Business Masthead Claims Silver Lake Has Put £500M Price Tag on Zoopla

The British business-focussed newspaper, City AM has claimed that the UK's number two portal Zoopla has been put up for sale by its American owners.

The paper claims that private equity firm Silver Lake Partners values Zoopla at £500 million, less than a third of what it paid for the asset in a 2018 deal.

City AM does not cite a source in its reporting, saying only that the claim comes from an upcoming episode of a third-party industry podcast (the Home Front podcast with Russell Quirk) which the newspaper has been able to independently verify.

It is unclear which parts of the business might be in the shop window. After acquiring Zoopla for $3 billion in 2018, Silver Lake separated comparison businesses Uswicth, and Confused.com from parent company ZPG's property division. The property division was rebranded as Houseful in 2023 and the group's Alto CRM business was spun off earlier this year.

Zoopla has declined to comment on the matter and, without any named source, the story remains in the realm of speculation.

In a March 2024 episode of the PPW Podcast, Online Marketplaces Chairman, Simon Baker speculated that Zoopla might be for sale with CoStar Group the likely buyer.

"My hypothesis is that CoStar, via their investment in OnTheMarket, will close the gap a bit to Zoopla. They won't easily overtake them. And eventually they'll probably make an offer to buy them."

When we put this claim to Zoopla COO, Rich Hayes in an episode from March this year, he poured cold water on the speculation saying that the owners were solely focused on building a great business.

"Quite frankly, any board signing off a four million pound investment [in branding] that has a direct impact on our bottom line... I don't need to elaborate. If we were literally in negotiations to sell this business right now, the last thing we'd be doing is investing in our team to grow our proposition and really double down on what we see as our competitive advantage."

Since being acquired by U.S. operator CoStar in October 2023 for £100 million, third-placed player OnTheMarket has been putting pressure on Zoopla. CoStar's Q1 reporting showed that annualised revenue for the portal stood at $7.2 million in Q1 while lead volumes were up 17% year-on-year and listings volumes up 23%.