Portal War ‘24: Traffic is a Non-Zero-Sum Game

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Homes.com appears to have solidified its place as the #2 portal in the U.S. market, without a corresponding decline in traffic at any other portal.

Why it matters: Portal traffic appears to be a non-zero-sum game – traffic gained by one portal is additive and not coming at the expense of other portals.

Dig deeper: In the first quarter of 2023, the big three real estate portals – Zillow, realtor.com, and Redfin – had a combined 334 million average monthly unique visitors.

  • Fast forward to the first quarter of 2024 and those same portals have a combined 338 million average monthly uniques – no change – with Homes.com growing to an additional 94 million average monthly uniques.

 
 

And that’s just for Homes.com – if you include CoStar’s entire residential network, which includes Apartments.com, the scale is even greater.

  • It's a valid comparison; the other portals also include traffic from a larger network of sites, including rentals.
     

  • The result is that CoStar’s resi network has nearly double the traffic of realtor.com.

 
 

CoStar’s traffic reporting hasn’t been consistent – it has fluctuated between Homes.com and the entire residential network, and sometimes includes quarterly averages and other times specific months.

  • CoStar’s inconsistent reporting runs the risk of reducing trust in its traffic numbers, even when the underlying results are impressively real.
     

  • But traffic has unequivocally increased over the past year, punctuated by two periods of heavy advertising.

 
 

CoStar’s advertising spend reached an all-time high in Q1 2024 – which directly corresponds to the recent traffic surge in February and March.

 
 

The bottom line: While Homes.com’s traffic increase is additive to the market and not affecting other portals’ traffic, that’s not to say it won’t affect their businesses. 

  • Unlike website visits, there is a finite amount of transactions, commission dollars, and agents willing to spend money online; that’s a zero-sum game.

Note on data: Collecting traffic data for Homes.com and CoStar’s residential network relies on a combination of assembling clues, triangulation, and making a few assumptions. The numbers above are estimates based on public information.