Realtor.com announced to its agent advertising customers today that it’s reducing the monthly subscription charges for the site’s advertising and lead generation solutions by 60 percent next month.
In an email to agent advertising customers obtained by Inman, realtor.com CEO David Doctorow acknowledged that, even with many areas taking measures to cancel schools and other social gatherings, the real estate listing search portal is still seeing homeowners and shoppers reach out to agents.
“We continue to experience significant search and lead activity on our site and apps,” Doctorow said. “Whether it is shopping for a home or exploring options for selling, millions of consumers are reaching out to brokers and agents to assist them.”
“Nonetheless, we understand that the ability for our customers to conduct business as usual is impacted to some extent,” Doctorow added. “Realtor.com stands with the real estate industry and you, our customer, to provide support where we can.”
Both previously committed and new customers will see the 60 percent reduction on their monthly invoice generated during the March 20 to April 2020 period. Customers that have prepaid for the annual subscription will be contacted by customer service to discuss an equivalent credit to be automatically applied to the agent’s account.
Realtor.com has two different lead generation platforms, dependant on the market. In some markets, agents pay for a certain number of impressions to be the agent that consumers connect with, when they opt to contact an agent in. a specific ZIP code.
In other markets, realtor.com has replaced that service with one from Opcity, which acts as a referral service. Agents pay a portion of their commission for closed leads.
Realtor.com declined to clarify how much the move will cost the company. A similar decision from Zillow, to offer 50 percent off its lead generation platform Premier Agent, was estimated to cost the company between $40 and $50 million.
