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Costar Group closed its fourth quarter in a strong memo, according to a revenue call from the Virginia-based portal.
Costar Group’s fourth quarter revenues increased 11% year-on-year to $709 million, accounting for 55 quarters of double-digit revenue growth. Costar remained profitable, but net profit fell 37% year-on-year to $60 million.
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“Costar Group has acquired a strong year of profitable revenue growth in 2024, and in the fourth quarter of 2024, it will surpass the top end of both revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance range. We achieved 55 consecutive quarters of double-digit revenue growth,” Costar founder and CEO Andy Florance said in writing.
“Our flagship Costar generated $1.02 billion in revenue, up 10% year-on-year,” Florance added. “Costar Group’s commercial information and market brands produced exceptional results in 2024 with a profit margin of 43%.”
The company’s full-year results reflect fourth-quarter performance, with the commercial giant increasing its revenue of 11% to $2.46 billion year-on-year, with FY net profits of between $375 million and 139 million. It was raised to dollars. Adjusted EBITDA (revenue before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) fell 13% over the quarter to $112 million.
Costar’s adjusted EBITDA fell in the fourth quarter, but the portal ended the full year on a rise, with the scale increasing from $240.8 million to $491.7 million.
Florance concluded its statement by praising Homes.com, the company’s housing portal, which fought against its competitor Realtor.com in the second-place race. Despite a slight decline in traffic to Homes.com’s residential network compared to 2023, the CEO said that traffic to networks including Homes.com, Apartments.com and Land.com still remains Realtor He said it surpassed .com.
“In less than a year, the Homes.com network has become the second largest residential real estate market in the United States,” he said. “In the fourth quarter, we reached an average audience of 110 million unique visitors each month, almost doubled Realtor.com’s average 62 million unique visitors.”
“Homes.com benefits consumers, sellers and their agents. Consumers can find their homes using what they believe is the best site in the United States.” he added. “Homes.com members have gained more exposure to lists on the internet, helping them to build their brands and sell their homes faster while earning 58% listings. Our dedicated sales force has grown to 275 representatives thanks to increased productivity for lifetime personnel and increased customer NPS scores.”
In the company’s revenue call, Florance said Costar doesn’t allow Homes.com’s marketing push. By the end of 2025, we will raise this support awareness to 50%.
“We’ve started [2024] “We’ve grown with a single digit low awareness, increasing that recognition to 33% over the course of the year,” he said. “We believe we will be able to reach 50% subsidized recognition this year as we complete our second successful Super Bowl campaign and launch our 2025 campaign.
Costar also resolved the issue of staffing at Homes.com. This was highlighted by Florence as a hindering membership growth with past revenue calls. Homes.com plans to increase its staff from 41 dedicated salespeople to 275 in 2024, and add another 50 employees by the end of March.
“Our goal is to have 500 Homes.com sales representatives set up by the end of the year and be productive,” he said. “Our Homes.com sales force that achieved that goal will be one of the biggest sales teams in just two years, which hasn’t existed last year. Nevertheless, the whole team is literally I’m a rookie, but I sell it effectively.”
Florance said the larger teams brought net new monthly revenues and NPS consumer loyalty score benefits. As the team becomes more experienced, Costar expects a significant increase in the growth rate of Homes.com membership.
“The dedicated Homes sales team is extremely effective in serving new clients, achieving excellent net new promoter scores and updating the business. He said, “Last year, new Homes.com member We launched the ship. I think we provided a better value proposition. [other] It’s a residential portal, but I had to educate real estate agents who have been used to buying agency leads for 30 years. ”
The CEO also touched on the market rentals in his lengthy remarks about Zillow. This said last week’s revenue call outweighed Apartments.com in terms of average monthly unique visitors based on ComScore data.
Florence said he welcomed the competition, but while sharing similar web traffic statistics on the Apartments.com network, including 11 sites, when the housing giant had higher traffic , I defied it defied resolutely. He also distorted Zillow’s $100 million rental syndication deal with Redfin, calling it “not an attractive deal.”
“Along with consumers, two of the three apartment seekers dominate brand awareness by saying they use Apartments.com,” he said. “We continue to add new customers to the market with all unit count properties, increasing the apartment community with over 75,000 payments by 7% per year.”
“That year we processed more than 5 billion rental payments,” he added. “In just over a year, we are already number one in Canada’s traffic, the latest Apartments.com market. There is still plenty of room for growing this business.”
