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Realtor.com is a
real estate Real estate is property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this (also) an item of real property, (more general ...
listings website operated by the
News Corp News Corporation, stylized as News Corp, is an American mass media and publishing company headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The second incarnation of the News Corporation (1980–2013), original News Corporation, it was formed ...
subsidiary Move, Inc. and based in
Santa Clara, California Santa Clara (; Spanish for " Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 census, making it the eighth-most populous city in the Bay Area. Located in the southern Bay Area, the cit ...
. It is the second most visited real estate listings website in the United States as of 2021, with over 100 million monthly active users. The site launched as the Realtor Information Network in 1995, serving as a closed network for members of the
National Association of Realtors The National Association of Realtors (NAR) is an American trade association for those who work in the real estate industry. It has over 1.4 million members, making it one of the biggest trade associations in the USA including NAR's institutes, so ...
. It relaunched in 1996 as a public website displaying property listings. Since then, Realtor.com claims to be the largest real estate website in the United States, and in 2016 was valued at $2.5 billion by
Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley is an American multinational investment management and financial services company headquartered at 1585 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. With offices in more than 41 countries and more than 75,000 employees, the fir ...
.


Operations

Realtor.com is operated by the real estate network Move, Inc., which is owned by
News Corp News Corporation, stylized as News Corp, is an American mass media and publishing company headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The second incarnation of the News Corporation (1980–2013), original News Corporation, it was formed ...
. Ryan O'Hara served as
chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...
(CEO) of both realtor.com and Move until June 18, 2019. Following the announcement of O'Hara's departure, News Corp's President of Global Digital Real Estate Tracey Fellows was named acting CEO in June 2019. David Doctorow was named the new CEO in January 2020. The website is licensed to operate by the
National Association of Realtors The National Association of Realtors (NAR) is an American trade association for those who work in the real estate industry. It has over 1.4 million members, making it one of the biggest trade associations in the USA including NAR's institutes, so ...
(NAR), the real estate industry's largest
trade association A trade association, also known as an industry trade group, business association, sector association or industry body, is an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific Industry (economics), industry. An industry tra ...
. The company's business model is built around selling referral-based solutions, leads, and advertising to agents, brokers, and others in the real estate industry. Realtor.com covers 80 countries. Originally located in
San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...
, the company moved to Santa Clara in 2016.


History


Early history and public listing

Realtor.com first launched in 1995 as the Realtor Information Network (RIN), which at that time was a closed network providing proprietary information to members of NAR. In 1996, the hosting site became public, allowing any Internet users to search for property listings, and expanded with the addition of Regional Multiple Listing Service (RMLS) listings in August. RIN grew from 32,000 property listings in December 1995 to nearly 400,000 properties by October 1996. The site was relaunched with the name "Spot Realtor.com" at the same realtor.com domain name in November 1996. The site's management was assumed by a company called RealSelect, in a new partnership with NAR, funded by investment from venture capital firms. RealSelect later changed its name to
Homestore Move, Inc. is a real estate listing company based in Santa Clara, California. The company operates the Move Network of real estate websites, the largest of which is Realtor.com. Move has a longstanding partnership with the National Association of R ...
, and continued to operate the realtor.com site with NAR as a partner. Starting in 1997, Realtor.com became the exclusive online real estate listings source for several companies, including ''
USA Today ''USA Today'' (stylized in all uppercase) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virgini ...
'',
NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
, and
America Online AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...
(AOL). Realtor.com also entered into a partnership with Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Service, beginning in 1998. With more than 1.3 million listings by 1999, Realtor.com had become the largest website for real estate listings, and expanded services to include
virtual tour A virtual tour is a simulation of an existing location, usually composed of a sequence of videos, still images or 360-degree images. It may also use other multimedia elements such as sound effects, music, narration, text and floor map. It is dis ...
s of properties. Homestore went public in August 1999, raising $140 million in the process. NAR retained a significant equity position, but Homestore negotiated agreements with multiple listing services and brokerages to secure direct feeds of listings.


