Rupert Murdoch Targets Rightmove

Rupert Murdoch is gearing up to build a real estate portal empire.

A subsidiary of Murdoch’s News Corp. is eyeing a possible acquisition of the United Kingdom’s largest real estate portal, Inman reported. The owner of Realtor.com revealed this week it was considering snapping up Rightmove.

In a statement to the London Stock Exchange, Murdoch’s REA Group said there were “clear similarities between REA and Rightmove in terms of their leading market positions in the core residential business,” as well as alignment in terms of values.

Speaking of values, it’s not clear how much Australia-based REA would be willing to pony up to acquire Rightmove, which saw its shares jump 20 percent in the immediate aftermath of REA’s declaration of interest. As of Tuesday, the market cap of the company was $7.1 billion.

REA has until Sept. 30 to make a move on Rightmove, according to British law.

REA is a massive player in the portal space, running brands in Australia, Asia and North America; it doesn’t have any Europe-specific brands listed on its website. Some of the well-known entities under the REA umbrella are Simpology in Australia, PropertyGuru in Asia and Realtor.com in North America.

One of REA’s biggest competitors is Andy Florance’s CoStar Group, which is making inroads of its own across the pond. This year, the firm acquired Rightmove rival OnTheMarket for $126 million.

Both CoStar and Realtor.com lag behind Zillow in terms of market share of monthly user visits, though the latter’s presence outside of North America is much more limited.

The platform wars have been a source of fascination for years. Last month, CoStar declared traffic to its subsidiary, Homes.com, was closing in on Zillow after a big advertising push that included not one, not two, not three, but four commercials during the Super Bowl.

Last year, CoStar actually looked at acquiring Move, Inc., the immediate parent company of Realtor.com. But the potential $3 billion acquisition fell apart last February.

— Holden Walter-Warner