On the same day that Andy Florance’s company, CoStar, filed a lawsuit against one of its top competitors, he took the stage in front of hundreds of industry insiders and declared victory.
Homes.com, Florance said onstage at Inman Connect San Diego, is now the No. 1 residential real estate search portal.
That’s in part because the CoStar CEO doesn’t view top competitors like Zillow, Realtor.com and Redfin as playing in the same arena.
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“I would say that we are really in a universe of one,” Florance said. “We’re the only portal that is focused on marketing the real estate, giving the agent the tools that are really effective at helping them market the real estate on behalf of the owner.”
“We’re not competing against either Realtor or Zillow for customers,” he added. “We are doing something completely different. In essence, we are now No. 1 at that.”
Florance was interviewed on the event’s main stage by Inman CEO Emily Paquette, who asked Florance about his pursuit to overtake Zillow as the top real estate portal for consumer and agent awareness.
Florance has been laser-focused on establishing Homes.com as “the only pro-agent site,” referring to his portal’s approach to highlighting the listing agent in front of the millions of consumers visiting the platform every month.
CoStar this month reported that it had generated 111 million unique monthly visitors to the Homes.com Network in the second quarter. That network includes the company’s Homes Network; Apartments Network, for which the company reports 48 million unique visitors monthly; and Land Network, for which the company reports 12 million monthly views.
Earlier in the morning, Homes.com parent company CoStar filed a lawsuit against Zillow alleging “systematic infringement of CoStar’s copyrighted photographs.”
In CoStar’s complaint, filed in federal court in New York state, the company said Zillow is displaying nearly 46,000 CoStar-copyrighted images on Zillow Rentals. Many of the images, CoStar claims, still have the CoStar watermark and have been displayed more than 250,000 times on Zillow, Redfin and Realtor.com rental listings, as a result of the portals’ listing syndication agreements.
Paquette asked Florance to address the lawsuit, filed just hours before his scheduled appearance at one of Inman’s marquee events.
“Obviously, we cannot afford to pay staff to do a job for our clients and then have someone else just take the content,” Florance said. “It’s a little bit like you’re a large brokerage firm, and you buy 47,000 signs to go in the front yard, and your competitor takes the signs and uses them in their front yard.”
“We don’t want to be involved in it, but if it happens you have to deal with it,” he said.
Photo by AJ Canaria Creative Services
Homes.com vs. Zillow
The battle between Homes.com and Zillow has flared up in the wake of a Zillow policy update that blocks any real estate listing from the platform if that listing was publicly marketed before being entered into the multiple listing service and on Zillow within a business day.
Discussion about the policy has largely focused on Compass, the nation’s largest brokerage by sales volume. Over the past year, Compass has ramped up its efforts to build a broad network of private exclusives that, initially in their journey on the market, are available only via Compass agents. The existence of that network bars those listings from Zillow.
Homes.com slammed the policy update and said it would give additional marketing to listings that are banned from Zillow. The policy decision put Homes closer in line with Compass, and Florance addressed that apparent policy alignment on Wednesday.
“There’s a little manipulation going on. We can all say, ‘Hey, this real estate brokerage that we compete with — Compass — if it’s bad for Compass, it’s good for me, so I’m going to be anti-Compass here,’” Florance said.
“Compass is a regular thorn in your paw,” he said, “Zillow taking control of the market and replacing the MLS is a dagger in the heart.”
Direct-mail campaign
Photo by AJ Canaria Creative Services
Earlier this month, Inman reported exclusively that Homes.com had begun sending mailers to homesellers asking them to pay to increase the visibility of their listing via Homes.com.
Agents from coast to coast told Inman they felt the direct-mail campaign was inappropriate, though the company has said more agents supported the move than opposed it.
Florance told investors in CoStar’s second-quarter earnings call that the campaign went to 100,000 homesellers who are represented by agents who are members of Homes.com. He repeated the comment on stage Wednesday when Paquette asked him about the campaign.
“We sent mailers to the homeowners that they represent saying, ‘This is what your agent has invested in for you,’” Florance said. “The reaction to that has been overwhelmingly positive. The agent loves having us say something to their homeowners about what rock stars their agent is.”
The mailers also went to sellers whose agents told Inman they had no connection with the portal.
