, emerging markets, his business model, the size of the prize in MENA, and what it takes to take on not one, but two unicorns...

What does Property Sorted do?

We are building a trusted real estate marketplace in the MENA region, starting in Egypt.

MENA has a big problem with the basic search experience, from fake listings and phone spam. These problems have lasted for decades, ever since the portals launched at the start of the internet age. We're using technology and AI to decrease the cost of doing this, and we're delivering 10x user experiences based on these technologies.

Where did the idea for the business come from?

The idea came from two sides of the transaction in different areas of the world: selling a property in Egypt and buying a property in London.

When I saw the differences in the availability of information and the portals and the transparency, that told us that there was something there and that we should pursue it as a business.

Can you build some context about the MENA region for us?

In the MENA region, we're talking about a billion people on the demand side. It's huge. And on the number of houses, let's take Egypt, for example, the population is 106 million. The number of houses there is around 24 million.

And the houses available online at any given time are from 200,000-300,000, and most processes are still offline.

The demand for online homebuying is sky-high and getting bigger.

Another very important thing around this region is in the last five years or so there have been multiple currency depreciations, and a volatile stock market, which has impacted trust. Therefore, for most people, real estate is the number one asset that they put money into to hedge against inflation or save for the future and their family, et cetera.

Compare this to the UK where there is a lot of money in the stock market and other reliable asset classes. It is very important to remember that most people in the MENA and MENAP regions are highly reliant on real estate as an investment asset, yet it remains very difficult for them.

Abdelrahman Zohairy on-stage at the Proptech and Portal Watch conference in Barcelona

What's the nature of your competition in the region?

We are up against five big businesses, two of which are unicorns (Dubizzle, PropertyFinder). We are also up against the marketplace segment of Facebook even though it isn't technically a portal. There are some other players but those three businesses are the central components of the competitive landscape.

What tech do you use and what are you working on at the moment?

One of the most important things we do is check the accuracy of the listing, including price, title, description and features. We are using a lot of data points and technology to make sure they all make sense and no one can post anything fake.

We're currently working on very exciting stuff with SEO and AI-generated content. We're creating a kind of end-point in the back end that takes a lot of parameters. You can tell it "I want to create a blog", and this is my user's intent, and this is my ISP, and this is where they are on their user journey.

Then, it uses LLMs and our proprietary data to create high-quality content. This will help us with programmatic SEO at a serious scale.

How do you make money?

We sell high-quality leads to agents. We're a data-first company, so we collect data points around what the customer is doing, where they landed from, where they've clicked, how much time they spent on a specific page, and what searches they have done.

This creates a profile and, depending on the engagement of that lead, we can say that this person has a high intent, a medium intent, or a low intent.

We then tier our leads and price them according to the lead's level of intent, and the location in which they're searching.

In other words, we make more money selling a high-intent lead searching in a trending area than we do on a medium-intent lead in a less popular area.

Do you take a slice of the commission?

No, we don't. We don't take the house price into account and we don't intend to go into the transaction or commission pool. We view ourselves as a Tech company and we view the agent as the trusted advisor who closes the transaction and deserves to keep their full commission. We think this is more scalable.

How do you attract supply? Are you approaching agents directly? Or scraping?

That's a great question, and it is actually both. We talk to the supply side, and they give us data directly. We also crawl the web and we try to—from all sources—collect every single possible listing out there and aggregate everything onto our platform.

We're also looking into attracting FSBO supply and maximising our coverage in the future.

All our traffic is organic and comes from online and offline conversations, from in-person conversations to Facebook, Reddit threads and SEO.

What is the size of the opportunity for investors in MENA?

Another great question. As mentioned previously, we are a massive region with a billion people, and we already have two unicorns.

I believe that there is space for another billion-dollar unicorn in MENA—if not two. This is a very substantial market.

There's another interesting thing that most people don't know about—and that is most of these countries are not even built yet!

Most developed countries are already built, but in Egypt alone, we live on less than 10% of the land. The same applies to Saudi, right? it's mostly vacant.

There is so much still to be done. Development potential, growing populations - MENA is like a video game where you have free land to build on and you watch your baby city grow into a thriving metropolis over time.

Add onto this the basic problems that have yet to be solved with search and data and transactions. This is something big, there is a massive opportunity for great things.

What's the biggest problem you want help solving today?

As a founder, I have a lot of problems!

We are currently bootstrapped and we want to grow and move faster. While it is true that no amount of money can solve all problems, some funding would be nice!

We are looking to raise funds from angels that are strategic to the industry and have a long-term vision. We want to team up with someone who understands we have a long-term plan - not a "three years and leave" collaboration.

What will it take for Property Sorted to be the next unicorn in MENA and MENAP?

A great question! The first is funding. If you are going to take on unicorns like Dubizzle Group and Property Finder, you need money to beat them. These are companies that are ready to raise $50 million and $100 million rounds, so raising capital is critical.

Talent is next. The unicorns are based in the UAE and can attract great talent from Europe. We will need a great team to take them on.

Finally, we need to be smart about where we compete. We do not want to go to war where the unicorns are strong in a certain area, we need to focus on areas that are not a strategic priority.

