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Though a lot of 2024’s headlines centered on Realtor.com’s fierce battle with CoStar, CEO Damian Eales mentioned the rivalry is towards the underside of his priorities — particularly as an intensifying housing scarcity threatens the livelihoods of tens of millions of Realtors.
Damian Eales | Credit score: AJ Canaria Inventive Providers
“On election day last November, we ran ads in some of the major newspapers in this country where we congratulated future leaders who would be elected overnight,” he instructed the Inman Join New York crowd on Wednesday. “But we put a challenge to them — we urge you in your new roles of responsibility to face the real challenge of our time, which is housing affordability. I would say that the last administration really made Realtors the villain of housing affordability by focusing on commissions.”
“And even if they only reduced commissions by, let’s say, a percentage point, which was probably their goal, that pales into insignificance with the real issue, which is housing supply,” he added. “So what you’ll see from us in the year ahead is a real focus on shining a light on the issue that America is short 7.2 million homes and it gets worse every year because we’re not building enough stock to deal with the supply.”
Eales mentioned tackling housing provide constraints is a “win-win” for brokers and shoppers; nonetheless, the {industry} has to do a greater job speaking with shoppers and decision-makers in regards to the insurance policies that will supercharge housing begins and sluggish dwelling worth progress to a extra sustainable degree.
“I wish we’d spend more time talking outside of the bubble to all of the community leaders that the people in this room influence and certainly who we can influence as Realtor.com and who we can influence as News Corp,” he mentioned. “[We need] to start challenging politicians to deal with the issue of reducing red tape, freeing up land, dealing with [the ‘Not in My Backyard’ movement] and building more homes because we as an industry will be more successful, but more importantly, society will be more successful as a result.”
Eales mentioned Realtor.com is dedicated to lobbying for progressive housing insurance policies and objectively educating shoppers about these insurance policies by way of the portal’s journalism arm, which is the highest writer of consumer-facing actual property information within the U.S.
“Ten years ago when News Corp purchased Realtor.com, we didn’t have a single journalist in Realtor.com. Today we have many journalists,” he mentioned. “We’re the number one portal for consumer real estate news. And, in fact, if you add up all of the real estate articles that appear across News Corp, including Realtor.com, we’re the number one publisher of consumer real estate news in this country.”
The CEO mentioned the model’s sturdy concentrate on housing advocacy and producing client information doesn’t detract from the corporate’s larger objectives of reclaiming its title because the primary portal within the {industry}. If something, he mentioned, it places them in the most effective place to attach with shoppers and construct belief — an necessary puzzle piece to pulling a larger share of brokers again to the Realtor.com platform.
“If we’re seriously going to take on Zillow, we need to challenge ourselves. We’re the number one most trusted brand by consumers in this country. We want to be the number one largest portal in this country,” he mentioned. “It’s going to take us some time to get there. And if we’re going to do it, we’re going to have to be a better alternative for consumers. We’re going to have to grow our audience. And we’re going to have to be a better alternative for customers.”
Echoing his opponents, Eales mentioned a part of changing into higher for homebuyers, homesellers, and brokers will undoubtedly embody leveraging synthetic intelligence to enhance the Realtor.com platform. The corporate’s tech workforce has already used AI to overtake search features on the positioning, which permits shoppers to make use of pure language and color-coded maps to simply discover their most well-liked listings.
“Artificial intelligence allows you to create a completely different search experience for every individual consumer. Imagine going to the Realtor.com app and my experience is entirely different from your experience because I know not only your past behavior, but I know your past behavior on all of the brands that News Corp has across North America,” he mentioned. “If you’re a Wall Street Journal customer, you’re probably going to have a different experience than a New York Post customer for instance.”
On the agent aspect, Eales mentioned Realtor.com is deploying AI to extend productiveness and assist them maximize outcomes from Realtor.com’s portfolio of lead-gen merchandise.
“We’re partnering with companies like Ylopo, for instance, to help us vet leads, to ensure that leads are of higher value, and help us to nurture leads to take some of the burden off agents so that they can be more productive in their role,” he mentioned. “I think that there are going to be enormous advances in AI’s ability to help train agents to identify good agent performance, poor agent performance, and we’ll be at the forefront of those developments.”
As for what 2025 holds, Eales mentioned he’s prepared for the following wave of competitors as AI and market headwinds problem portals to up their worth proposition.
“We love competition at Realtor.com. We think it’s our role to become better for our customers and for consumers through competing really aggressively and last year was a very aggressive playing field,” he mentioned. “I’d like to think, though, that despite all of the investments that CoStar made in the industry, we fended them off… And today, we’re very focused on Zillow.”
“They’re to be admired in many respects, but they’re very much a consumer-centric organization. In every speech that I ever hear from representatives from their company, they start first and foremost with the consumer,” he added. “I think, not to say that consumers are unimportant, we spend a lot of time talking to consumers and agonizing over our consumer experience. But I think we’re a different company. You know, we say that we’re building for the industry.”
