Don’t expect radical changes to realtor.com under the management of News Corp., which acquired the site’s operator, Move Inc., in November — at least not right away.
Ryan O’Hara
Move’s new CEO, News Corp. veteran Ryan O’Hara, says he’s looking to start out with “simple product improvements” already in the works before the acquisition, and that the goal is to make “steady, sustained progress.”
O’Hara — who’s at Real Estate Connect New York City this week to meet with industry players — tells Realtor Magazine that there’s no question that realtor.com will remain Move’s “core site.”
There’s “a lot to admire and to build on,” he says, including Move’s partnership with the National Association of Realtors and the quality of the site’s listings and the leads it generates.
Where O’Hara sees room for improvement is product development, which “has sometimes trailed the marketplace or been slow to evolve to consumer needs.”
For now, he says, realtor.com will remain focused on simple improvements, citing two areas where work was in progress before the acquisition — agent profile pages and making property searches more intuitive.
O’Hara did promise that Move under News Corp. will “explore some big, bold ideas” and reiterated that it’s partnering with its parent company “to cross-promote across platforms and boost traffic and time spent on our sites.”