Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

Realtor.com Bets on Collaboration in an Industry Addicted to Conflict

Realtor.com® Unveils Realtor.com®+™: A First-of-Its-Kind Collaborative Home Search Experience 

“Realtor.com® was born from the partnership between the National Association of Realtors® and MLSs, and for three decades we’ve championed an open marketplace that delivers transparency and meaningful value to consumers and professionals,” said Damian Eales, CEO of Realtor.com®. “Realtor.com®+™ modernizes that legacy by putting more powerful tools into more agents’ hands than any product in our history, keeping professionals at the center of the transaction, and giving MLSs the valuable AI-driven capabilities and member tools they need to lead the industry forward. ”

I love this move from Realtor.com. While everyone else is fighting and suing each other, Realtor.com’s CEO, Damian Eales chose to build alliances instead. Who would’ve thought a portal, run by an Australian, might be the one to bring collaboration back to the MLS?!

That’s the thread running through this entire announcement: collaboration.

First, the partnerships. Realtor.com+ is launching with more than 15 MLS organizations, representing over 120,000 agents. That speaks to a void in the market.

Then there’s the app — enter the whiz kids from Zenlist. The team at Zenlist already built a world-class agent–client collaboration experience, and now it’s seamlessly tied into the broader Realtor.com ecosystem.

Next, the integrations. Deep connections into MLS systems, plus vendors like Realtors Property Resource, DocuSign, and Hover.

While CoStar leans into bluster, Zillow toys to play big daddy, and Compass pushes seller-centric exclusivity as a wedge, Realtor.com is betting that the open marketplace still matters — and that strengthening it beats fragmenting it.

So Realtor.com is doing the logical thing: reinforcing the network that made it relevant in the first place. The difference is how they’re doing it. We all know Damian isn’t afraid of a picking fight, but instead he’s picking partners.

In a sea of “disruptors,” collaboration might be the most disruptive move of all.

Bravo.

Move sues CoStar over trade secrets

CoStar hit with trade secrets lawsuit over dueling real-estate websites

“According to the complaint, Kaminsky headed Realtor.com’s “News and Insights” platform until he was laid off in January. The lawsuit said that Kaminsky took a similar role at Homes.com in March.

Move said it discovered last month that Kaminsky had stolen documents related to business strategy, industry contacts and “a vast array of other competitively sensitive and valuable information” for CoStar.”

Blake Brittain, Reuters

Shades of 2014 when Move sued Zillow over the departure of Errol Samuelson and Curt Beardsley. That was pretty messy and Zillow finally settled (without admitting any wrong doing) for $130 Million. Someone once told me that you are never really successful until you start getting sued. So I guess it’s official that Homes.com is getting traction.

Funny that it’s usually CoStar doing the suing. It will be interesting what tidbits come up in discovery if things get that far.

A new home search portal swoops in to the mix

Flyhomes Launches World’s First AI-Powered Home Search Portal

“Developed over the last two years, ‘Flyhomes AI,’ is a proprietary technology which brings the first conversational real estate search and research to the market, dramatically expanding the amount of information home shoppers can find online.”

Flyhomes

The company has some legit pedigree too.

“The technology integration was overseen by ZeroDown co-founders, Laks Srini and Abhijeet Dwivedi, who joined Flyhomes as chief technology officer (CTO) and chief growth officer (CGO), respectively. Srini and Dwivedi previously served as Co-founder/CTO and as COO at SaaS HR platform, Zenefits.”

Flyhomes

One of ZeroDown’s major investors is Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT.

The new portal will be live in 28 states and Washington D.C., which they claim covers 75% of the listings (I think that sounds right). I got an early sneak peak at the site and it’s pretty rad. Along with the typical portal things you can also ask it questions like

“Show me homes in Los Angeles that have recently dropped in price”
“Provide me an overview of recent t sales in 90210”
“Show me homes in 92648 that are having an open house this weekend.”

To me this could be what a future MLS system interface could look like.

I’m hoping to have someone from Flyhomes on my podcast, I’ve got a ton of questions about their business model, and how they plan to expand coverage.

But my biggest take away is just when we thought that there was no innovation left in the listing portal space, a new competitor enters the ring. Congrats flyhomes! Can’t wait to see more!

Bada Bing

Microsoft Bing Real Estate Portal in Violation of Copyright Infringement – MLSs Must Act Immediately

“It seems like Zillow and Redfin started a relationship with Microsoft to leverage innovative OpenAI technology to deliver some interesting consumer benefits to people searching for homes on Zillow and Redfin. It is hard to ascertain how this relationship started with Bing Chat and evolved into Bing.com/realestate providing a full listing display breaking so many MLS rules, that links out to advertisers, and points to Zillow and Redfin as the sources of the data rather than the brokerage or MLS. It’s not Zillow or Redfin’s data to give!”

Victor Lund, WAV Group

Great write up from Victor regarding the Bing controversy, go read the whole thing. Sam DeBord was the first to start posting about this and Marian at Inman News did a story as well. Good reporting.