For us, problems around fake listings in Egypt and focusing on the demand side more (the unicorns focus on the supply side). We need to tackle MENA differently.

Talk to me about AI.

I sit in the middle between tech and business. I worked with a lot of data science years ago, so I sort of know the ins and outs of it.

And I think AI is being thrown out there as the solution a lot of times, but it's more of an enabler and cutting costs or increasing revenue.

But, it's really just a tool. And I think it's important to always remember that as of today, AI is still a tool and it's not replacing a person. For example, we can't use AI to replace the speakers at the conference, right? We need those experienced people to say all these insights and secret sauces and use their brain power.

AI helps us to do better, but it's not really a replacement. So I think that's a very important thing to remember.

What's your feeling on the industry as a whole after the PPW conference in Barcelona?

The industry operates in a very powerful niche. Real estate portals are an industry by themselves, and it is very difficult to change this industry.

I think the startups are trying to take over the market leaders in the wrong way by building new portals. It takes a ChatGPT to take on a Google, the same goes for new portal businesses. We will need a paradigm shift to change the industry at this stage.

Congratulations on your Pitch Club win. How are you feeling?

Amazing! We learned a lot and improved our pitch from what we have seen and heard here.

What goes into a great pitch?

A pitch is a gauge between storytelling and data.

In the beginning, when you're a young business with less data, you need to focus on the storytelling side, contextualising the problem and bringing emotion and the big vision into your pitch.

As you grow and access more data, you can lean into the numbers and share more business-focused themes.

The audience also matters. If they are highly educated on the problem, you can focus on the solution. But if they do not understand the problem, you need to fill in all those gaps as a priority in the first instance and spend less time on the solution.

What isn't the industry talking about that it should spend more time talking about?

We need to talk about and look much more closely at developing and emerging markets. There are so many opportunities with high-population markets in MENA and MENAP regions. We lack a lot of basic stuff that we take for granted in the UK and other mature markets like Australia.

This is something investors and the industry as a whole should be looking at.

And finally... How about a testimonial for the Proptech and Portal Watch conference?

We discovered that the bar is very high at this conference. I took notes in 90% of the talks! I've learned so much. There are brilliant speakers, very experienced people.

The conference has been very useful, I recommend the event to everyone.

We hope to be back soon because being here has given us amazing confidence in what we do. We have a strong conviction that what we are doing is much-needed, and our customers are telling us the same.

Thank you so much for all the hard work that goes into making it such a valuable experience for attendees. We will be back again next time.

• Company operating revenue was up 15% year-on-year at A$22.1 million.
• Operating EBITDA was up 10% year-on-year and up 14% on Q1 2024 at A$1.8 million.
• All operating segments (regions) grew revenue in Q2 both on a year-on-year and sequential basis, including Zameen.

Commenting on the results, founder and CEO, Shaun Di Gregorio said:

“FDV achieved a record revenue result in 2Q 2024, being our best-ever quarterly performance. This represents a 15% improvement on pcp and 14% on 1Q 2024, highlighting a positive rebound from the seasonally softer first quarter, with all our operating regions growing their revenue, including our investments in Pakistan.

Each of our operating regions are EBITDA positive, which enables us to invest in product development. The product roadmaps in each of our operating regions are targeted investments designed to drive long-term revenue growth and value creation.

Over the last 18 months, we have successfully navigated the challenges posed by uncertain economic conditions around the globe. As these conditions show signs of improvement, we expect to see improved trading conditions in the medium term.”

FDV owns and operates 12 online classifieds marketplaces across three regions worldwide and holds a 30% stake in the leading Pakistani property portal, Zameen and a 37% stake in Pakistani autos vertical PakWheels.

The company's share price has suffered over the last couple of years largely due to the subdued performance of its 'Asia Associates' brands  (Zameen and Pakwheels) which have been heavily affected by political turbulence in Pakistan.

The good news for investors is that the Asia Associates were back in the black for the second straight quarter contributing A$3.1 million in revenue (up 13% y-o-y) and EBITDA of A$0.4 million (up 296%).

Elsewhere FDV's Latin American business—known as '360 LATAM'—saw record revenue of A$14.8 million and 10% yearly growth in EBITDA (A$1.3 million) despite product investments such as a new tech platform for the company's Chilean horizontal brand Yapo.

In the Middle East and North Africa region—reported as 'MENA Marketplaces Group'—FDV's assets saw a rebound from Q1 as revenues totalled A$2.5 million while EBITDA was flat at A$0.14 million. The company chalked up the softer EBITDA figure to reduced demand for advertising and contribution from lower-margin products.

In Asia there was a standout performance from the Burmese real estate vertical iMyammarhouse which saw revenues increase 95% year-on-year in Q2 to A$0.68 million. Meanwhile, the Filippino brokerage and listings business Hoppler continued to drag down the segment's metrics as its revenues declined 40%.

Looking ahead, the company continues to have high hopes for its 'Iris' MLS-like service. The product performed well in Latin America having been introduced into select markets in 2022 and logged A$654k in revenue for the quarter, up 85% year-on-year. FDV is also moving into the B2B property materials space in Latin America and saw its 'Centrify' marketplace grow revenues significantly in the quarter.

