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.
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.”
Read the orginal article: https://propertyindustryeye.com/breaking-news-zoopla-up-for-sale-with-500m-asking-price/
