Zoopla has been put up for sale with an asking price of around £500m, it is understood.
City AM reports that the property portal has been put on the market by Silver Lake Partners which has owned the group it forms a part of following a £1.6bn deal in 2018, which at the time included the likes of Confused.com and Uswitch as well as Primelocation, Money.co.uk, Tempcover, Hometrack and Alto, along with Calcasa in the Netherlands.
The news of Zoopla’s potential sale originates from an up-coming episode of the Home Front property podcast with Russell Quirk.
Zoopla declined to comment when approached for comment.
Zoopla had returned to profit in 2023 as its sales passed the £90m mark.
Accounts with Companies House revealed that the business swung to a pre-tax profit of £18.7m in 2023, having reported a pre-tax loss of £6.2m in the prior 12 months.
However, a number of job cuts were made, as reported by EYE.
Zoopla’s parent company recently slashed its pre-tax loss by almost £600m in 2023.
The organisation reported a pre-tax loss of £134.9m for its latest financial year after posting a loss of £714.6m in 2022. The group’s revenue also surged from £391m to £451.5m over the same period.
During 2023 the group’s property division rebranded to Houseful.
Reflecting on the news that Zoopla is up for sale, Shaun Adams of Cooper Adams Estate Agents, said: “[The news] only reinforces what many of us in the industry have been saying for years: the UK property portal market is broken, unbalanced, and heavily stacked against independent agents.
“Zoopla, once seen as the main competitor to Rightmove, is now being sold off by its owners, Silver Lake Partners. This follows years of consolidation, corporate packaging, and prioritisation of shareholder value over agent service. Rightmove continues to raise fees year after year — regardless of market conditions — while providing little meaningful innovation, flexibility, or genuine support to the agents that fund it.
“This is no longer about portal preference — it’s about market dominance, price exploitation, and the fact that many agents feel trapped, with little choice and even less say.
“The sale of Zoopla highlights the lack of genuine competition in the portal space. When one of the “big three” is being shuffled like a corporate asset and the other behaves like a monopoly, it’s clear the system is not serving the industry — or the public — fairly.”
The news about Zoopla being put up for sale is telling — it’s not just a one-off business move, it reflects a wider issue in the UK portal landscape.
When the second-largest portal is changing hands and the largest (Rightmove) continues to raise fees without any serious checks or competition, it underlines the imbalance we’ve all been feeling for years. Independent agents — the ones who fund these platforms — have been squeezed harder every year, with very little meaningful return.
This isn’t about “portal loyalty” anymore, it’s about choice, fairness, and sustainability. We now have one dominant player, one being sold, and a growing number of agents asking: “Is this really the best we can do as an industry?”
If you feel the same way, I’d love your support in driving change.
Let’s work together to create something better — because the current model clearly isn’t working for most of us.
– Shaun Adams
Cooper Adams Estate Agents
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I feel that every independent agents is with you on this.
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Thank you so much. The only real disagreement tends to come from Rightmove itself, the larger agencies enjoying hefty discounts (which you and I effectively help to fund), and a few onlookers who argue that clients wanting to be in the “best shop window” is irrelevant — that agents should simply ignore those clients and expect them to settle for less visibility.
That mindset misses the bigger picture entirely.
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So, the original deal struck at a price that very few people could get their head around, was, after all, simply ludicrous, and the buyers now face a huge write off.
Astonishing.
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£500m !!!! You’ll be lucky, maybe knocking a nought off might help !
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The final nail in the coffin for Zoopla after the long story of OTM’s failure starting with the ‘one other portal’ rule which kneecapped Zoopla just when it was becoming a real challenger to RM.
Chesterman left, it’s been rudderless ever since. Such a shame, a needless casualty of the original OTM failure.
Remember how that was supposed to challenge RIghtmove? How did that go?
Self-defeating own goal. Still, it opens up the way for BestAgent. More transactions, shorter times, higher fees.
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Had to look up bestagent
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I have an idea for something called Boomin, …….oh wait
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