REA Group adds an affordability filter for rentals

Realestate.com.au has added an affordability filter for its rental properties on the back of the launch of an accessibility filter for homes to buy and rent last month.

The new filter lets users search for properties that fill within rental affordability schemes including the National Rental Affordability Scheme.

Jarrod Scott, general manager of Product at Realestate.com.au, said:

"Persistent national rental market challenges and rising cost of living pressures continue to impact so many Australians. For those who are eligible for specific rental affordability schemes, our new affordable housing search filter is designed to ease some of the stress of finding a new home.

"The filtered search provides more clarity around eligibility for these properties and will ultimately also support agents in receiving applicable enquiries and applications.

"We were also pleased to add a new accessibility filter to our experience last month. Designed with the support of groups such as Spinal Life Australia, this update enables consumers to easily filter buy and rent properties with accessible features. Agents simply need to identify these features in listing copy and the property will automatically appear in a filtered search."

Also... REA Group relaunches Audience Maximiser product

Not content with one product launch, Realestate.com.au also announced this week that it relaunched its Audience Maximiser product to give more control to agents.

The latest redesign takes Audience Maximiser from an impressions-based package to a click-based package, all easily managed within REA Group’s customer self-service platform, Ignite. REA says the change should "drive more high-intent actions to an agent’s listing and prioritises quality over quantity to help find the right buyer, sooner."

Melina Cruickshank, Chief Product and Audience Officer at REA Group, said:

"Our Audience Maximiser product extends this reach off platform, increasing campaign listing views by 66%.

"Furthermore, the product has no need for third-party cookies; it leverages our own, highly engaged audience. This enables customers to confidently run targeted campaigns and ensures listings are seen by the right buyers."

PropertyGuru launches Mall Intelligence Module

PropertyGuru has launched a tool that will track the performance of circa 200 commercial spaces for the rest of the year.

The Mall Intelligence Module will offer developers and managers of real estate investment trusts (REITs) the insights and analytics they need to understand metrics including footfall and customer demographics in shopping malls.

PropertyGuru says it is also developing generative AI tools with a focus on developments and city planning across Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

Bayut adds a "New Projects" page for off-plan properties

The UAE-based real estate portal Bayut, part of the Dubizzle Group, has added a new page to its website for off-plan property opportunities.

The new page includes information about projects for residential, commercial and mixed-use projects. Users can browse options and also receive advice on payment plans, price trends (and comparative trends across other local markets), and apply for pre-approval on a mortgage from the Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank.

Sahibinden signs unexpected partnership with Turkish technology and car manufacturer Togg

Turkish real estate portal has entered a partnership with the technology company and car manufacturer Togg, whereby drivers can use the T10X car's mapping software to find and navigate properties listed for sale and rent on the Sahibinden portal.

Sahbinden, which says it wants to be seen more as a technology business than a real estate marketplace, has also said it is open to similar deals with other car manufacturers in Turkey.

Purplebricks to launch ITV campaign after media-for-equity deal

Purplebricks has reached an agreement with broadcaster ITV to advertise its brand on UK television screens in return for equity in the business.

ITV, which runs an "Equity for Media" fund, has pledged up to £4.5 million to Purplebricks in return for a stake in the portal. The broadcaster previously invested £11 million in Strike—the company that acquired Purplebricks last year—in 2021.

Sam Mitchell, CEO at Purplebricks, said:

"This is an exciting moment for Purplebricks as we partner with ITV in a significant media-for-equity deal.

"“The process for buying and selling properties hasn’t changed in almost 200 years, but thanks to Purplebricks, customers are now able to sell their home for free, with no hidden costs.

"ITV will help us take that message to homes across Britain as we continue to build on the strong momentum of the past six months and look forward to further growth in the future."

Zoopla to spend Marketing budget on local marketing using AI, advertising and content

Zoopla, the UK's number two real estate portal, has pledged to increase its local marketing campaigns as part of the business' significantly boosted marketing budget for 2024.

The Silver-Lake-owned company has increased its marketing budget by 41% this year, and a press release has outlined Zoopla's plans to dedicate a significant portion of the budget to ensure users see marketing that is local to their area.

Zoopla will expand its number of area guides and use AI-powered, hyper-localised email marketing to complement its national campaign running until the end of June.

Nikki Cole, Director of National Sales at Zoopla, said:

"It’s no secret that Zoopla has unrivalled market and audience intelligence and our latest regional campaign allows us to showcase this to agents and consumers in their local area.

"We look forward to empowering consumers to use this insight to make better home-buying decisions, and supporting agents during these summer selling months as a result."

AI-powered portal Jitty adds a new categorisation option for similar properties

Jitty, the UK's first AI-powered challenger portal, has added a new property-sorting feature to its "roomscrolling" platform.

The new "Collections" feature improves the property-browsing experience by collating groups of trending and interesting properties around the UK.

Collections categories include 'Buy a Pub' and 'Charming Cottages', with Jitty saying the feature is designed to make browsing properties fun and playful.

