Realtor.com announced today that the National Association of Realtors bestowed a “Global Achievement Award” on its international website, realtor.com/international, during the trade group’s annual conference.
“We are deeply honored to be recognized by the NAR community for our role in helping provide Realtors with a platform to market listings to the growing international audience and to connect with customers in their native languages and familiar metrics,” said Eleonore Rojas, vice president of partnerships and product integration at realtor.com, in a statement.
Realtor.com accepted the award on Nov. 9 in San Francisco, at an “International Night Out Gala” during NAR’s annual conference.
Other “Global Award Winners” announced at the conference included Singapore-based Realtor Jeff Foo, who was named “International Realtor Member of the Year,” and the West San Gabriel Valley Association of Realtors, honored as “Outstanding Ambassador Association.”
Rojas said that since its launch three years ago, realtor.com international has had “tremendous adoption,” with “more than 1 million non-U.S. monthly visitors to our sites.”
NAR awards the Global Achievement Award to companies “achieving excellence in global business services by fostering the exchange of timely and accurate real estate information across borders and helping to create and grow international relationships among real estate professionals,” realtor.com said.
Realtor.com international features international homes for sale, land, and commercial and rental listings from the United States and 36 additional countries.
The site displays search options, listing information translations, multiple home-size conversions and 22 different currencies, and supports 11 languages.
The site also helps consumers interpret listing information that may use measurements or indicators (some countries may display the total number of rooms rather than the total number of bedrooms) that are unfamiliar to them.
“Our website provides accessible information to consumers and the ability to connect buyers and sellers,” Rojas said. “We are extremely proud of the progress that has been made, and we will continue to expand internationally.”
The announcement comes as agents continue to digest the news that realtor.com is experimenting with an agent matching tool, AgentMatch, that helps consumers evaluate and choose agents based in part on statistics gleaned from multiple listing services.
Seeking to calm a segment of Realtors who objected to AgentMatch, realtor.com announced on Nov. 19 that it had invited 16 real estate professionals to serve on a board to help shepherd the tool through its development.
NAR owns the realtor.com website and “Realtor” trademark, and licenses both of them exclusively to realtor.com operator Move Inc. under the terms of an operating agreement that dates to 1996. The trade group also owns a stake in Move — 2.28 percent of Move’s outstanding common stock, which, as of April 1, was valued at about $15 million.
Move also pays about $2 million a year in royalties to NAR, which gets most of its funding from dues paid by its 1 million members, totaling about $120 million a year.
NAR also has a seat on Move’s six-member board of directors, and two seats on the eight-member board of directors of Move subsidiary RealSelect, which operates realtor.com.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct that realtor.com, not NAR, unveiled AgentMatch at NAR’s annual conference.
