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As real estate portals compete ever more intensely to differentiate themselves, up-and-comer Movoto has nabbed a coveted prize: a deal to exclusively provide some school quality data from nonprofit GreatSchools.
The companies announced the deal Thursday morning, saying in a statement that Movoto will become the “sole provider of home listing data for the leading nonprofit school information site.” The deal will give Movoto access to new datasets that other sites won’t have and will exclusively bridge the two companies’ websites.
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In an example provided to Inman this week, the GreatSchools’ landing page for a California high school included a Movoto link on the right side of the page.
The partnership will not eliminate GreatSchools’ data from other portals such as Zillow, Homes.com, Redfin and Realtor.com, all of which currently display school rankings from the nonprofit. Instead, Movoto described the partnership as a “deep integration” that should give it more information than is available via competing portals.
John Berkowitz
Movoto CEO and co-founder John Berkowitz added in the statement that he is “ecstatic” about the deal.
“GreatSchools is a nonprofit that unequivocally shares our vision for transparency in data, and as a real estate company with a large audience we have a responsibility to not misrepresent our communities,” Berkowitz added. “GreatSchools understands the importance of providing high-quality, data-powered educational insights.”
Movoto’s move to beef up its school data offerings comes amid an intense “portal war” among different consumer listing websites. That competition began with CoStar’s entrance into the residential space via its Homes.com brand; CoStar has subsequently criticized incumbent portals including Zillow, Redfin and Realtor.com.
Up until now, Movoto has largely not been a part of the portal war discourse, but Thursday’s news might change that. Technology company OJO owns Movoto and earlier this year rebranded to make the site its public, consumer-facing identity. That move hinted that Movoto was preparing to march more explicitly into the portal war fray.
Thursday’s news of a deal with GreatSchools further pushes Movoto onto the front lines because the company is now making the case that it has something — deeper school data — that consumers can’t get from better-known rivals.
The Movoto-GreatSchools deal also comes just days after CoStar announced that it is buying imaging company Matterport. The CoStar and Movoto deals are unrelated, but thematically similar in the sense that they both represent portals diversifying their offerings in ways that might give them a strategic advantage over rivals.
Jon Deane
In its statement Thursday, Movoto described its vision as providing “quality, speed, and clarity in data for consumers, ensuring the consumers are equipped with all of the right tools in the homebuying and selling journey.” The statement adds that the partnership with GreatSchools will “diversify” the portal’s school data.
GreatSchools CEO Jon Deane also expressed excitement about the new deal, saying it will help “parents who are navigating significant life changes to relevant, local housing information directly on our platform.”
