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The National Advertising Division has handed Realtor.com parent company Move another win in an ongoing advertising battle with rival CoStar Group.
On Friday, NAD, an arm of the Better Business Bureau’s National Programs, rejected CoStar’s challenge against Realtor.com’s “No. 1 site real estate professionals trust” advertising tagline. The Virginia-based commercial behemoth challenged the tagline, which is based on an August 2023 double-blind survey of over 1,300 real estate professionals, for being outdated and failing to reflect the current sentiments of real estate professionals. However, NAD said the survey results were still timely at the time the claim was filed in mid-July.
“Realtor.com, operated by Move, Inc., is affiliated with the National Association of Realtors, the real estate industry trade association that owns the US trademark to the term ‘Realtor,'” the decision read. “The challenged claim appeared online, including at the top of Realtor.com’s homepage.”
“In support of the challenged claim, Move relied on results of a double-blind survey of over 1,300 real estate professionals conducted in August 2023 by a market research firm,” it added. “The National Advertising Division (NAD) determined that the survey was reliable support for the claim. Further, NAD determined that the survey remained timely during the period of the challenge.”
Although NAD ruled in Move’s favor, the Division urged the portal to conduct a new survey as the validity of the August 2023 results won’t “last in perpetuity.” Move told NAD they already conducted a new survey in August 2024 and will update the tagline citation to reflect the most recent results.
A Realtor.com spokesperson lauded NAD for its decision and said the portal is proud of its strong industry reputation.
“NAD’s independent confirmation further cements Realtor.com as the No. 1 most trusted site by real estate professionals,” the spokesperson told Inman in an emailed statement. “Trust is not just a tagline — it drives our business. Our ads influence where customers invest their hard-earned marketing dollars, and we don’t take that responsibility lightly.”
Although CoStar lost the challenge, a company spokesperson said they stand by Homes.com’s “Your Listing, Your Lead” business model and the traction it has gained among agents.
“We know agents hate lead diversion and love Homes.com’s ‘Your Listing, Your Lead’ business model,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “We continue to believe that Realtor.com’s approach of selling off leads is bad for agents and bad for consumers. Homes.com’s climbing Net Promoter Score (NPS), a measure used to gauge customer loyalty, satisfaction, and enthusiasm with a company, now surpass Realtor.com’s, shows consumers agree.”
NAD’s decision is the latest chapter in an ongoing battle between CoStar Group and Move, which gained steam last fall when Move began taking issue with CoStar’s claims about Homes.com’s triple-digit traffic growth. The tension followed both portals into the new year, as CoStar CEO Andy Florance and Realtor.com CEO Damian Eales traded barbs at Inman Connect New York, with each leader touting the strength of their business model and urging agents to question the claims of the other.
The rivalry reached new heights over the summer when Move filed a theft of trade secrets lawsuit against CoStar and former Realtor.com News & Insights editor James Kaminsky. In the suit, Move claimed Kaminsky accessed Move-owned documents approximately 40 times after being laid off in January and shared the contents of those documents with CoStar to bolster Homes.com’s traffic and search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.
The suit has taken multiple twists and turns over the past few months, with Move pushing for a preliminary injunction to block Kaminsky and CoStar’s alleged continued access to Move-owned files. However, the portal’s quest for the injunction has been unsuccessful, with California District Judge George H. Wu noting Move’s counsel has failed to provide sufficient facts to support their request for the injunction along with two recent Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (CCDAFA) claims against Kaminsky. Wu has given Move’s counsel the chance to file a second amended complaint, as the portals move toward a summer 2025 trial date.
During the first stages of the suit, Move also filed an NAD challenge against CoStar over the traffic data it highlighted in its advertising. In the challenge, Move took issue with Homes.com’s claims that it reached more than 150 million unique monthly visitors on its site and had double the unique monthly visitors of Realtor.com. Move said both statistics were based on the Homes.com Network and not the Homes.com website alone, which boasted fewer unique monthly visitors.
NAD sided with Move and banned CoStar from using “Homes.com just reached 156M monthly unique visitors” and “Homes.com now has DOUBLE Realtor.com’s traffic” in its ads. However, NAD allowed CoStar to continue using Homes.com Network traffic in its ads, as long as they “explicitly disclosed it in the body of its advertisements.”
Despite their legal spats, the latest round of earnings shows both companies are facing similar challenges as the US housing market works its way through a medley of headwinds caused by stubborn mortgage rates, slowing sales, and wavering consumer sentiment and activity.
CoStar’s Homes.com and Homes.com Network traffic reached 130 million and 85 million unique monthly visitors, respectively in the third quarter. Although those metrics represented double-digit annual growth, they are a step down from the previous quarter, which saw Network traffic at 156 million and Homes.com traffic at 110 million. The company is also facing a few hiccups in growing membership traffic, which was flat for the quarter. However, Florance said Homes.com’s challenges were expected as the company is “in the bottom of the first inning” of growth.
Meanwhile, Realtor.com saw its revenue dip 1 percent to $140 million during Q3, as traffic increased 2 percent to 77 million unique monthly visitors. Lead volume declined 1 percent year over year during the quarter; however, parent company News Corp’s CEO Robert Thomson said Realtor.com is poised for a “rebound” as market headwinds continue to turn.
