This week's roundup begins in Australia, where realestate.com.au has some numbers of its own share...
REA Group says its traffic lead over Domain has increased in the past 12 months, despite Domain achieving record traffic last month.
Last week, Domain announced an all-time traffic high for October 2025, after new owner CoStar Group doubled down on marketing investment. And now Australia's biggest real estate portal has hit back at its rival's claims with some boastful numbers of its own.
According to figures shared by REA Group, more than 13 million people visited realestate.com.au in October, while consumers spent an average of 38 minutes browsing, more than double the average session time of Domain (13 minutes).
User engagement also reached new highs. Logged-in membership hit record levels, supporting all-time highs in buyer listing views and shares. App usage also reached a record 69.3 million visits in October and has been downloaded over 15 million times.
Sarah Myers, General Manager – Audience and Marketing at REA Group, said:
“Reaching 13 million Australians is a significant milestone—it’s over 60% of online adult Australians. It’s also an increase of 1.2 million on October last year, which we’re proud of given we were working with an incredibly high base. Australians are property obsessed and while audience levels are always strong at this time of year, our site’s increasing lead highlights that Australians continue to prefer realestate.com.au over any other platform.
“October’s record results were achieved through our powerful marketing engine—including all-time highs in direct visits, SEO referral traffic, and personalised lifecycle marketing—showcasing the strength of the realestate.com.au brand. Our focus on engaging buyers, sellers, owners and renters in rich, immersive experiences that support deeply personalised property journeys ensures they continue to return to our site. The value for our customers and their vendors comes in both the scale and engagement of our unmatched audience.”
Domain used last week's traffic update as an opportunity to share several advertising rollbacks on its portals. Domain President Jason Pellegrino commented that "consumers don’t want the clutter" of third-party ads during their home search, while "vendors shouldn't expect" to compete with external advertisers when they're paying to market a property.
REA Group recorded 4% revenue growth in its latest financial report, and the first comment by new CEO Cameron McInytre, who joined the business in November.
Bayut, the real estate vertical for Dubizzle Group in the UAE, has agreed a commercial partnership with the fintech Prypco to be an exclusive mortgage provider.
The horizontal marketplace, Dubizzle, will also benefit from the partnership.
According to its website, Prypco has facilitated transactions in excess of AED 5 billion (USD 1.3 billion) with a network of over 11k real estate partners, serving over 50k customers. The company claims to be "building the region's leading real estate ecosystem."
Prypco is partnered with nearly 20 banks, and says its mortgage product offering serves 2,000+ UAE and non-UAE residents.
99.co, Singapore's number two real estate portal, has introduced AI smart tags to allow users to make more specific home searches.
AI tags do not require conversation-like search prompts and uncover listings that home searches would have previously missed.
A blog announcing the launch said:
[Filters] don't always reflect the details you care about, like wanting a bright unit, a pleace near the MRT (metro) or a fully furnished home that's ready for move-in.
[AI Tags] offer a smarter way to search by helping you find properties based on the things you actually care about in real life, in a more intuitive and personalised way. Instead of relying solely on fixed filters, you can now browse homes using lifestyle-focused keywords that highlight what matters most to you – helping you discover properties that truly match your needs and preferences. AI Tags are keyword-style labels added to each listing. They highlight features that buyers and renters care about
According to 99.co, this is the first feature of its kind in Singapore's property search space—in other words, 99.co has a head start over its rival, the market leader PropertyGuru.
99.c0 also says AI tags surfaces more context about listings than traditional search, without the hassle of typing out full, conversational prompts required on other platforms.
LankaPropertyWeb has introduced 'Albot', a trilingual AI chatbot designed to provide real-time support and market information on its platform. The chatbot can answer queries in Sinhala, Tamil and English, offer insights into area price trends, and compare the price of a specific property against average prices using LankaPropertyWeb's property statistics database.
Albot also generates links to relevant search results based on user-defined criteria and guides advertisers through the process of posting an ad on the site. The tool is intended to reduce reliance on customer support and improve the self-service experience for property seekers and advertisers.
According to LankaPropertyWeb, advertisers using the company's social media packages see around three times more reach, leads and impressions compared with standard listings on the platform.
LankaPropertyWeb has also developed AMPLIFIER (Automated Multi-Platform Integration for Instant Extra Reach), an AI-driven tool that converts property listings and images into short-form videos for distribution across Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube. The tool automatically generates captions and hashtags tailored to the property and the target platform, and selects soundtracks from a weekly updated library of trending TikTok audio curated for the Sri Lankan market.
The company reports that AMPLIFIER supports its social media audience of more than 200,000 followers and is used to publish approximately 150 to 180 videos per month. Some videos have achieved organic reach of more than 200,000 views within a few days. LankaPropertyWeb says between 80 and 100 agents use the tool each month.
The company estimates that its automation tools save more than 270 hours of manual work per month internally, including around 90 hours on social media post creation and 180 hours on video production and publishing.
Immowelt, one of Germany's leading real estate marketplaces, has launched a new pricing package.
ImmoBasis allows landlords to advertise unlimited rental properties free of charge for one month. Listings will appear on Immowelt.de and Immonet.de, among other partnering sites. The hope is that the first month delivers suitable results to justify signing up for a paid model. Landlords will only be charged a standard rate if any active listings remain after the end of the thirty-day period.
Robert Wagner, COO at Immowelt, said:
"Our offer is transparent: broad reach, ease of use and clear terms. We are simplifying our pricing model for private landlords. Whether you have one rental property or several, all private owners can list on immowelt for €0 for the first month."
Immowelt announced the arrival of Theo Mseka as CEO earlier this month. Immowelt is part of AVIV Group, which owns several leading marketplaces, one of which, the Israeli marketplace Yad2, is currently up for sale for more than a billion dollars.
Rightmove is trialling its new 'Renovation Cost Estimator' tool as it encourages users to consider the renovation potential of homes listed on its portal.
The estimator tool uses AI to read the floor plans of properties listed on Rightmove, then provides a room-by-room estimate of the cost of a renovation, based on how basic or high-end the project is.
Estimates are based on actual room dimensions and local labour and material rates, supplied by BuildPartner.
Tarah Lourens, chief technology and operations officer at Rightmove, said:
“We’re excited to trial another innovation on our platform, this time building out further our suite of renovation tools for serious home-hunters. By using technology to provide tailored renovation estimates based on real room sizes, we’re helping agents connect with serious buyers who are actively planning their next move.”
Zoopla has introduced updates aimed at increasing the visibility of new homes to potential buyers.
The updates, designed to increase lead generation for new homes, showcase local new-build developments on map view; highlight the benefits of new builds on listings cards; and contact detail capture pop-ups featuring new-build brochures and virtual tours of new-build properties.
The portal says the updates have seen up to a 90% increase in new home leads for housebuilders in Northern England, 71% in Southern England, 37% in the Midlands, and 10% in London.
Alex Rose, commercial director at Zoopla, said:
“At Zoopla, our focus is on driving value for money for all our customers. New homes are an important market where we have invested heavily in improving both the quality and quantity of leads we deliver to our housebuilder partners, and it’s fantastic to see those efforts driving strong results at a time when builders want to support sales rates.
“By making new homes more visible across Zoopla and helping buyers better understand the benefits of new-build properties, we’re able to deliver higher-intent enquiries even in a challenging market. This is just the start, and we’re excited to continue innovating to support the new homes market in the months ahead.”
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