Realtor.com CEO calls Rival Homes.com ‘a fixer-upper, to say the least’

Move, the operator and parent company of Realtor.com, saw revenue grow in the final months of 2025 in response to new offerings and increased market share — developments that prompted the company’s leadership to suggest it is beating a key rival in the portal wars.

Move’s revenue rose 10 percent year over year to $143 million, a gain largely attributed to higher sales of RealPRO Select, Realtor.com’s seller lead program. News Corp announced Thursday in the quarterly figures

“We are pleased to report excellent second quarter results, with growth in both revenue and profitability accelerating versus the previous quarter, and we see favorable signs for the second half of our fiscal year,” News Corp CEO Robert Thomson said in a statement. He added that the outlook for the next quarter is “promising.”

“The second quarter results were driven by continued growth at Dow Jones and Digital Real Estate Services, both of which delivered double-digit earnings growth and have started the calendar year strongly,” Thomson said.

Australia-based News Corp reports earnings on a fiscal year schedule, meaning the company’s “second quarter” was actually the last three months of the 2025 calendar year.

The company stated that Move will shift its focus to more premium offerings with higher revenue per lead and will provide growth in the number of sellers, new homes and rental companies.

The average number of unique monthly users of Realtor.com’s web and mobile sites increased 1 percent year over year to approximately 62 million users, according to internal Move data. Lead volume also grew 13 percent year-over-year – a welcome sign after recent quarterly declines.

Meanwhile, average monthly visits for Realtor.com during the second quarter were 241 million, according to Comscore. That represents 3.4 times Homes.com’s visit share and 2.3 times Redfin’s visit share, Realtor.com CEO Damian Eales said in a blog post on the company’s website. During the second quarter, Eales added that Realtor.com also closed “more than half” of the visit share gap the company had with Zillow over the past 18 months.

During an investor call on Thursday, an analyst questioned whether the company was concerned about the amount of capital being poured into Homes.com, and whether News Corp saw this as a threat to Realtor.com. Thomson said the company was “delighted” with Realtor.com’s progress and suggested it was a bit “unkind” to compare the two portals at this point, as Homes.com is now considered “at least a fixer-upper” by some estimates, if not a “knockdown.”

Realtor.com also held the title for the most audience engagement during the quarter with 4.8 visits per unique visitor, Eales said in his post.

The portal continues to see audience growth from being a member of News Corp, Eales added, allowing Realtor.com to leverage its brand and content with high-intent buyers of News Corp publications such as The Wall Street Journal And Barrons.

“During the longest housing crisis in our company’s history and amid unprecedented competition, Realtor.com has once again demonstrated that growth comes from continuing to focus on the needs of our customers and the industry,” Eales said in the blog post.

Damian Eales | Credit: Realtor.com

“We put the customer first by simplifying discovery and leveraging artificial intelligence to make it easy for consumers to connect with professionals,” the CEO continued. “We are offering brokers an enhanced premium value proposition through our RealPro Select program and broadening the ability for all brokers to access our audience through our online store. We are performing exceptionally in our growth businesses, especially our seller business, which delivers the industry’s most interested audiences to brokers.”

Eales touted Realtor.com as an “industry-first” model that advocates for the industry and “champions” of the MLS. He also took the opportunity to criticize what he called “closed platforms that deliberately limit consumer choice” by restricting access to certain brokers and steering users to their own mortgage services – something he said ultimately hurts homebuyers and sellers.

This pro-industry stance is what prompted the company to launch Realtor.com+ last month, Eales said, a platform available only through MLSs that provides a collaborative search experience for agents and homebuyers. The platform currently has 16 MLSs signed up, with more expected “soon,” Eales said.

“I am confident that our continued focus on customers and industry integrity will drive our future growth,” concluded Eales.

Email Lillian Dickerson