Realtor.com has nearly a third of the market, CEO says
The search portal touted strong traffic numbers alongside steady revenue growth, highlighting improved product sales and its recent Zillow listings partnership.
"Premium offerings" are continuing to push revenue higher at Realtor.com, according to parent company News Corp's latest earnings report.
Revenue was up 10% for FY26 Q3 (January to March on a fiscal year calendar) — the "sixth consecutive quarter of growth," Realtor.com CEO Damian Eales said in a quarterly overview published May 7.
Contributing factors included higher sales of RealPro Select — a premium seller leads product — and MLS adoption of Realtor.com+, a "first-of-its-kind" home search platform launched in January.
Still number two: Although Realtor.com and Homes.com have both claimed to be the No. 2 home search portal (after Zillow), Eales said Comscore site traffic data suggests otherwise. With 261 million average monthly visits, Realtor.com accounts for 31% of the market share, versus 6% for Homes.com, he noted.
When measuring engagement — defined as visits per unique user — Realtor.com said its numbers were up from the previous quarter, launching it into the top spot among major search portals with 5.3 visits compared to 3.5 for Zillow, 2.9 for Redfin and 1.9 for Homes.com. Realtor.com's overall number of average monthly users was flat year-over-year at 66 million, according to internal data.
Products and partnerships: In addition to revenue-driving industry products, Eales touted the company's recent consumer innovations, including the integration of the Realtor.com app in ChatGPT in March and a "Market Clock" feature that shows whether a given market favors buyers or sellers.
He also highlighted the company's latest partnership with Zillow, announced last week, to display pre-market "Preview" listings on Realtor.com — a collaboration that "reflects our longstanding commitment to the open marketplace," Eales wrote. It's not the first time Realtor.com has teamed up with the competing portal: Realtor.com previously partnered with Zillow on rental listings and interactive media features.
Housing initiatives: Late last year, Eales implored the industry to stop "bickering" over divisive issues like private listings and instead focus on housing supply, "a shared purpose that unites us."
That philosophy was reflected in his quarterly review as well, which mentioned Realtor.com's recently launched "HomeGrown" campaign and its ongoing "Let America Build" initiative — advocacy programs focused on affordability and the "the urgent need to address America's housing supply crisis."
Ahead of the market: "The renaissance of [Realtor.com] has really preceded the recovery of the overall U.S. housing market," News Corp Chief Executive Robert Thomson told investors during the quarterly earnings call on May 7, adding that "Damian Eales and the team have ensured that Realtor is primed to take full advantage of any uptick" in home sales as the market improves.