Homes.com grows with increased agent adoption, consumer demand

Homes.com continues to ascend and has become the second-largest residential real estate portal in the U.S., according to CoStar Group CEO Andy Florance, who shared insights during the company’s first-quarter 2025 earnings call on Tuesday.

Backed by sharp increases in both traffic and agent participation, Homes.com reported 104 million average monthly unique visitors in the first three months of this year.

That figure, which is up dramatically from early 2024, signals a fundamental shift in the digital real estate hierarchy and in how agents want to work online, Florance said.

The platform has seen a surge in visibility and effectiveness since its Super Bowl marketing campaign just over a year ago. Unprompted consumer awareness of the brand rose to 36% in Q1 2025, compared to only 4% before February 2024.

The results are translating directly to agent success, Florance said, with CoStar reporting that member agents are winning 61% more listings than comparable non-members.

“Agents don’t want to have their leads sold back to them,” he said. “Homes.com puts agents front and center — with their names, their branding, their listings. We don’t commingle data. We don’t confuse the consumer. And we definitely don’t divert leads.”

Florance added that Homes.com’s demo-to-close rate topped 50% in April, the highest ever for any CoStar sales team. The platform’s dedicated residential sales force has grown to 370 and is expected to hit 500 by the end of June.

Clear Cooperation debate

The rapid rise of Homes.com coincides with deepening scrutiny of long-held industry norms, including listing practices and the Clear Cooperation policy set by the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

Amid commission lawsuits and evolving brokerage models, Florance said the real estate community is asking fundamental questions about who controls listings — and who benefits from them.

“Since the beginning of time in real estate, people have marketed listings off-market,” Florance said. “People have always looked to see if there’s someone they know — in the shop, in the neighborhood, a private client — who wants to buy a property. That’s especially true at the mid and high end. It happens in commercial real estate and across the globe.”

Florance noted that roughly 20% of listings worldwide are marketed privately or outside of public portals. While that figure has remained steady, he said new tensions over MLS rules and lead diversion models may accelerate change in how — and where — agents publish listings.

Challenging the status quo

Florance made it clear that Homes.com’s strategy is designed to contrast sharply with existing models that redirect or sell leads.

“In most countries, lead diversion models don’t exist,” he said. “When people have a choice about where to market their listings, they choose platforms that don’t strip away their leads. They don’t want to pay to win back their own clients.”

He later added, “There’s real anxiety among some firms that, as agents are given more choice, they’ll avoid platforms that exploit them. That positions us very well, because we’re not trying to manipulate the market or regulate how people operate. We’re working with agents, not against them.”

Florance acknowledged that with shifts in enforcement of Clear Cooperation and MLS commingling rules, more brokers are evaluating whether to list on MLSs, private networks or proprietary platforms first based on how these decisions impact their clients and commissions.

CoStar financial performance

CoStar reported companywide revenue of $732 million for the first quarter of 2025, a 12% increase from $656 million in Q1 2024.

Adjusted EBITDA rose to $66 million — a 429% jump — despite a net loss of $15 million due to a $31 million charge tied to the February acquisition of 3D imaging firm Matterport.

“This was our 56th straight quarter of double-digit revenue growth,” Florance said. “CoStar and LoopNet were standouts, with CoStar up 68% in annualized net new bookings and LoopNet bookings up 200% year over year — its best result since Q3 2022.”

Apartments.com also added more than 4,300 properties in Q1 2025, its highest single-quarter gain since 2016.

Looking ahead, CoStar forecasts second-quarter revenue of $770 million to $775 million, along with full-year 2025 revenue of $3.115 billion to $3.155 billion. Adjusted full-year EBITDA is expected to land between $355 million and $385 million.

Florance said the acquisition of Matterport is expected to fuel long-term growth across all property types.

“Matterport is the best way to present physical real estate online and convert it into structured data,” he said. “We plan to scale this across our platforms and dramatically expand the utility of this unique dataset.”

A philosophical shift

Florance views Homes.com not only as a new product but as a philosophical shift in how the real estate industry interacts with digital tools.

“This is not just a product shift,” he said. “It’s a business model shift. The industry is tired of being intermediated by platforms that take their listings and then charge them to access their own leads. We are offering them something very different — something that works with them, not around them.

“We’re giving brokers and agents back control. And they’re responding.”