Okay so let’s first let’s get something straight right from the top, Bing.com/realestate is a mother fucking real estate portal, not a search results page.

  • I can like properties
  • I can save a property
  • I can setup a saved search
  • I can see multiple photos (sans watermark) – WTF?
  • I can “claim ownership”
  • I can see an “estimated value”
  • I can even get a mortgage!

And it appears that Zillow, Redfin and Realtor.com may be complicit in powering Bing. From Victor’s post,

“Here is how easily Zillow and Redfin can stop bing from accessing and republishing content – code courtesy of OpenAI “<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>.” Inventory is turning in 30-90 days in most markets, rendering search on Bing irrelevant in a short period of time. If current listings are not displayed to active home buyers in today’s tight market, consumers will abandon them. Of course, this would be a poison pill for Zillow and Redfin who rely on search engines for a significant amount of their consumer traffic.”

Victor Lund, WAV Group

Shout out to Homes.com for not being a part of this scheme, as Victor also points out.

But MLS organizations need to step up, more from Victor.

“MLS must protect the assets contributed by each broker, or firms will simply contribute their content to OpenAI for free, and access the listing content of other brokerage firms using OpenAI. CMA vendors like Inside Real Estate, Delta Media and dozens of others can stop paying $5 Million a year in Data License fees and access the data from OpenAI. An OpenAi driven CMA would work like Cloud CMAs revolutionary 1 Minute CMA, only it would be almost instant. Moreover, consumers could simply run their own CMA without a professional.”

Victor Lund, WAV Group

“AI” is the new “lion over the hill”. If MLS orgs want to protect their data licensing revenue you need to nip this in the bud now.

Industry Relations Podcast: CoStar Acquires Matterport, The photography wars

How will CoStar’s recent buyout of Matterport affect the industry? In this episode Rob and Greg dive into the recent acquisition of Matterport by CoStar and how Rob and Greg predicted this years ago. How will Zillow respond? And how will other industry giants such as Redfin be affected by this huge announcement?

They also talk about Realtor.com’s CEO, Damian Eales, and his plans to expand the portal’s offerings. But beyond the competition between these portals lies an important conversation about raising the bar in the industry and eliminating low-quality agents for the betterment of consumers. 

And what’s the next battleground in real estate? Buyer rep agreements will be crucial to differentiate between the showdown with good agents and bad agents.

Connect with Rob and Greg: 

Rob’s Website

Greg’s Website

Our Sponsors: 

Notorious VIP

This podcast is produced by Two Brothers Creative 2024.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

Top portal rivals show mutual support for buyer agency

“In a LinkedIn post, Zillow Co-founder and CEO Rich Barton drew attention to Eales’ “valuable thoughts” in the Wall Street Journal op-ed, but also reminded the industry that Zillow had previously launched its own effort — “Real Estate Rights for Consumers” — to show support for transparency in the industry and for buyer agency. “

AJ LaTrace, Real Estate News

Shocking. Two companies that sell buyer leads to agents agree that buyer’s agents are important.

Authenticity, CoStar and the craps table.

If you haven’t caught our last episode of Industry Relations that just dropped today you hear Rob talk about the desire for industry entities such as NAR to stop the corporate word salad and speak authentically. This conversation made me think about an article and podcast that caught my attention. It was in relation to the letter (email?) Andy Florance, CEO of CoStar, sent regarding a few statements made at NAR NXT. The entire letter is available (and link to the podcast) so you can go read it here at:

COSTAR CEO SENDS MESSAGE TO WSJ & REALTOR.COM

In the letter Mr. Florance make a few statements:

He calls out Bob Evans, VP of Industry Relations at realtor.com, for making false statements “that Homes.com was working against real estate agent“.

He (Andy F.) takes full responsibility for CoStar News naming Sitzer/Burnett plaintiff attorney Michael Ketchmark, “newsmaker of the week” and states “It will not happen again.” [Small quibble; Ketchmark was named “Person of the week”]

He also points out the fact realtor.com and the WSJ is owned by the same company and then makes a damn good point. Here’s a quote from his letter:

“Many people mistakenly believe that Realtor.com is part of NAR. In fact, it is not, it was sold years ago and is now owned by News Corp. The Wall Street Journal and Realtor.com are sister companies. They work together closely. The folks that call the shots for The Wall Street Journal and Realtor.com are one and the same.

The Wall Street Journal has been prolifically writing more than most about theSitzer/Burnett class action lawsuit and the NAR defeat. They have published article titles such as “Home Sellers Take On the Realtors Cartel”, “Almost No One Pays a 6% Real-Estate Commission-Except Americans”, “The Upending of One of America’s Most Popular Professions”, “The Way You Pay to Buy or Sell a Home is About To Change”, “Jury Finds Realtors Conspired to Keep Commissions High”, “Real-Estate Commissions Could Be the Next Fee on the Chopping Block”, “Realtors Face an Antitrust Reckoning” and more.“

Letter from Andy Florance, CEO & Founder of CoStar

Zing! Pow! Authentic enough for you yet? Love him or not Andy Florance is not in his box seats, he is on the field, and I’m here for it.

