CoStar to Acquire Homes.com: Should Zillow Be Worried?
Summary
The platform supports more than a half-million agents and brokers, and the website receives about 5 million unique visitors each month in the form of buyers searching listings. Zillows real estate platform received more than 200 million unique monthly users in the fourth quarter of 2020 and was visited 2.2 billion times altogether. Once its brought under CoStars umbrella, it will join forces with brands like the LoopNet commercial real estate marketplace (an area where Zillow doesnt operate), Apartments.com, Apartment Finder, and most importantly, the Homesnap real estate agent workflow software business. As CEO Andrew Florance said in the press release announcing the acquisition, "Our plan in bringing Homesnap and Homes.com together is to help agents market their listings in support of the ‘your listing, your lead’ philosophy -- which stands in contrast to most players in the industry.” To be sure, CoStar and Zillow are two different businesses heading in very different directions. However, the acquisition of Homes.com certainly puts the two in more direct competition, and Homes.com could become a much greater threat to Zillows core business now that its backed by CoStars resources and expertise.