Graham Paterson, CEO at Jitty, said:

"We’ve created Jitty’s Collections to ensure that those who enjoy browsing the property market have more opportunity to find exactly what they are looking for, and better yet, inspire them to look at homes they might not have previously considered."

Jitty uses AI to sort and filter properties for a range of metrics including room sizes, number of bedrooms and energy rating. The platform also uses Large Language Models (LLMs) to interrogate floorplans, photographs and property descriptions from UK real estate agents' websites and listings.

Online Marketplaces welcomed Paterson onto the PPW Podcast earlier this year. You can watch the full episode here.

Redfin launches a free rental tool for property owners

Redfin has launched the "List My Home for Rent" tool, which is free to users who want to list a property for rent in 13 markets across the United States.

Owners with fewer than ten rental properties can list in a few minutes using basic information and a bride description, then track listing views, answer enquiries, and schedule tours, all for free.

The tool is available in Chicago; Hampton Roads, Virginia; Hawaii; New York; Northern New England; Oregon; Rhode Island; Richmond, Virginia; Sacramento, California; San Francisco, Seattle; Southern California; and Washington, D.C.

Listings published via List My Home for Rent will not appear on Redfin's subsidiary portals, Apartment Guide, Rent.com and Rentals.com. However, Redfin says these listings will automatically integrate by the end of 2024.

US rental portal Zumper's ChatGPT Plugin now available to everyone

Almost a year after its initial launch, Zumper's ChatGPT-enabled apartment search tool is widely available for anyone with an OpenAI account.

The news was announced in a post on the US rentals specialist's site yesterday and comes eleven months after the marketplace initially announced the development of the tool. OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT) had disabled all real estate search plugins in September of 2023 over discrimination concerns.

The plugin is now up and running again to help users find a new rental apartment.

Dubbed 'ZumperGPT' the tool is able to respond to inquiries about listings, fine-tune search results based on a variety of preferences, and deliver detailed descriptions of properties from the marketplace's listings. Users don’t need to have a Zumper account to use the plugin, but they are encouraged to set one up if they want to message or apply to the listings Zumper GPT presents.

Zumper's investors include US venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins as well as European publishing and marketplace giant Axel Springer.

BuyRentKenya taps Homsters' expertise to build

Ringier-owned real estate portal BuyRentKenya has announced a new tool that sees the portal work directly with developers.

Home Connect was developed with help from Dmitriy Aleksandrov and the team from Homsters. The tool connects agents directly with property developers and allows the marketplace to make a commission from deals it generates.

Homsters is a leading provider of automated sales and marketing solutions for the sale of new property developments that was acquired by Ringier in 2022 precisely to bring its know-how and technology to the online marketplace operator's portfolio companies.

Developed in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, Homsters' end-to-end marketing platform promotes new developments across all online channels, captures buyer leads, nurtures these leads, and distributes closable leads to affiliated and in-house sales teams. This allows the platform operator to earn a share of the commission on the deals it creates.

UK rentals portal KrispyHouse raises $1.6 million

The British rentals marketplace KrispyHouse has raised £1.3 million (USD 1.6M) from an undisclosed investor.

Krispyhouse says it will use the funds to expand its offering outside of London and invest more heavily in product development.

The marketplace launched in October 2023 as a 'dating service' for tenants and landlords, giving both parties access to instant messaging and sending notifications to tenants when suitable properties become available.

The platform is free to use for all landlords and letting agents, and the company says over 500 agents per month advertise their properties on the KrispyHouse platform.

Anthony Kyriacou, CEO at KrispyHouse, said:

"Having spent three years developing our product and building a great team, we launched to market last October and quickly received strong uptake.

"This extra funding will help us boost both revenue and market share as well as giving estate agents exceptional value via quality leads and innovative tools to help them increase their market share of property instructions."

Keyper raises $4M pre-Series A round

Dubai-based "rent now, pay later" platform Keyper has raised a Pre-Series A round worth $4 million in equity funding from lead investors BECO Capital and Middle East Ventures Partners.

Previous investors including Vivium Holdings, Jabbar Internet Group and Signature Developers participated in the round, while new investors Annex Investments, Pin Investment, and Al Qahtani Investment also took part.

Keyper has also raised $30 million in Shariah-compliant sukuk financing from global asset manager Franklin Templeton Investments on top of a seed round worth $6.5 million raised by Access Bridge Ventures and Vivium Holdings.

Keyper is a real estate investment and management app for landlords that automates daily tasks and allows them to monitor their portfolios in real-time. The startup says it is processing over $10 million in annual rental payments on its platform.

The Emirati-based PropTech, founded in 2022, recently added a direct debit rent payment solution for tenants based in Dubai.

RE-TEC Solutions announces strategic investment from REdimension

South African proptech RE-TEC has announced an undisclosed strategic investment from the REdimension Real Estate Technology and Sustainability Fund, a fund advised by REdimension Capital.

RE-TEC is a provider of intelligent technologies aimed at revolutionising the management of retail property assets such as shopping centres.

Aileen Rodel, Co-Founder and CEO at RE-TEC, said:

"Our vision at RE-TEC is to create a seamlessly connected ecosystem where retail, real estate, and technology solutions converge to redefine how property is managed.

