This is behind the attack on Immoscout and Co.

It was actually only a matter of time before Ebay classified ads – soon to no longer belong to Ebay as a brand – would discover the exciting and lucrative real estate business more intensively. Although the portal, which will remove Ebay from its name in the coming year and already belongs to the Adevinta Group, which specializes in advertising portals, has always had advertisements for apartments and houses for rent and for sale in its program, it still wants to intensify business in this regard.

As managing director Paul Heimann explains in the Handelsblatt, the company in particular wants to steal business away from the large real estate portals such as Immoscout and, for example, win more professional real estate sales and brokers: “The figures from the past year show that the moment has now come when Hidden attack champion.”

Portals such as Immoscout, Immowelt and Immonet in particular could lose market share – and here above all in the private user business, which already brings 15 million visitors to classifieds. Interestingly, it is the brokers themselves who are already using classified ads intensively as a sales channel – and they want to push this further in the future. Classifieds boss Heimann speaks of 9,000 real estate professionals who are already advertising here – and of around 2,000 who were added last year alone. It is not without reason that Adevinta assumes that these could be receptive to additional paid features.

Because the real estate business has not become any easier, especially in many metropolitan areas, since the rising interest rates on loans and the threat of stricter insulation and heating requirements have not made business in the real estate industry any easier.

Immobilienscout is still far ahead, but the 73.8 million euros in sales that were made there in the fourth quarter alone with professional customers (i.e. brokers, real estate developers and property developers) probably offer plenty of imagination for Ebay classifieds.

In an interview with t3n last summer, Heimann explained that the company is looking for additional revenue through additional features in the commercial business and a healthy balance between the company’s pillars. In the current situation, this probably means the need to become less dependent on crisis-prone lines of business. Even then, Heimann had indicated, among other things, that commercial customers such as real estate agents and car dealers were an important target group.

And so the workforce has now also been expanded and 60 of the 350 employees have been shifted to the real estate topic. However, real estate marketing also follows other mechanisms than the other product groups that you buy quickly – Ebay classifieds also knows that. It remains to be seen whether the new focus on real estate will work and whether the plan for the Adevinta portal will work. Nevertheless, a shift in market share in favor of the portal is likely.