On May 11, 2026, Poland’s Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (“UOKiK”) announced that it launched an investigation into the OLX Capital Group after receiving numerous reports of significant fee increases for property listings on Otodom, OLX’s real estate platform. According to UOKiK, the fees increased after OLX introduced a new billing model that resulted in a change to Otodom’s terms and conditions. The new model allegedly bases Otodom’s advertising fees on “the total value of all properties offered by a given user during a specified billing period,” which will cause fees to vary for individual entities and will base them on factors beyond advertisers’ control, including the price of real estate in the local market.
Tomasz Chrostny, President of UOKiK, decided to investigate the fee increases, which may be “disadvantageous for estate agents,” amid concerns regarding the “lack of transparency in the rules for setting fees, as well as the differentiation of terms of cooperation with estate agencies.” According to UOKiK, these practices may breach competition laws if OLX holds a dominant position in the real estate market and the increased fees restrict competition in the market. Under the existing law, an entity whose market share exceeds 40 percent is presumed to have a dominant position and is prohibited from abusing its market power.
If UOKiK investigators find that a breach of competition has occurred, the President of the UOKiK will initiate antitrust proceedings. The UOKiK also emphasized that, while its President is not able to affect Otodom’s price levels directly, he can indirectly influence prices by eliminating practices that are prohibited by law.