"We are committed to continual innovation within the industry to enhance asset value, operational performance and drive sustainability outcomes, and are excited to partner with REdimension who share this commitment."

Lamudi Philippines hires new COO

Lamudi Philippines, which is owned by the Australia-based Digital Classifieds Group (DCG), has hired Lars Hougaard as COO, who joins from the same role at Cambodian portal Realestate.com.kh.

Hougaard, who will report to Lamudi Philippines CEO Anurag Verma, has also spent time at real estate companies PopDeal and FazWaz.

Hougaard said:

"A big thank you to Mathew Care [founder] for entrusting me with the opportunity to lead and nurture an incredible team in Phnom Penh and to Mark Nosworthy [Group CEO] for offering me this exciting new opportunity in Manila."

DCG acquired Lamudi Philippines from Emerging Markets Property Group last year, a deal that also saw the Group snap up EMPG's Indonesian assets.

Private Property appoints new CEO

South African real estate marketplace Private Property has promoted COO Theo Mseka to CEO, effective 1 May 2024.

Mseka has been promoted after 18 months at the company, replacing outgoing CEO Charl Bruyns.

Mseka spent eight years at another South African portal, Property24, including three years as CPO, and spent a further two years as the head of Marketplaces at BetterHome Group before joining Private Property.

On the appointment, the new CEO said:

"I am thrilled to be stepping into this role next month and feel honoured to be leading a dedicated team with the people, knowledge and skills needed to propel Private Property to new heights.

"I also look forward to collaborating even more closely with our established client base of market-leading agents and developers so that we can keep delivering innovative products and solutions that enhance their businesses and drive them forward. As CEO, one of my key focus areas will be growing this base to include all agents in South Africa so that they too can benefit from the added value we bring to our clients."

Fang CFO resigns

Peng Cui has resigned from his position as CFO at Chinese portal Fang to pursue other opportunities, after two years in the role.

Richard Jiangong Dai, chairman of the board, commented:

"I want to thank Peng for his leadership and his many contributions to Fang through this period of unprecedented change.

"He has played an important role helping the company to get through the tough times while building a strong finance team with deep expertise, and I remain as confident as ever in the future of Fang. On behalf of the board of directors and all Fang stakeholders, I want to wish Peng all the best in his future endeavors."

Fang is currently undergoing a privatization proposal led by Chairman Dai. Fang is the second largest marketplace in China, sandwiched between real estate portals Anjuke and KE Holdings (Beike).

OLX Group hires Christian Gisy as CEO, with incumbent set to retire

Christian Gisy is the new CEO of OLX Group, directing the company's strategy in Europe and South Africa for real estate brands including Otodom (Poland) and Property24 (South Africa), as well as marketplaces in other verticals.

He replaces Lydia Paterson, who intends to retire at the end of 2024 after an interim role at Prosus. She led the Group for seven years.

Gisy reports to Ervin Tu, interim CEO of Technology at Prosus, which owns OLX.

Ringier Slovakia hires new executive director

František Novák is the new executive director of Ringier Slovakia Media and Ringier Slovakia Communities, as of April.

František Novák has been promoted after 11 years with the company.

His new directive will be to oversee the day-to-day operational management and other business matters for Ringier Slovakia Media and Ringier Slovakia Communities, reporting to CEO Marek Václavík.

Ringer Slovakia operates no fewer than six classified portals in Slovakia, including real estate verticals Byty.sk, Novostavby.sk, Nehnuteľnosti.sk, TopReality.sk, and holiday rental site Chaty.sk.

PropertyGuru hires Kenneth Soh as country manager

Kenneth Soh is the new country manager for Malaysia at PropertyGuru, joining from e-commerce platform Shopee.

Soh will lead commercial operations for PropertyGuru's Malaysian assets—PropertyGuru.com.my and iProperty.com.my.

Soh succeeds Sheldon Fernandez, who leaves the company after filling the role for the previous nine years.

Cian appoints new non-executive member of the board

Russian real estate marketplace Cian has appointed Dmitry Sergienkov as a non-executive member of the Board.

Sergienkov serves as Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors of HeadHunter and has a verifiable history in C-suite and M&A including a stint at JP Morgan Chase.

Maksim Melnikov, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Cian PLC, said:

"Dmitry brings to the Board a deep industry expertise, in particular in the areas of strategic development and capital markets.

"I am sure, that both his expertise and professional experience will be invaluable for the Board and the Company. We are delighted to have Dmitry with us and look forward to working together."

The award for the best question at the PropTech and Portal Watch conference in Bangkok went to Nils Körber who posed a fascinating (if surreal) question to the audience during his keynote presentation about Ringier's journey to the AI-powered marketplace.

Nils is the Managing Director of Ringier South Africa, a software development hub providing tech solutions for many well-known classifieds platforms and property portals around the world including Imobiliare in Romania, BuyRentKenya and Reality in Slovakia.

I wanted to understand more of the motivations behind Nils' presentation, fight vs flight in the face of emerging technologies, the industry's seeming unwillingness to discuss its problems, and preparing for the next generation of workers, so I asked him...

Nils, give us a quick outline of your keynote presentation in Bangkok.

