Realtor.com revenue erodes amid portal rivalry

With the portal wars now white-hot, Realtor.com's revenue has cooled off. Move, Inc., the parent company of Realtor.com, posted a 2 per cent year-over-year revenue decline to $143 million in the fiscal year fourth quarter, it announced Thursday.

NewsCorp, Move's parent company, attributed the decline to higher mortgage rates and macroeconomic headwinds.

Revenue from Move's real estate segment—about 80 per cent of Move's total revenue—declined 2 per cent year-over-year, with Realtor.com's lead volume flat and website traffic flat annually.

Internal data shared on the call by executives outlined that Realtor.com's website traffic came in at 74 million average monthly unique visitors.

Despite a lower revenue from Move, NewsCorp's digital real estate segment still enjoyed an excellent performance for the quarter, which generated a 21 per cent year-on-year increase in revenue to $448 million.

NewsCorp, as a whole, revealed 2 per cent year-over-year growth in its revenues to $10.09 billion for the full fiscal year. The digital real estate services sector increased revenue by 8 per cent to $1.6 billion for the full fiscal year despite a full-year 10 per cent decline in Move's revenue to $544 million. Overall revenues in real estate were down 11 per cent on an annual basis for the full year due to a drop in referrals and core lead generation output.

Looking ahead, the chief financial officer, Susan Panuccio, said NewsCorp was working on establishing a diversified revenue base for the company.

"As we communicated last quarter, we are focused on best positioning Realtor.com for a housing recovery," Panuccio said. "Our key strategic focus areas remain the same as we head into the new financial year and include modernizing our technology stack; investing in content for our product offerings, which most recently included the release of a new dynamic mapping feature; and leveraging News Corp's network to drive audience share."

Despite being a hot topic, Robert Thomson, CEO of NewsCorp, did not address the portal wars and Move's lawsuit against listing portal rival CoStar. Thomson did, however, laude Realtor.com CEO Damian Eales' leadership, pointing out that the firm was prepared to handle the upcoming business practice changes outlined in the National Association of Realtors' commission lawsuit settlement agreement.

"The market does seem on the cusp of a revival," Thomson said. "I have to say that Damian has done an excellent job in taking full advantage of our media platforms to raise the profile of [Realtor.com] and drive traffic."