Homes.com names new president after 2-year leadership gap
Felix Kusch, a real estate executive who previously oversaw two European home search portals, has been tapped “to get Homes.com to No. 1.”
CoStar Group announced Monday that it has tapped Felix Kusch to serve as president of Homes.com. The appointment adds an experienced portal executive to the home search site more than two years after its last president exited.
Who is Kusch? Kusch brings over 15 years of experience as a consultant and leader at several European companies, including two of the top real estate portals in Europe. At Immoweb, Belgium's No. 1 search portal, Kusch was the interim CEO in late 2020 and the first half of 2021, and he later served as CEO at Immowelt, the No. 2 portal in Germany, for over three years.
Kusch has also held leadership positions at Axel Springer Digital and the AVIV Group before joining netgo, where he was chief commercial officer for about seven months prior to his move to CoStar.
Moving forward, Kusch will report to CoStar Founder and CEO Andy Florance. The rest of the Homes.com team will report to Kusch.
Aligned with Homes.com's strategy: Kusch's prior work with real estate portals has similarities to the "Your Listing, Your Lead" approach championed by Homes.com, the company said.
"I've watched what CoStar Group has built with Homes.com from across the Atlantic, and it's the same fight I've spent my career in: earning trust by promoting the property, not shopping the lead," Kusch said in a statement.
"Now I get to do it in the biggest residential real estate market in the world and I couldn't be more ready to get started with the CoStar Group team," he added.
What CoStar's CEO had to say: Kusch brings "exactly the experience we want leading Homes.com," said Florance, who applauded the executive's experience running other portals abroad and beating "some of the toughest competitors in the industry to do it."
Though CoStar mapped out a plan earlier this year for reducing its investment in Homes.com and has experienced shareholder pushback regarding its ongoing support for the portal, Florance has said previously that its Homes.com investments thus far have been paying off, with the company still focused on becoming the top portal in the business.
Kusch, Florance said, has "proven that he can take on an established competitor and come out on top."
"Our model and his are the same: you win by putting the property and agent first, not by selling agent's leads to multiple agents," Florance added. "I am confident Felix is the right leader to get Homes.com to number one in the U.S."
Closing a two-year leadership gap: Kusch's appointment comes more than two years after Homes.com's previous leader departed the company.
The last person to oversee the portal as president was David Mele, who left in May 2024 after nearly a decade with the home search site. Mele first took on the leadership role at Homes.com as president in 2014 and stayed with the portal following its acquisition by CoStar in 2021.
Three years later, Mele told Real Estate News that he was leaving to pursue "an opportunity outside of the real estate industry." Since then, Mele has been serving as president of Pool Scouts while Homes.com has been without an officially appointed president.