I called it our journey to the AI-powered marketplace.

[At Ringer] We are asking ourselves what we as a marketplace software provider can do with artificial intelligence, just like everybody else. We've done machine learning, recommendation, and personalization, which is a good start. But where do we go next?

We need to find a strategy.

I see that in three layers. The first is 'how can we improve the efficiency and performance of our own employees?' Not only software engineers, but also the employees across our marketplace businesses. In other words, engineering, sales, marketing, customer care and HR—how can we with AI support them to do a better job?

The next layer is the back end. So from a platform point of view, how can we enable engineers to build better AI-driven software? What is needed for that?

And then the last layer is more the consumer-facing part.

By dividing the strategic and tactical uses of AI into three digestible parts has made it much easier for us to parse this topic without getting overwhelmed, and my talk was about sharing these insights.

Below: Nils Körber on stage at PropTech & Portal Watch Bangkok 2024

If I operate a marketplace and want to start using AI, where should I look first: the back end or the front end?

The back end, for sure. Why? Because we all love to text. Let me explain.

How do we use our laptops? How do we use our phones? How do we interact with apps? We type, right?

Texting is ingrained in us. and it is fairly difficult to change this innate behaviour in one day. This will take some time. We should focus our efforts on building your product for internal use rather than on bells and whistles that our users aren't used to yet.

A user behaviour shift needs to happen before we can revolutionise the front-end experience for consumers. We are not there yet so it is better to make incremental improvements in the back-end for now.

Are you predicting an evolution from text to image or video? Where is the search experience headed?

Yes, this is a good question.

It's pretty easy to fall into the hype of Apple Vision Pro, AR, and the like. I believe it will take some time until that tech is really there for us.

But I think LLMs (large language models) will fundamentally change how we interact with the machine.

I also think voice is going to be reborn. Siri and Alexa almost messed it up.

Why did they mess it up? Because they have always been able to process what you say pretty well, but at the time when they were released—without LLMs that didn't exist—Alexa and Siri couldn't give you a satisfying answer.

It was a one-way conversation that limited the usefulness of the early Siri/Alexa product experience.

In the recent past, for me to use my voice to trigger a search in the marketplace hasn't made sense. If I use my voice, I want that voice experience to be rich, not just replicating what you can type. We must overcome this hurdle before we can truly extract value from a voice search.

What skills have I inherited thanks to AI?

It is difficult to comprehend, but with AI you have inherited all human knowledge—and a workforce to match.

This was always the case with Google but in the past, you had to process it yourself. But now the machine is writing for you, generating for you what you want to know about human knowledge.

This means we can now parse market-related data and formulate a strategy out of that, just by asking the question.

This is where human interference is needed. When it comes to strategic stuff, the machine can't do that yet, but collaboratively that potential is there.

As a businessman, today you have infinitely more support. You no longer only have your normal teams available. And you know, like, managers of sales and marketing will report back to you and you can give them commands. Suddenly you have of these resources available across the board, and they can work for you.

Your presentation asked, 'What would you do with one million interns?'

That's enough to trigger my fight-or-flight response! Where are the quick wins for a technophobe like me?

I think there is a rather tremendous mind shift that needs to happen on this topic. It is therefore a difficult question to answer without getting too high-level and philosophical, but I will try to answer it!

The short answer is mastering prompt engineering.

I think we are quite stuck within this business-focused structure whereby we have teams, onboarding processes, and knowledge transfer from person A to B that needs to happen for the business to succeed.

If a new hire joins, there is a bedding-in period for them to learn the ropes before they can start meaningfully contributing to the business—even for a CEO. The same goes for AI.

The key is to break down your strategy into achievable tasks and divvy them as if the AI were your team member, then put the AI to work once it has been trained according to your processes.

And because AI is getting smarter, one million interns quickly become one million junior-level people, then mid-level people and at some point even senior people—either way, it is about getting accustomed to, and mastering, prompt engineering.

We can now tell a machine to perform all types of tasks. It's just about pushing our creativity and moulding the AI to what we need.

What isn't the industry talking about that it should be talking about?

Budgets, and the transparency of problem-sharing.

It isn't so much the budget itself that we need to talk about, but I want to know how businesses are extracting revenue from budget investments. I would like to see more transparency in which products and services are performing well for other businesses and watch someone get up on stage and be more open about how 'hey, I messed this up and this is what we will do about it and this is the return we can get from this level of investment.'

I would like to see anonymous submissions from attendees at a conference being brutal about their failures and then we can work through them together as a roundtable discussion. If someone wants to stand up and say 'That was me and it's the biggest mistake I made in the past 12 months!' then maybe we can continue that conversation at dinner later.

What has your biggest failing been in the past 12 months?

You're going to laugh, but it's being four to six months late on generative AI.

Of course, we knew it was going to happen, and we knew about the impact, but until we came up with our little strategy it took us a while to realise that wow, we need to do something here. It feels like we came to that conclusion a little late. Not years late, thankfully, just months late.

What's the next big problem?

From my responsibility, which is predominantly tech teams, we have to increase the efficiency of our developers.