As a prolific player of craps I have an analogy for you. In the game of craps you have the concept of “right way” and “wrong way” bettors. In simple terms “right way bettors” are betting on the shooter, and “wrong way bettors” are betting “against the shooter”. When a hot craps game is going on and a “wrong way bettor” shows up at the table everyone gets pissed off. They think having a “wrong way bettor” at the table brings “bad juju”. CoStar, in my view, has been perceived by the industry as a “wrong way bettor”. This was due to the fact that CoStar’s business model does better with the elimination or neutering of buy side compensation. And guess what? It’s looking like Andy made the right bet.

“7 OUT!”

Here’s the thing as these so called “portal wars” heat up. There are many things that we can argue about regarding the business models of all the portals. Dual agency, agent responsiveness, etc. But the Sitzer/Burnett ruling and all the copy cat lawsuits are making it very clear that the game has changed. CoStar isn’t the wrong way bettor any longer.

We need to move on. CoStar, Zillow, Realtor.com are all going to have to adjust. We as an industry are going to have to adjust.

We aren’t play craps anymore. Feels to me more like poker.

Listing Toolkit review with Cloud CMA integration

Listing Toolkit by Realtor.com is a surprisingly valuable, lightweight marketing solution: Tech Review

“Listing Toolkit is a resource for agents to attract more seller clients and uncover buyers seeking their homes, among other benefits. It’s for those with Realtor.com Pro accounts and has a full integration with Lone Wolf’s Cloud CMA to quickly build dynamic presentations that can be juxtaposed with a wide range of buyer traffic data to demonstrate demand across the entire Realtor.com coverage area. It enables quick property advertising campaigns and allows for self-promotion and branding using Realtor.com’s UpNest product suite, which allows for paid increases in reach. Overall, the experience is supported by a modern, consumer-facing UI and should pose little challenge to learn. It could be a nice value-add to the tech stack of agents with reasonable marketing budgets, and a good use of time for small, tech-forward brokerages and teams with marketing staff.

Craig Rowe for Inman News

Good write up from Craig. As I’ve written about before I think the realtor.com team did a great job with Lone Wolf with the integration.

Realtor.com partners with Lone Wolf to add Cloud CMA integration to its new “Listing Toolkit”

New integration connects Realtor.com®’s Listing Toolkit and Cloud CMA by Lone Wolf.

Lone Wolf teams up with Realtor.com® to bring exclusive buyer reports to over 500,000 real estate agents

“Realtor.com®‘s Listing Toolkit, which is currently available for purchase across the country, helps agents win and sell listings, from elevating their brand to sellers and identifying matching buyers to promoting listings leveraging Realtor.com®‘s consumer audience. The integration with Cloud CMA means mutual users can add several premium report pages to their CMAs, including Realtor.com® reports with insights into matching buyers and buyer demand to showcase deeper market intelligence to prospective sellers.”

Via PR from Lone Wolf

This was one of the last things I worked on before I left Lone Wolf, and probably the most exciting.

Adding buyer demand data to Cloud CMA reports was just a no-brainer. Doing a listing presentation and ending with, “and I have 5 buyers I could contact right after this that are looking for a house just like yours” is a great way to help agents win more listings.

A couple of things to note. First I was super proud Realtor.com had chosen Cloud CMA. I was told they did a ton of research and in the end it was super obvious that Cloud CMA was the best choice to add as a partner. This is not only a testament to the product itself but all the MLS organizations that have supported Cloud CMA for so many years. Also, I was super impressed with design and development team at Realtor.com. The men and women on these teams were some of the best designers and collaborators I’ve ever worked with. Many thanks to Mohammed, Faisal and the rest of the team.

Lastly I just love the level of partnership here between these two vendors. Having been a part of the process I know that it took a little give and take, but ultimately both sides can be really proud of the work.

CoStar won’t buy realtor.com

CoStar will not acquire portal Realtor.com after all

“During Tuesday’s investor call, Florance compared CoStar’s portal ambitions to the choice consumers face between buying a home verses building something new. But thanks to what Florance described as Homes.com’s success with traffic, and its positive reception within the real estate industry, CoStar has apparently settled for now on the building, rather than buying, strategy.

We feel we have a unique offering on the organic side that no one else is offering out there,” Florance said at another point during the call.

Tuesday’s earnings report states that Homes.com now has more than 20 million unique monthly visitors.”

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, remember when CoStar was going to buy CoreLogic? Good times.

Ultimately this was a head-scratcher anyway, how was CoStar going to manage two brands? Rob and I went over this on an episode of Industry Relations.

I love the optimism here from Andy, but Realtor.com traffic is roughly 5 times that of Homes.com, and Zillow is 10 times that of Homes.com. I still can’t believe Andy’s grand plan is to “beat Zillow”, especially organically. I keep believing there has to be something else…some other plan yet to be revealed. Beating Zillow seems like a fool’s errand.

As a wise man once said, “never get involved in a land war in Asia.”

Sponsored By Aligned Showings