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Realtor.com CEO Damian Eales didn’t mince words during his Inman Connect Las Vegas session on Thursday. The CEO took direct aim at CoStar Group CEO Andy Florance’s claims about rival portal Homes.com’s performance, urging audience members to take what they hear with a “packet of salt.”
Eales pointed to an advertising challenge Realtor.com parent company Move filed in July with the Better Business Bureau’s National Advertising Division as an example of CoStar’s alleged deception. The challenge took issue with CoStar’s “Homes.com just reached 156M monthly unique visitors” and “Homes.com now has DOUBLE Realtor.com’s traffic” claims, which were based on Homes.com Network traffic — not Homes.com traffic alone.
Homes.com has since updated its ads to highlight the site’s sole traffic figures, although the NAD ruled they can still use Homes.com Network figures with “explicit disclosure.”
“People in this room thought that their brand and their listings were appearing on all of those URLs,” he said. But quite frankly, I encourage you to go to all of those other 16 URLs, like Land.com and Apartments.com, and search for your brand and your listings.”
Eales went on to question additional claims Florance made about the number of views Homes.com members get on the listings, saying that he tracked the difference in listing views on Homes.com, Realtor.com and Zillow. A listing for an $830,000 apartment in Los Angeles has 300 views on Zillow but 14 million views on Homes.com.
“I mean, please, the population of LA is less than 4 million,” he said. “Who are these people [viewing the listing]? And why hasn’t the property sold? You know, sometimes if it seems too good to be true, perhaps it is. I think that customers should really challenge the claims that are being made.”
Although many of the headlines Realtor.com has made this year have been related to its beef with CoStar, Eales said the company has dedicated a lot of time to championing buyer agency and helping the industry navigate coming changes with commission policy. The CEO highlighted the portal’s “111 Reasons” campaign that highlights the tasks buyers’ agents handle during a transaction — an important move as some homebuyers grapple with the upcoming decoupling of commissions.
“[The campaign] came from inspiration from our customers and from [multiple listing services] who were saying, ‘Hey, we’re getting hammered here,'” he said. “The profession of buyer agency is being questioned by the media, it’s being questioned by lawmakers, and we need help to demonstrate the value that buyer agency brings to consumers.”
“We’ve launched two editions of that, in which we’ve demonstrated the 111 reasons why it is important for consumers to get independent buyer agency when making the biggest and most leveraged purchase of their lives,” he added.
Beyond homebuyers, Eales said he hopes the campaign gives regulators and lawmakers valuable insight into what buyers’ agents bring to the transaction. This is especially important, he said, as the Department of Justice monitors multiple real estate antitrust cases, including the Aug. 17 changes connected to the National Association of Realtors’ settlement.
“It is clear that this administration and, I think, all administrations in the future, would want to reduce the cost of buying and selling homes,” he said. “And there are many ways that you can do that. We would argue that looking at commissions is one way, but there are a lot of others.”
“Taxes are another area that should be examined, as are the regulations and red tape associated with building new homes,” he added. “But in terms of commissions, yes, they have clearly signaled that they expect to see a more efficient marketplace and downward pressure on commissions, but we haven’t heard anything from the [DOJ] where they have suggested that they wish to do that at the expense of consumer protections.”
Eales said “there is still a great deal of confusion” about how to handle upcoming commission changes, but he believes the industry will find its footing and that consumers will continue to see the value of buyer brokers in the years to come, with “agency being preserved.”
“People still need a lot of help on both sides of that transaction,” he said. “We argue that independent representation is better than being represented by the party who’s representing the seller. But ultimately, that’s the consumer’s choice.”
As he eyes the future, Eales said Realtor.com is dedicated to providing agents with quality, high-intent leads and creating industry-leading products that benefit buyers and listing agents. The CEO highlighted Advantage Pro, a platform he called the predecessor to Homes. com’s “Your Listing, Your Lead” promise, Real Choice Selling and Listing Toolkit.
“Listing Toolkit is where we work with agents to ensure that they have the best listing capability in market, and then we ensure that that agent is presented to active sellers on our site through a consumer product called Real Choice Selling,” he said. “That’s where we provide a choice of agents, which consumers will then choose. We’re not selling advertising. We’re selling new listings to listing agents and performing incredibly well.”
Realtor.com’s buyer leads program, listing products, and rentals partnership with Zillow will yield dividends for the company, he said, with revenues projected to rise 50 percent in the year ahead.