The big guys are doing this already and that's why we are seeing all these tech layoffs. From my point of view, The Big Four and McKinsey are being a bit aggressive, but in essence what they are saying is that in the next five to ten years, you have 60%-80% efficiencies, and efficiencies in that vocabulary mean you can let 60%-80% of the people go because the machine takes care of their jobs.

For me it is a problem because I like my team! And this cost pressure will only come to mind more and more. Tech salaries are high and it's a big line item on our total budgets.

We will need to be 20% more efficient but have the same output. My mandate as a manager and as a business owner is to understand how to make that happen.

One more question: Digital Natives Vs. AI Natives. Is the workplace going to place a higher value on creative thinkers who are more in sync with AI and can think laterally in tandem with emerging technologies?

The 18-24 bracket is going to be the first generation that is not only internet native but will be used to having everything available to them, all the time, 24/7.

This will be the first generation of AI natives, and they are already being underestimated. People lazily brand them as "the generation that doesn't want to work". They may be ten years old today but they will be used to having a whole life experience that is generated just for them at their fingertips.

We will need people like that and we need to take that generation more seriously.

Can we get a testimonial for the conference?

I don't think there's a better conference for the marketplace industry. I attended some other conferences more local to me in Europe and Africa. For me, the set of great people, such as real business leaders and industry leaders for online marketplaces, make you unbeaten.

We've split this roundup into global regions for your convenience, starting with...

United States

Zillow introduces 'coming soon' listings

Listings can now be categorized as 'coming soon' on Zillow's portal—as long as you're an agent-customer of Canadian real estate software company RESAAS.

RESAAS customers can opt-in to pre-market their clients' properties to build momentum and interest before officially going live.

Customers who pay for RESAAS’ Ultimate account level will have the option to push coming-soon listings to Zillow, but CEO Tom Rossiter has warned that this offer won't be for everyone:

"Coming Soon listings represent the most recent and sought-after listings in the real estate industry.

"Agents should still follow the Coming Soon guidelines of their local MLS. This won’t be for every agent, and isn’t for every market."

Europe

Immobiliare signs partnership with insolvency specialist abilio

The Italian real estate portal Immobiliare has announced a partnership with abilio, a member of the Illimity Group and insolvency sales specialist. The deal will see abilio become the portal's exclusive concessionary for sales resulting from insolvency cases.

The two companies have worked together before to produce a report on the state of judicial sales in the Italian market.

Immobiliare's partnership announcement comes a month after agent-owned rival Wikicasa announced the launch of its Wikicasa Auction product: a digital, integrated service for the auction and NPE (Non-Performing Exposure) sector.

Housfy collaborates with StageInHome for virtual staging

Spanish hybrid portal Housfy will now offer virtual staging thanks to a new collaboration with Barcelona-based StageInHome.

StageInHome is an interior decoration visualisation specialist that uses AI to let users 'dress' properties according to their preferences.

In a press release, StageInHome suggested that "by decorating properties in just 10 seconds, it manages to attract 62% more visits and, with it, significantly accelerate the sales process compared to the industry average."

Saúl García, CEO at StageInHome, said:

"This partnership with Housfy represents an important step forward in our mission to transform the way properties are decorated and sold.

"We are delighted to join forces and hope to offer innovative and effective solutions to our clients so we can grow together and make a difference in the real estate market."

Founded 2021, StageInHome is a part of the portfolio of startups promoted by Napptilus Tech Labs.

Domclick adds online booking for property viewings

Russia-based real estate specialist DomCLick has added the option for users to book property viewings online, but it isn't nationwide yet.

Interested parties previously had to make phone calls or write to sellers to get the ball rolling on a deal.

Buyers can submit up to one application per listing, including picking a specific date and time.

Alexey Leipi, director at DomClick, said:

"We are the first real estate marketplace to launch online appointment booking. For now, it is available for secondhand properties in Moscow, St. Petersburg and the adjacent regions.

"In the near future, we plan to extend this service to the rest of the country."

The United Kingdom

Jitty opens in its second city, Bristol

AI-powered UK challenger portal Jitty has officially launched in Bristol, its second city on the road to a UK-wide index by the end of 2024.

Graham Paterson, CEO at Jitty, said:

"Bristol is a vibrant city full of beautiful homes. We love the West Country, and Jitty has been so well received in Bath that Bristol is an obvious next step for us. Aside from London, it's been our most requested next city so we're happy to oblige.

"The city's blend of historical and modern buildings makes for a fascinating cross-section of homes, and it's been a pleasure to look through the homes that our AI finds, to show homebuyers and browsers.

"This is just the start. We are listening to our users at every step of the way and will be sharing some exciting new features throughout 2024."

Jitty attracted 3000 users in Bath in two weeks after launch.

Jitty is an  AI-powered property search engine that has been designed to transform the way people find and buy homes. The company was co-founded in 2023 by CEO Graham Paterson, formerly at Wise and Deliveroo, CPO James Storer, ex-Deliveroo, Freetrade, Habito, and Klarna, and CTO Daniel Cooper previously at Deliveroo, Duffel and Hopin.

Propertynews makes £250k investment into UK-first AI assistant

UK challenger portal Propertynews has made what appears to be a UK-first AI assistant called "Liv", representing an investment of over a quarter of a million pounds to answer buyer questions 24/7.

