Realtor.com parent company Move logged the fifth consecutive quarter of annual revenue gains on Wednesday, sustained by the portal’s push on premium products, including RealPRO Select and Realtor.com+.
Move’s fourth-quarter revenue increased 13 percent to $167 million, while the full-year revenue increased 11 percent to $610 million. News Corp, which owns Move, operates on a fiscal year that ends on June 30.
Robert Thomson
“Its success comes as premium offerings have expanded and yield has been increasingly optimized,” News Corp CEO Robert Thomson said during the company’s earnings call. “The emphasis on high quality leads, combined with AI-inspired product innovation and assiduous assistance for buyers, sellers and Realtors, have transformed the business’s fortunes…”
Move’s recent performance represents a significant turnaround for the company, which hit a rough patch from 2022 to 2024 as it navigated market headwinds and increased pressure from new entrant, CoStar’s Homes.com.
News Corp pulled its Australian publishing Chief Operating Officer Damian Eales into the helm at Realtor.com in 2023, charging him with the task of pulling the once-leading portal back to the top.
Since then, Eales and his team have sharpened Realtor.com’s portfolio of lead products, released a steady stream of artificial intelligence-powered home search features, and better leveraged the portal’s consumer news arm and relationship with the National Association of Realtors.
”It’s a tribute to Damian Eales, and the team at Realtor, in particular, in the way that the site has been developed,” Thomson said. “I mean, people talk about moats in the AI age; moat is a strangely medieval concept.”
“What Realtor has been creating, there’s a chasm between itself and other companies, because of the way that they’ve been building proprietary IP, that no AI engine can legally scrape,” he added. “It’s trusted, truthful information. It’s crucial for customers.”
Damian Eales | Credit: Realtor.com
In a blog post, Eales dove deeper into the earnings results, focusing on Realtor.com’s consumer engagement and updates on Realtor.com+.
The portal’s Q4 average monthly unique users decreased 6 percent year over year to 68 million.
Although there are fewer average monthly unique users, Eales said those users are more engaged, with Comscore data showing that Realtor.com drove 3.4X the visit share of Homes.com and 2.3X Redfin, and remained No. 1 in audience engagement at 4.8 visits per unique visitor.
“We are executing exceptionally in our growth businesses, most particularly our seller business which is delivering the highest intent audience in the industry to listing agents,” he said. “Our unwavering customer focus reflects the long-standing principles that have guided Realtor.com since its founding.”
For Realtor.com+, Eales said the multiple listing service-led collaborative search platform now has 16 MLS partners, representing 1,500 percent growth since January.
Realtor.com+, available only through MLSs as a member benefit, enables agents to search listings with MLS filters, view real-time insights into buyers’ search activity, read local market intelligence reports, communicate with clients and auto-plan tour routes without leaving the Realtor.com+ platform.
Eales said Realtor.com’s strategy reflects its belief in the MLS system and an open marketplace, and making sure that Realtors stay at the center of the transaction. Realtor.com partnered with Zillow this summer to display pre-marketing listings on its site.
“Given the mounting cost pressures on MLSs and their members, along with legal challenges to the cooperatives that underpin the American system, strengthening the open marketplace is now more vital than ever,” he said.
“In stark contrast, some competitors operate closed platforms that intentionally limit consumer choice — restricting access to a handful of agents, steering users toward their owned mortgage services or discouraging independent buyer agency,” he added. “These practices fundamentally reduce the transparency, efficiency and integrity of the residential real estate marketplace, and ultimately harm American sellers and buyers alike.”
