home.co.uk is 30 years old. Here is what comes next.

Home.co.uk launched in 1995. That puts it among the first generation of UK property websites, built before broadband was common, before smartphones existed, and before Rightmove was even incorporated.

For thirty years it did something simple and did it well: it gave people independent, honest data about the UK property market.

What it was known for

Home.co.uk built its reputation on two things. First, its data. The house price analytics, supply and stock figures, and local market breakdowns became reference points for buyers, journalists, and researchers who wanted a number they could trust that did not come from a portal with a vested interest in making the market look busy.

Second, its independence. Home.co.uk was never owned by an estate agency group or a venture fund optimising for a quick exit. Ben Horton and Doug Shephard, who founded it and ran it for three decades, kept it that way.

That reputation is what we acquired when Homemove bought home.co.uk in November 2025 (more on why we acquired home.co.uk). We are not replacing it. We are building on it.

What changes under new ownership

The name stays the same. The data stays independent. What changes:

The technology. We have rebuilt the platform from the ground up. Faster search, AI-powered tools, and direct connections to 18 estate agent CRMs so listings stay current automatically. The infrastructure behind home.co.uk in 2025 is fundamentally different from what was there before.

The scope. home.co.uk was a search portal. The platform it is becoming is a search portal plus a moving platform: surveys, conveyancing, removals, mortgages, broadband. You do not just find the property, you move into it.

The AI layer. Property data is rich and often left unused. We have built AI tools that put it to work: an instant valuation engine, a market data product for estate agents, and an AI assistant, Inigo, that answers questions about properties and the market. These tools live on home.co.uk now. Today the platform tracks 1,249,531 live UK listings for sale and to rent, including 45,623 new-build listings, from a 3-bed house in Fringford, Oxfordshire at £350,000 to a 1-bed flat on Henry Street, Manchester at £195,000.

What does not change

Listings remain free for estate agents. That was a founding principle when the site launched in 1995 and it is a founding principle of what we are building now.

The data stays independent. Our market insight is based on our own listings data, clearly labelled and not inflated. We will not claim the market is hotter than it is.

That was a founding principle when the site launched in 1995 and it is a founding principle of what we are building now.

A note on the founders

Ben Horton and Doug Shephard are staying involved as strategic advisers. Thirty years of institutional knowledge about UK property data does not leave the room when an acquisition happens. We made sure it does not.

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home.co.uk was founded in 1995 by Ben Horton and Doug Shephard. It was acquired by Homemove (HM Haus Group Ltd) on 4 November 2025.