News Corp era

News Corp News Corporation, stylized as News Corp, is an American mass media and publishing company headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The second incarnation of the News Corporation (1980–2013), original News Corporation, it was formed ...
purchased Realtor.com's parent company, now called Move, for $950 million in September 2014. According to comScore, Realtor.com was receiving 34.1 million unique visitors per month at the time. New partnerships were formed with
Airbnb Airbnb, Inc. ( ), based in San Francisco, California, operates an online marketplace focused on short-term homestays and experiences. The company acts as a broker and charges a commission from each booking. The company was founded in 2008 b ...
, to focus on encouraging potential home buyers to stay in neighborhoods of interest to them; and with
Yelp Yelp Inc. is an American company that develops the Yelp.com website and the Yelp mobile app, which publish crowd-sourced reviews about businesses. It also operates Yelp Guest Manager, a table reservation service. It is headquartered in San Fra ...
, to provide users with information about listed properties' neighborhood amenities. Move acquired interior design and lifestyle website
Remodelista Remodelista is an interior design and lifestyle website operated by Remodelista LLC. It was founded in 2007 by the current editor-in-chief Julie Carlson along with Francesca Connolly, Janet Hall, and Sarah Lonsdale. The company is based in New Yor ...
and outdoor spaces and garden design website
Gardenista Gardenista is an outdoor spaces and garden design website operated by Remodelista LLC. It was founded in 2011 by Julie Carlson and Michelle Slatalla initially as a section of Remodelista, and then as a separate entity in 2012. The company is ba ...
in 2016 as part of Realtor.com's marketing strategy. At the time of purchase, the two sites represented 1.5 million monthly readers. "Behind Realtor.com's Remodelista-Gardenista acquisition"
''Business of Home'' 2016-07-15
In June, 2019 the company sold back the websites to founder
Julie Carlson Julie Carlson (born November 24, 1960) is an American writer and co-founder of interior design and lifestyle website Remodelista and outdoor spaces and garden design website Gardenista operated by holding company Remodelista LLC, owned by Carlson ...
and husband Josh Groves and are now independently operated by Remodelista LLC."To Our Readers: Remodelista Update"
''Remodelista'' 2019-06-01
As of 2016, Realtor.com claimed to display 97 percent of residential properties for sale in the United States, and reportedly received 36.7 million unique monthly visitors. The company was valued by
Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley is an American multinational investment management and financial services company headquartered at 1585 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. With offices in more than 41 countries and more than 75,000 employees, the fir ...
at $2.5 billion. Features for
augmented reality Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be de ...
and
image recognition Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the human ...
in listings were added to the Realtor.com
mobile apps A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on de ...
in January 2017. Also, the site began offering 3D tours from Matterport on its
iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...
app, and began offering the same technology on its website and Android app. Move acquired Opcity, the Austin, Texas-based
real estate technology Property technology (also known as proptech, PropTech, prop-tech, and real estate technology) is used to refer to the application of information technology and platform economics to the real estate industry. Property technology overlaps with financ ...
company, for $210 million in 2018. The company, which developed a platform that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to match potential home buyers with agents, continued to operate as an independent business until being integrated in 2019–2020. In 2018, Realtor.com introduced Local Expert, a digital marketing service for targeting ads to agents and prospective buyers on both the company's website and
Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
. Local Expert was expanded in 2019 to allow ad purchases for searches at the city level in addition to the ZIP Code level. Another marketing product, Market Reach, launched in early 2020. During 2019 and early 2020, Realtor.com added a number of features to improve search options, including a commute time filter, noise overlay map, and automated value model comparisons. Realtor.com introduced Sellers Marketplace in July 2020 to help consumers with iBuying by providing homeowners with information for comparing selling options. In August 2020, Realtor.com launched a digital tool to help people assess the risk of flooding to a home over the course of a 30-year mortgage. In May 2022, Realtor.com added wildfire risk data to the online tool. Both integrations were a result of collaboration with the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit research and technology organization that uses data and technology to predict climate-related risks. As of mid-2020, Realtor.com was receiving approximately 68 million unique users per month The same year, Move purchased software company Avail. Avail provides tools used by landlords such as creating and marketing listings as well as collecting rent and maintenance requests. In 2021, it was reported as the number one real estate listings website and second most visited. In June of 2022 Move acquired UpNest.com to expand its seller strategy. UpNest algorithmically matches real estate customers with multiple agents in their area. Since UpNest's launch in 2013 approximately 1 million agent proposals have been submitted on the UpNest platform. In 2018 and 2019, UpNest was ranked on Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 as #85 and #116, respectively.


Marketing

Elizabeth Banks Elizabeth Banks (born Elizabeth Irene Mitchell; February 10, 1974) is an American actress and filmmaker. She is known for playing Effie Trinket in ''The Hunger Games'' film series (2012–2015) and Gail Abernathy-McKadden in the ''Pitch Perfe ...
became a spokesperson for Realtor.com in 2015, appearing in the company's YouTube series targeting
millennials Millennials, also known as Generation Y or Gen Y, are the Western demographic cohort following Generation X and preceding Generation Z. Researchers and popular media use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000 ...
buying their first home. Her first commercial for the company was directed by
Fred Savage Frederick Aaron Savage (born July 9, 1976) is an American actor and director. He is known for his role as Kevin Arnold in the American television series ''The Wonder Years'' (1988 to 1993). He has earned several awards and nominations, such as ...
. A subsequent campaign, "The Home of Home Search", launched in April 2018. Realtor.com's current campaign, "Homes for Every Home Buyer" uses the tagline "to each their home". One ad features rapper Big Boi in "Our First Big Boi House", which depicts first-time homebuyers of color and celebrates Black homeownership. The website's advertising campaigns have been recognized by ''
Adweek ''Adweek'' is a weekly American advertising trade publication that was first published in 1979. ''Adweek'' covers creativity, client–agency relationships, global advertising, accounts in review, and new campaigns. During this time, it has cover ...
'', the Online Marketing Media and Advertising (OMMA) Awards, and the
Webby Award The Webby Awards are awards for excellence on the Internet presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over two thousand industry experts and technology innovators. Categories include ...
s for their creativity, use of talent, and digital advertising.


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Realtor.com Residential real estate Real estate valuation Online real estate databases Real estate services companies of the United States Companies based in Santa Clara, California News Corporation subsidiaries American companies established in 1995 Real estate companies established in 1995 Internet properties established in 1995 1995 establishments in California American real estate websites