In an appetiser for the kind of entertainment we’re here for in the UK, CoStar has gone all-out in stat-shaming their US competitor, Realtor.com, as a result of a decision by the advertising regulator on what can and cannot be claimed.
America’s Better Business Bureau (BBB), a much more fun sounding version of the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), told CoStar last week that they couldn’t merge the stats from all of their stable of US brands – including Apartments.com and Homesnap – under the Homes.com single brand. This means CoStar can’t claim they’re twice the size of Realtor.com. Instead – in what must pass for something of a Pyrrhic victory for Realtor – CoStar can only claim to be 60% larger (110m monthly unique visitors v 66m for Realtor, according to the former’s Google Analytics).
Realtor.com celebrated the ruling, stating that CoStar had been caught using ‘smoke and mirror’ tactics and that Realtor.com alone was focused on growing a ‘quality audience and quality leads’. (Portal historians will note that, whenever a company starts using the word ‘quality’ a lot, it tends to be because the ‘quantity’ metric isn’t working for its side of the argument.)
Right on cue, here in the UK we had our first independent analysis showing that CoStar’s OnTheMarket (OTM) has pushed its way into the #2 spot in the country for lead quality. AgentResponse, a lead management platform, said that 37% of OTM’s leads in June responded to a follow-up questionnaire, compared with 48% of Rightmove’s and 25% of Zoopla’s.
It's Zoopla that is likely to become the ‘Realtor.com’ in the UK scenario, fighting to stay in second and raging against some perceived creativity in CoStar/OTM’s stats.
CoStar have signalled that they’re going to carry on going toe-to-toe with Realtor.com’s efforts to rein its claims in. Their punchy General Counsel, the appropriately-named Gene Boxer, came out swinging in our very own EstateAgentToday;
“Apples to apples, Realtor.com is losing the portal wars, and losing big. They keep trying, and keep failing, to hide the facts. Homes.com is the No. 2 most-visited residential real estate portal, far surpassing Realtor.com, and the Homes.com Network has double the traffic of Realtor.com. Consistent with [the BBB’s] decision, CoStar will continue to advertise that fact.”
It seems clear that Zoopla is either going to have to draw up a very strong communications’ strategy, to deal with an inevitable deluge of claims from CoStar about OTM’s performance v Zoopla, probably starting around now – or it’s going to have to accept that CoStar will spend enough to beat it into second, and just agree to merge with it now.
(My money’s on the second of these options happening in the end – the only question being how much money each will spend fighting the other first.)
Whilst all this goes on, Rightmove continues its strategy of hiking its prices to an eye-watering degree, essentially to starve agents from being able to afford CoStar/OTM/Homes.com, in whatever format it finally sets its sights on the Final Boss.
Grabbing our popcorn and settling down to watch these ‘portal wars’ unfold over here, the entertainment will be plentiful – however, the outcome is seriously important. The more of everyone’s revenues Rightmove guzzles – then gives to its shareholders and directors – the poorer the remaining eco-system is, for the whole of the UK residential sales and lettings industry.
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