A major overhaul awaits the company. In addition, it involves drastic changes aimed at the market and residential customers. This is how Hemnet's message can be summarized. The reorganization means that the workforce will be reduced by almost 40 percent, which is estimated to affect around 50 employees, in addition to external consultants. This will in turn provide annual cost savings of approximately SEK 80-85 million.
Implement changes
For the real estate industry and homebuyers, the changes regarding housing advertisements are more interesting. Hemnet, which has traditionally charged for its advertisements, will now launch two free advertising formats where all advertisements on the housing market can be collected. Hemnet is thus following its competitor Booli, which functions more as a search engine that collects housing from the real estate agents' own websites. The market now also includes the upstart Boneo.
Hemnet has lost a lot of trust among some brokers and customers, but also market supply. Now, just like Booli, you will be able to say that "we have the entire market supply, regardless of whether it is pre-market or for-sale market," points out Erik Wikander.
A concept
Historically, the housing site has had an almost monopoly-like status where "searching on Hemnet" became a concept. In recent years, however, competition has become tougher, not only from Booli, which is owned by state-owned SBAB, but also in the form of many choosing to only advertise on the real estate agents' own pages. In addition, a recurring criticism has been Hemnet's high fees, something to which there should now be an alternative.
From the time Hemnet was listed on the stock exchange until today, prices have increased quite a bit in percentage terms, while we have had a housing market that has been quite rough for the past 3-4 years. The timing of the aggressive price increase has probably been a bit too harsh, Erik Wikander believes.
Got several challengers
Whether the changed offering is sufficient remains to be seen. Erik Wikander highlights that new AI search services can radically change the housing search so that services like Hemnet have more challengers than just Booli:
–It is not difficult for someone who currently has an account on Claude or ChatGPT to say: “I want to look at three three-bedroom apartments on Södermalm of around 75 square meters, set up a route and book me in for viewings this Sunday,” he points out.
