Realtor.com and CoStar CEOs Take Swipes Amid Legal Battle and Traffic Claims Dispute

Realtor.com CEO Damien Eales and CoStar CEO Andy Florance have both used the Inman Connect event in Las Vegas to reassert their positions in an ongoing legal feud between the two portals.

Homes.com claims the site had reached 156 million monthly unique visitors, double Realtor.com's traffic, with Eales urging industry professionals to take CoStar's figures with "a packet of salt" given CoStar's decision to include other traffic from its network of websites in the Homes.com figure.

Eales challenged attendees at the event to look for their listings across the entirety of CoStar's network of portals.

He said:

"People in this room thought that their brand and their listings were appearing on all of those URLsBut quite frankly, I encourage you to go to all of those other 16 URLs — like Land.com and Apartments.com — and search for your brand and your listings."

Eales went on to challenge the validity of traffic claims on an individual listing level, citing a listing in Los Angeles that had circa 300 views on Zillow and 14 million views on Homes.com:

"The population of LA is less than four million.

"Who are these people [viewing the listing]? And why hasn’t the property sold? You know, sometimes if it seems too good to be true, perhaps it is. I think that customers should really challenge the claims that are being made."

Realtor.com filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau’s National Advertising Division and Homes.com has since moderated its traffic claims accordingly.

Meanwhile, rival portal operator CoStar CEO Andy Florance continues to strongly deny any wrongdoing in an ongoing lawsuit with Move Inc. and its portal Realtor.com.

Speaking to Brad Inman, Florance again called out Move Inc. for its "PR stunt" lawsuit and defended "poor guy" James Kaminsky, the former Realtor.com editor who Florance says the firm will protect throughout the case. "We have paid for his legal counsel", said Florance. "We're not going to let him be the fall guy for this."

Other comments from the CoStar CEO include increased consumer awareness of Homes.com since the launch of its billion-dollar advertising campaign, and continued belief in Homes.com's strategy of "selling homes instead of leads" as the backbone of the portal's push for market leadership in the United States.

Zillow CEO Rich Barton also appeared at the event, commenting on how the industry needs to move away from the portal 1.0 experience.