Shawn Mullahy, newly appointed CEO at Zumper, joins Harvey for a conversation about taking over from Founder, Anthemos Georgiades, and moving towards a new business and revenue model that fills houses faster.

00:00 Intros and Zumper changes

04:35 Zumper's strategic shift under new leadership

10:08 AI Integration and Future Business Model

17:02 Challenges in Lead Attribution and Customer Engagement

22:01 Investor Perspectives on AI Innovation

30:13 Transition from CRO to CEO and Team Dynamics

36:00 Future Trends in Rental Markets and Closing Thoughts

Toby Chapman from OC&C Strategy returns to the PPW Pod for a follow-up on last year's debate around AI and real estate marketplaces. A year on from his "AI truck" prediction, Ed, Simon and Toby unpack why share prices are down 30-50%, whether portals are undervalued or were overvalued, and where the real existential risks actually lie.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:03 Has the AI truck hit? Investor markets vs operating performance

04:49 Undervalued today, or overvalued in the past?

07:54 OC&C research: where does the industry think the risk is coming from?

12:12 Integrate with the AI labs (Chat GPT etc.) or stay out like CoStar & Airbnb?

17:18 Why aren't portals shaping the AI narrative themselves?

21:01 Simon's pushback: are we having the wrong conversation entirely?

25:18 Will OpenAI build a vertical property portal? (Spoiler: probably not)

29:00 The whole property buying journey — portals' real battleground

31:01 Lead attribution, the trust dilemma & whose side is the portal on?

38:00 The generational shift — are portals built for the wrong audience?

42:29 Toby's counter: leaders double down, opportunity beyond search & discovery

44:15 Wrap-up — reconvene this time next year

Guest: Toby Chapman, Partner at OC&C Strategy Consultants — https://www.linkedin.com/in/toby-chapman-8a559a15/

Presented by:

- Edmund Keith — https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-keith/

- Simon Baker — https://www.linkedin.com/in/stbaker/

In this week's news roundup, Ed, Simon Baker and Harvey Hancock unpack CoStar's $800M all-cash swoop for new-homes data specialist Zonda, and share their first-hand impressions of Realtor.com's new Google-powered RealAssist AI search tool.Chapters:00:00 Intro00:52 CoStar Buys Zonda for ~$800M09:40 Realtor.com's New RealAssist AI (with Google)18:59 Can AI-Native Challengers Beat the Incumbents?30:06 Are Portals Building Search or a Decision Engine?CoStar Pays ~$800M for ZondaCoStar Group is acquiring new-home construction data specialist Zonda in an all-cash deal worth roughly $800 million — its first major acquisition since Domain in Australia and its first US deal since Matterport. The team digs into why "more data wins" fits Andy Florence's playbook, the flat market reaction, and the hard road from owning great data to delivering a stronger EBITDA margin. Unlike Matterport, Zonda is a profitable B2B business, so the question becomes which costs CoStar can strip out and which products it can layer on top.Testing Realtor.com's RealAssist AIEd and Harvey got a behind-the-scenes demo of Realtor.com's new conversational search tool, RealAssist AI — co-developed with Google and currently a whitelist-only beta. They cover what stood out: searching by affordability rather than price, "Google grounding" that pulls in third-party data, and a commute/lifestyle mapping feature. That opens a wider debate on the API costs of grounding every search in Google, whether AI-native challengers gain an edge by pricing those costs in from day one, and whether portals are really building search — or trying to own the comparison and decision phase before Claude or ChatGPT does.Presented by:• Edmund Keith — https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-keith/• Harvey Hancock — https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvey-hancock/• Simon Baker — https://www.linkedin.com/in/stbaker/