As you can imagine, here at Online Marketplaces we need to keep track of a lot of real estate websites. Although they generate the most headlines, we don’t just cover the biggest names in the biggest markets. We cover all real estate websites in every market.
What we’ve discovered is that there aren’t good enough guides for the best of the best outside of the bigger markets. To make sure we never miss a beat, we’ve done the research and have compiled a series, by continent, of the best real estate websites in the world and why they hit the mark.
A subsidiary of Alma Media and a sister company to Vuokraovi.com (which specialises in rentals), Etuovi comes out on top when it comes to website traffic in Finland’s market. Etuovi's main competitor in Finland is Schibsted-owned Oikotie which also features job adverts.
A traditional pay-to-list portal model for buying, renting, and selling property, Etuovi offers a range of filters that makes the process easier for Finnish consumers and those looking to crack into the market.
With the Etuovi website and app, users can search via the map or through keywords and whether or not a listing offers virtual tours- something that has jumped up in importance since the spring of 2020.
Hemnet is the reference point for portals in Sweden. It is a traditional pay-to-list portal for buying, renting, and selling property that allows users to search its inventory via map, keyword, and whether or not a listing offers virtual tours.
Interestingly, in the Swedish market, the home seller is the party responsible for paying the portal, not the agent. This has allowed Hemnet to increase prices steadily since floating on the stock market in 2021.
Although more of a horizontal marketplace site, Schibsted-owned Finn leads the way in real estate as well as several other categories in Norway. It’s still a traditional pay-to-list portal and like many 'horizontals', it offers robust filters for an easier search experience.
Finn.no accounted for 80% of the NOK 216 million its parent company generated in real estate revenue for the first quarter of 2023.
Currently, consumers can benefit from searching for listings via the map where they can either input the region they’re interested in or draw a shape on the map, whether or not the listing offers virtual and 360 tours, and by keyword.
The property portal branch of a popular Icelandic news site is #1 in Iceland, though it doesn’t have much competition. The other options are a rental-only platform and a horizontal. Visir focuses solely on buying, renting, and selling property.
The confusingly-named Danish portals may be hard to tell from one another, but Boligsiden is a market leader with two times the traffic of its nearest rival Boliga.dk, but with fewer search filters.
Boligsiden is one of the very few leading portals around the world we found in a recent study that are run by real estate agents.
It may not have a catchy name, but the German market leader is a titan of the internet and run by Scout24, one of the most innovative companies in the space. The portal, also known by its shorter form ImmoScout24, offers map searches, including drawing on the map to find listings within the exact boundaries a consumer wants, virtual tours, and keyword searches.
ImmoScout24's main competitor is Immowelt which is run by AVIV Group, a subsidiary of publishing giant Axel Springer which also owns the French portal SeLoger.
Consumers also benefit from being able to scroll through all of the images uploaded for a listing on the search page without the need to click on the listing itself.
Homegate is one of many real estate platforms owned by the all-powerful Swiss Marketplace Group which owns no fewer than 12 real estate marketplace websites in the country including ImmoScout24.ch.
Homegate and its sister sites' main rivals in Switzerland are Newhome, a portal owned by local banks and agencies, and the Swiss version of the Immowelt portal.
Funda.nl is dominant in the Netherlands and claims 93% spontaneous brand awareness in the market. Its another one of the very few portals that are owned by real estate agency associations.
Focusing on the kind of filters that are more forward-thinking, it offers map search, draw-on map capabilities, and virtual tours.
The undisputed market leader in Belgium is part of AVIV Group / Axel Springer and was founded way back in 1996. Immoweb offers map search with the drawing feature and virtual tour filters on its search engine.
Another European portal operated by AVIV Group, SeLoger Group also owns and runs #2 French portal site Logic-Immo. Between them, they boast over 20,000 advertising agencies and are both backed by Axel Springer.
The main competition in the market comes from Adevinta-owned general classifieds portal Leboncoin along with its specialist sister site A Vendre A Louer. Bien'Ici, which is partly owned by agency groups, is in third place when it comes to traffic.
Founded in 2000 by leading estate agent groups, Rightmove has gone on to be a point of reference for portals all over the world. As part of the top three real estate websites in the UK, Rightmove is a traditional pay-to-list, like rivals Zoopla and OnTheMarket.
On Rightmove’s real estate website, home hunters can search via map, draw on said map, filter whether or not a listing offers virtual tours, search by keywords, and scroll through images on a listing before clicking on the listing, itself.
Zoopla has long been Rightmove's main competitor, but the rise of agent-owned OnTheMarket means there are three major players in the UK portal space nowadays.
Backed by Adevinta and Distilled Media (Fallon Brothers), which own 50% of the Irish market-leading property portal, respectfully, Daft.ie currently allows users to search via a map, though drawing on the map is a feature Daft.ie has yet to implement.
Still, the real estate website allows home hunters to search by keyword, add a pet-friendly filter, if a listing offers virtual tours, and scrollable images on the search results page. Its main competitor is MyHome.ie which is owned by the Irish Times.
With offices in 5 cities across 3 countries, Idealista is a rare example of a portal company enjoying success outside of its native market. This lands it in two spots on this list of the best real estate websites in Western Europe.
Idealista is owned by private equity funds EQT, Oakley Capital and Apax Partners although the latest rumours at the time of writing were that its owners were looking at an IPO or selling the business off.
Idealista allows users to draw on the map, add a pet-friendly filter, and scroll through images on the listing results page.
Honourable mention here for OLX’s brand, Imovirtual.com, but Idealista has established itself as the leading portal across the border in Portugal as well as in its native Spain. Idealista,pt receives backing from its joint owners, Idealista, EQT, and Oakley Capital.
Italy has the fiercest rivalry when it comes to real estate portal markets in Western Europe. Real Web-owned Immobiliare is in the lead in terms of traffic to one website but Idealista and Casa.it (which are both owned by the same parent company) provide very stern competition.
A traditional pay-to-list real estate website, Immobilaire offers users a way to draw an area on the map, scroll through images on the search results page, and filter whether a listing has virtual tours or not.
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