The real estate listing portal space has generated its fair share of headlines over the last several months. While Zillow, Homes.com and Redfin have been stealing most of the spotlight, Realtor.com has also issued some announcements of its own. HousingWire recently caught up with Realtor.com CEO Damian Eales to chat about the portal space and all things Realtor.com.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Brooklee Han: From Zillow’s lawsuits to activist investors at CoStar and Homes.com, there is quite a bit of noise in the portal space right now. How are you looking to navigate this noise with Realtor.com and position the company for future success regardless of what happens to the other industry players?
Damian Eales: When there is so much distraction it is really important to stay focused on what has historically made you a successful company. For us, it’s about balancing the needs of the American homebuyer and seller with the news to the professional who is best positioned to serve them. I think we have been able to balance both sides of the marketplace in a way that has been successful for us in both our audience numbers and our revenue numbers and that is really starting to play out for us now.
For the last three years, we’ve been focused on returning to those core principles of being a customer-first organization, be that the consumer as the client or the agent. From a consumer perspective, we’ve done a lot of work replatforming our core experience and leveraging the News Corp. brand to help promote the Realtor.com brand.
That is really starting to pay dividends for us. January’s Comscore data shows that Realtor.com recorded 261 million site visits last month, for 30% of visit market share compared to 11% for Redfin (98 million visits) and 6% for Homes.com (52 million visits). We are also No. 1 in audience engagement with 5.3 visits per unique visitor, better than Zillow at 3.9 visits, Redfin at 3.0 visits and Homes.com at 2.0 visits.
On the other side of the marketplace, we’ve spent a lot of time empowering our clients’ business growth. We’ve spent a lot of time focused on our RealPro Select category of business, which includes the teams that do a large amount of business with us, and they require more services from us on both the buy and sell side. We are also not ignoring the broad swath of individual Realtors that exist in the industry, and we want to ensure that as they enter the industry and build their business, that they use Realtor.com as their partner.
I think we have been able to strike a balance by serving both listing and buyers agents really well. There has been this debate about the relevance of buyside agents, and we think that buyer agency is very relevant. We think that ensuring that a professional Realtor is part of that conversation representing the buy side makes for a very healthy marketplace.
BH: You have previously mentioned wanting to build a stronger relationship with Realtor associations. Can you tell me a bit more about these efforts?
Eales: When I joined the business almost three years ago now, coming in from outside the industry, I reflected on one of the most powerful assets that existed in this business — the Realtor brand. Both the Realtor association brand and the Realtor.com brand have enormous heritage, authority and trust in the marketplace. I’ve really felt that our first and best opportunity is to leverage that brand better, but also to lean in to the industry more to support the good work and the purposeful work that the industry does and that Realtors do to help Americans find their way home.
In the case of Realtor.com, it is worth looking back to consider how it was established and that is out of a compact between the MLSs and Realtor.com, that was at the time, facilitated by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), and they created this magnificent system of real estate whereby sellers can list for free and there is full transparency in the marketplace for buyers. We think that as that’s being criticized by some, it has created an opportunity for us to remind the industry of the value that that cooperative has delivered for the industry. Beyond that, we think it’s also given us an opportunity to work with MLSs to consider what we want the future to look like and how we can strengthen this system even more, so that it is for the greater benefit of American home buyers and sellers and for the Realtor in the loop of any future transaction.
BH: This sounds like the basis for your recently launched Realtor.com+ product. Can you tell me a bit more about this new offering you are providing MLSs?
Eales: Realtor.com+ enhances and strengthens this relationship between a prominent and publicly accepted consumer portal and the MLSs, which are essentially the engine room of the industry. We feel that we have the opportunity to become the preferred front end of the MLS. The reality is that today a lot of Realtors send an email to their buyer with MLS links to listing they are contemplating, but the buyer chooses not to use the link in that email because the MLS software for visualizing those home is not as updated. So, they end up typing the listing into a portal instead. We want to be the link that the consumer gets in that email. In return, we will give the consumer a wonderful user experience and a collaborative space with their agent where they are free from being remarketed to another Realtor. In return, we share the data of their search experience back with the MLS.
If we become the preferred front end for those MLSs, then we’ll see that everybody in that ecosystem benefits, the buyer, the seller, the Realtor and the MLS. We spend millions of dollars every year to enhance our consumer experience and build our brand and now the MLS can partner with us and take advantage of that investment.
BH: Besides this new offering, how else are you looking to strengthen the relationship you have with MLSs?
Eales: We are the portal that is most aligned with the interest of the industry, so for us, when consumers come to our site, it is important to demonstrate why they should use a Realtor. We are hoping for the industry to encourage more consumers to come to Realtor.com — the portal that carriers their name and the trusted brand that reflects their profession. In many ways, we are working with NAR and the MLSs to consider how we can enhance that virtuous circle so that we all win in this together.
BH: Realtor.com has been very vocal regarding housing affordability challenges and has advocated for more homes to be built. Can you tell me a bit more about this advocacy work and the changes you are hoping to effect?
Eales: Our brand is so tied to the industry that we feel that we have a mission to stand up and advocate for the issues that are most impacting American homebuyers, sellers, property owners and the professionals who serve them. So, this comes very naturally to us as we tackle some difficult issues like the lack of housing supply and the crisis of housing affordability. Our biggest effort so far has been the Let America Build campaign, which we expect to see evolve over time.
I think we are uniquely positioned to dissect which states are doing well and which states are not doing well in terms of solving the crisis of supply. We have an opportunity to shine a light on the different building level discrepancies between states and encourage the states that are doing well to do more and for others to emulate those states.
These issues fundamentally need to be addressed more from a state and local government perspective than from a federal government perspective. We applaud the Trump administration in the many initiatives that they have canvassed and some that they are pursuing that will have a real impact on interest rates and housing affordability. We encourage state governments to consider their own issues locally and to consider how they can rapidly address the enormity of regulation and bureaucracy that prevents the building of new homes and affordable homes most importantly in their communities.