CoStar Group has named European real estate portal veteran Felix Kusch president of Homes.com, filling a leadership role that has been vacant for more than two years.
Kusch most recently served as CEO of Immoweb, Belgium’s largest real estate portal, and previously led German portal Immowelt. He will oversee the Homes.com leadership team and report directly to CoStar founder and CEO Andy Florance, the company announced Monday.
Felix Kusch | Credit: LinkedIn
“Felix has run two of Europe’s top real estate portals and beaten some of the toughest competitors in the industry to do it,” Florance said in the news release. “He’s proven that he can take on an established competitor and come out on top.”
Kusch fills a position that has been open since longtime Homes.com president Dave Mele left CoStar in May 2024 after nearly a decade in the role. Mele oversaw Homes.com through its 2021 acquisition by CoStar and the company’s subsequent effort to transform the portal into a major player in the home search space.
Florance effectively remained in the driver’s seat at Homes.com after Mele’s departure, continuing to oversee the portal while CoStar searched for a permanent replacement. In July 2024, he told Real Estate News that he hoped to find a new president who could eventually make him “unemployed” from his day-to-day role running the business. But that handoff ultimately took more than two years.
A portal veteran takes over
Before leading Immoweb and Immowelt, Kusch worked on mergers and acquisitions at Axel Springer Digital and served on the boards of real estate companies including Meilleurs Agents and Lamudi. CoStar said Kusch’s experience aligns closely with Homes.com’s “Your Listing, Your Lead” model, which promotes listing agents alongside their properties rather than selling buyer leads to competing agents — a strategy Florance has long derided as the “lead diversion” model.
“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 the announcement.
Kusch’s appointment comes as CoStar continues its costly effort to challenge home search giants Zillow, Realtor.com and Redfin for leadership of the U.S. residential search market. After years of substantial investment in Homes.com, CoStar has increasingly emphasized monetization, lower spending and a path toward profitability amid shareholder pressure over the cost of its residential push.
Earlier this year, the company outlined plans to sharply reduce spending on Homes.com through the end of the decade, while continuing to defend its long-term residential strategy. CoStar has also revamped its residential sales operation and pulled back from some of the expensive consumer advertising that helped establish the portal’s brand.
More recently, the company has pointed to improving financial results. CoStar’s residential segment posted its first positive quarter of adjusted EBITDA during the second quarter of 2026, generating $12 million — a $41 million improvement from the previous quarter. Homes.com revenue climbed 66 percent year over year to $28.5 million during the period.
CoStar said its network of sites, including Homes.com and U.K. portal OnTheMarket, attracted an average of 118 million unique monthly visitors during the quarter. Kusch will now take over the business as CoStar attempts to turn years of heavy investment in Homes.com into sustained growth and profitability.
