Newly installed realtor.com CEO David Doctorow is making major changes to the real estate portal’s c-suite, elevating two leaders of Opcity, a tech startup that its operator Move acquired in 2018.
David Doctorow | Photo credit: LinkedIn
The changes include the ousting of two longtime leaders at the company, Ray Picard, the company’s chief revenue officer and Hahn Lee, the executive vice president of business development and strategy.
“Since I joined realtor.com in early February, I have spent most of my time immersing myself in the organization and working with the executive leadership team to clarify our strategy, priorities, and growth opportunities,” Doctorow said in an email obtained by Inman. “Along the way, I’ve found that our company is filled with people who are passionate about achieving our purpose of making buying, selling, and living in homes easier and more rewarding for everyone.’
“While the COVID crisis has diverted some of my attention, and rightfully so, my focus on building the right structure to deliver on our purpose and grow our business has not wavered,” Doctorow added.
Among other changes are the elevation of Ben Rubenstein to chief revenue officer and Michael Lam to the newly created role of chief operations officer. Rubenstein and Lam founded Opcity, a lead referral service that Move acquired in 2018.
The promotions show a continued shift in business strategy for the News Corp subsidiary. Last year, realtor.com began outright replacing its traditional lead generation platform with the lead referral service from Opcity in some markets, where agents pay the company a portion of their commission when they close a warm lead, rather than pay upfront for impressions.
“As I thought about our future, I recognized early on that accelerating the integration between realtor.com and Opcity was absolutely central to our plans,” Doctorow wrote. “Only when these two organizations can act as one will we be best positioned to increase our organizational alignment with customers and consumers, advance our strategy, and accelerate our execution pace.”
Picard, who has been the company for seven years, was responsible for leading the company’s sales operation. He worked directly with the National Association of Realtors. Hahn had been with the company for five years, supporting corporate strategy and notably the company’s mergers and acquisitions strategy, which resulted in the acquisition of Opcity for $210 million.
“Change is never easy,” Doctorow wrote, in closing. “Over the next few weeks, I plan on rolling out more detailed observations, strategy, and company priorities to the entire organization, and as you will see, we have ambitious and aggressive goals that we are aiming to achieve.”
“I believe that these changes will best position us to achieve our goals and accelerate our growth well into the future.”
A spokesperson for Move confirmed the email’s veracity and the extent of the changes.
“At realtor.com, our purpose is to make buying, selling and living in homes easier and more rewarding for everyone. To succeed, we must continue to evolve our experience for both consumers and real estate professionals,” the spokesperson said. “The organizational changes we announced today will help accelerate the integration between realtor.com and Opcity, and will best allow us to meet the needs of buyers, sellers, and real estate professionals now and into the future.”
