Zoopla, the property website, has slumped to a loss after reporting “challenging market conditions” and writing down the value of a business acquired four years ago to serve property developers.

The company, which is the main competitor to the dominant Rightmove, did not disclose the number of estate agents that pay to list homes on its website but said its customer base “remained broadly stable” last year.

Despite that, Zoopla’s annual revenue fell by 7 per cent to £84.17 million, down from £90.45 million in 2023. It attributed the decline to “a rationalised product set”.

Paul Whitehead, Zoopla’s chief executive who used to run Cazoo, the used-car website that went into administration in 2023, has ditched legacy advertising products. “They generated a bit of revenue, but they weren’t good for consumers or customers,” he said. “Difficult decision, always, but it’s allowed us to concentrate on being a core marketplace.”

He added that the performance of the remaining business “was pretty resilient” in spite of what he described as “challenging market conditions” and the internal streamlining he was overseeing.

However, Zoopla still made a pre-tax loss of £5.17 million in the 12 months to the end of December 2024, compared with a pre-tax profit of £18.79 million the previous year.

The fall into the red was a consequence of a £19.5 million writedown of the value of Yourkeys, which was acquired in 2021 and helps developers to manage their reservations and sales. “The writedown relates to a shift in strategic priorities to other brands and initiatives,” Zoopla said.

The accounts demonstrate how far Zoopla has fallen behind Rightmove, which generated more than double Zoopla’s annual revenue in the first six months of 2025 alone.

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Whitehead joined the business as an adviser this time last year and became its chief executive in March. Zoopla now has a dedicated management team for the first time in a decade, having previously sat under the umbrella of Houseful, a group of property-related data businesses including Hometrack, which is used by lenders when valuing houses.

It has been on a media charm offensive before what could be a sale of the business by its American private equity owner, Silver Lake Partners. Silver Lake paid £2.2 billion for ZPG, Zoopla’s parent company which also includes Confused.com, Uswitch and Mojo Mortgages, in 2018.

“The shareholders are seven years in and they like to do these reviews of the portfolio and so they’ve engaged with external advisers to support them with that,” Whitehead said. Sky News reported this month that Silver Lake had drafted in advisers from JP Morgan and Arma Partners to assess the options.

Zoopla is unlikely to challenge Rightmove in terms of scale, but it wants to provide its estate agent customers with better leads on people who are seriously considering selling their home.

Zoopla is the go-to website for property valuation estimates in the UK and now has 4.8 million people actively tracking the value of their homes, a million more than at the start of 2025.

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“We’ve got a really engaged homeowner group and we can start to monetise that now by selling vendor leads to partners,” Whitehead, 54, said. “It’s not just about those looking to buy or rent a home, it’s also about those looking to sell their home and we’re the number one for that. That’s the bit which we’re going to double down on and grow further going forward.”