Liv is based on the same technology that underpins ChatGPT and uses information from property brochures, and third-party data on topics including travel times and local amenities.

Emma Kerr, managing director at Propertynews, said:

"We believe this is the first AI assistant, used in this way, on a property portal anywhere. It is part of our commitment to being the number-one choice in Northern Ireland for  buyers, renters and agents and to making the user experience as outstanding as it can be.

"A rigorous build and testing process has ensured that Liv offers best in class technology and seamlessly blends into the website to benefit and enhance the overall user experience."

Oceania

Listing Loop launches FloorPlan AI for 'five-minute' floorplans

Australian end-to-end transaction platform for pre- and off-market properties Listing Loop has launched a floorplan solution to its platform.

FloorPlan AI is set to offer the most cost-effective and fastest way to obtain a 2D interior floorplan, with a five-minute floorplan creation process turning around a completed floorplan within 24 hours.

FloorPlan AI produces accurate 2D floorplans with the property layout, room names, room dimensions, room fixtures and square meterage, all from using your phone’s camera to scan and by walking through each room. A fixed charge of $32 per floorplan.

Rhett Dallwitz, co-founder and CEO at Listing Loop, said:

"FloorPlan AI will significantly improve efficiencies by accelerating floorplan production and minimising the time involved in organising private inspections if the potential tenants can see the floorplan upfront. We are confident that FloorPlan AI will speed up the leasing process."

Listing Loop already allows users to find their ideal property, secure a home loan, receive expert buying guidance, arrange conveyancing, acquire specialised property financing, set up utilities and even organise removalists, cleaners and insurance from its platform.

Rent.com.au launches new international payment choices

Australian rental specialist Rent.com.au has s launched additional payment choices for its RentPay platform aimed at expatriate professionals, new migrants and foreign students.

The Company has partnered with Novatti Group Ltd to provide Alipay, WeChat Pay and UnionPay payment options for RentPay customers.

In a press release, Rent.com.au said this integration is "Expected to provide an incremental ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) contribution per transaction."

Greg Bader, CEO at Rent.com.au, said:

"RentPay is about providing choice and flexibility to renters while ensuring that property managers gain efficiency and certainty of payments.

"By being the first in our market to offer these popular new international payment options, we’re addressing a need that has arisen with increasing numbers of students, expats or recent migrants preferring to keep using these platforms due to the deep ecosystem, and the ties to family and friends they facilitate. At the same time, we’re helping our agent customers to position themselves at the forefront of payments technology without them having to invest valuable time and dollars in doing so.

"We have already seen several of our renters use immersive platforms platforms like Alipay and WeChat Pay to pay their rent in a roundabout way. With this release, RentPay now enables customers of these platforms to easily pay their biggest expense (rent) seamlessly and confidently."

Africa

Angolan portal Angocasa introduces legal support service for home purchases

Angola's leading real estate portal Angocasa has launched a new legal service for home purchases to ensure legally compliant transactions.

AngoCasa offers Basic, Standard, and Premium packages for clients with different needs and budgets. Each package includes essential services such as legal document analysis, preparation of purchase and sale contracts, and assistance throughout the property registration and legalization process.

Kenneth Hogrefe, CEO at AngoCasa, said:

"We are committed to providing our clients with safe and reliable solutions in the Angolan real estate market.

"With our new legal support service, we are taking another important step to ensure that property buying processes are transparent, legal, and hassle-free for all involved."

Asia

Saudi marketplace Wasalt teams up with rent specialist, Rize

The Saudi Arabian real estate portal Wasalt has signed a partnership agreement with the 'rent now, pay later' specialist Rize.

Established in 2021 by Ibrahim Balilah and Mohammed AlFraihi (pictured), Rize aims to revolutionize the rental landscape in Saudi Arabia where rents have historically been paid for the year in a lump sum. The company aims to shift rental payments towards flexible monthly instalments, making it a standard practice in the real estate market. The startup recently raised a $2.9 million seed round.

The partnership, which is already live on the portal site, sees Rize's solutions integrated into Wasalt's rental listings to give users the option to pay rent monthly instead of yearly.

As part of this partnership, BuyRentKenya will leverage its network to promote and facilitate the adoption of home insurance solutions offered by mTek-Services.

In Kenya, where the insurance penetration rate stands at approximately 2.4%, with home insurance representing a fraction of this figure, there exists a significant gap in coverage for homeowners and renters. The partnership aims to address this gap by involving local insurance firm GA Insurance Kenya as the underwriter for the home insurance products offered through mTek’s platform.

Elizabeth Costabir, CEO at BuyRentKenya, expressed enthusiasm about the partnership, stating,

"By combining our strengths and resources, we aim to create a seamless and user-friendly insurance experience for homeowners, ultimately enhancing the protection and security of their properties."

Bente Krogmann, CEO of mTek-Services, echoed this sentiment, saying,

"Our goal is to leverage technology to simplify the insurance process and provide greater accessibility to insurance products. Together with BuyRentKenya, we are committed to driving innovation and digitization in the insurance industry."