Homes.com has been pioneering a new term in their marketing communications to real estate agents and brokers: Lead Diversion Sites. Something that they claim they are not.
When Homes.com acquired Homesnap–the former brand of the Broker Public Portal (BPP)–they adopted the BPP narrative of “Your Listing Your Lead.” That term was made famous by Cary Sylvester during her time as VP of Everything at Keller Williams at a time of their fastest period of significant growth. Cary is now the Chief Real Estate Officer of Home Story. It’s a belief that was structured by the release of the Fair Display Guidelines–which are available to read at https://www.fairdisplay.org/.
Here is how Homes.com articulates YLYL in their marketing:
“Your Listing, Your Lead™ (YLYL) is the core principle of Homes.com. It means we don’t divert leads to other agents. We always put buyers in touch with the person who knows the most about the home: the listing agent. It’s so obvious, but Homes.com is the portal that respects the relationships agents build with both sellers and buyers. It’s the right way to do business and it works!”
Brokers and agents should be celebrating this strategy by CoStar CEO, Andy Florence. He is doing mostly what the industry was looking for. Where they fail is “unbiased display.” Homes.com charges for the pole position at the top of the page to increase listing exposure. That is how they drive revenue – like Google.
It has been fun to see Mr. Florence sword fight with Zillow…Billionaire vs. Billionaire.
One potential jab that Florence has not thrown at his competitors is that they are claiming brokerage commissions. Zillow would say that we are a “partner”; we get paid when you get paid. Homes.comm would say that Zillow is a competitor, using your data to slide into the commission on transactions by running a website, not a brokerage.
The good news is that the Broker Public Portal is retooled and focused on a re-launch in Q1 of 2025. With Dan Troup at the helm as CEO, they have rebuilt the technology that will be a step up over any MLS consumer website in operation today.
Tomorrow, Friday, November 1st – Troup will be showing the work to the unit holders of the BPP in two separate sessions. One is for brokers and another for MLSs who are also unit holders. If you need an invite – please ask.
The BPP has some great, and wonderfully inspired new features. This project has been the most successful collaboration among brokers and MLSs in the history of our industry. I am excited to see how the industry works together, once again, to make a difference.
