CoStar Cuts 100 'duplicative roles' and Appoints David Mele President of Residential

The American real estate data and marketplace giant CoStar Group has confirmed that it has laid off "approximately 100" employees from its nascent residential segment.

A statement on the matter did not provide specifics but did suggest that some of those made redundant had roles that were similar between CoStar's two big recent residential acquisitions, Homes.com and Homesnap.

“Today, CoStar Group took steps to combine and streamline the operations and functionality of Homes.com and Homesnap,"

The statement added that over the next 12 months, CoStar is looking to “increase the net number of employees building Homes.com by 700” despite this week's layoffs.

The group also confirmed the appointment of David Mele to the position of President of its residential division. Mele had previously been President of Homes.com for seven years and has been leading the portal through the CoStar integration process.

CoStar is already the leading player in commercial real estate via the LoopNet portal and in apartment rentals via Apartments.com. Since its $250m acquisition of agent platform Homesnap and the minor portal player Homes.com for $156m, CoStar has made no secret of its intention to shake up the residential portal sector and take a big slice of the market away from the likes of Zillow, Redfin and Realtor.com.

CoStar's residential operations have generated around $20 million in revenue per quarter since the company broke out the segment in reporting in Q2 of 2021. As confirmed by CEO Andy Florance in an interview with agent publication RisMedia this week, the firm's residential operations remain in the investment phase and currently only account for around 3.5% of company revenue.

CoStar joins a very long list of portal companies to have laid off employees over the last few months as housing markets around the world cool off. CoStar's rival Zillow cut 300 employees (5% of its workforce) at the end of October and short-term rentals specialist Vacasa laid off a reported 280.

Further afield, portals in China, the UK, Mexico and Thailand have all seen it necessary to cut back on headcount recently.