Boneo CEO Blasts Rival Hemnet for New Initiatives

The leading Swedish portal operator Hemnet has been criticised for launching a "sell first, pay later" offer and a Zillow-esque partnership programme.

Hemnet has been piloting a model where sellers only pay for a listing when a home is sold, to attract more housing stock to its portal. Hemnet says that if a listing is removed from Hemnet but the property sells within the next six months, the seller must still pay for the ad in line with the package they used for the listing.

In addition to the "sell first, pay later" offer, Hemnet is gradually expanding a targeted strategic partnership programme that will incentivise agents to designate Hemnet as a 'recommended partner'. Hemnet has already signed up three major agencies in Sweden for the programme.

But the moves have been criticised for taking a leaf out of Zillow's controversial playbook, whereby sellers must publish their listing on Hemnet within two days of the advertisement appearing on a realtor’s website.

Frederik Engdahl, CEO at Boneo, a challenger portal in Sweden, took to LinkedIn to highlight the dangers of the policy. Engdahl said:

 "Hemnet today presented a strategic initiative to secure the content of housing ads, which in summary means that brokers and sellers do not have access to all payment options if the property is first published on other housing portals or websites, and only later on Hemnet. Similar initiatives have been implemented by Zillow, the leading housing portal in the United States and the equivalent of Hemnet.

"Directly or indirectly introducing methods that limit sellers and brokers' options for their housing advertising can never be something positive, instead I am convinced that as a company you should strive to add sufficient value, so it will naturally and market-wise govern the choices that are made and for everyone's benefit: for brokers, sellers and housing portals." [Translated from Swedish]

Hemnet recorded revenues of almost 1.4 billion Krona in 2024.