Homesnap heads to the scrapheap

Former residential real estate powerhouse product Homesnap is headed for the exit as CoStar bets on its stronger brand. 

The Washington, D.C.-based real estate giant will be sunsetting the Homesnap brand and its products by the end of the year, Inman reported. Homes.com president David Mele told The Real Deal the parent company is already transitioning users to one of its newer brands. 

Traffic to the Homes site has increased 289 percent year-over-year, Mele said in an email to Inman, and has 10 times as much traffic as Homesnap.

It’s a sudden end for Homesnap, which appeared to be CoStar’s big leap into the residential real estate market. CoStar purchased the brand in 2020 for $250 million. At the time of its acquisition, nearly 300,000 agents used Homesnap to manage and analyze their listings.

A year later, however, CoStar doubled down on its residential push, buying Homes.com for $156 million. That brand quickly became a favorite, relaunching last year as an integration with the Homesnap search platforms. In September 2022, CoStar reiterated that Homesnap wasn’t going anywhere.

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In recent months, CoStar was reported to be in talks to purchase Move, Inc. — the parent company of Realtor.com — from News Corp in a deal that would’ve valued the entity at $3 billion. When that fizzled out, however, CoStar CEO Andy Florance started touting Homes.com as its residential future, saying CoStar would be able to start monetizing the brand later this year.

Homesnap is the parent company of Citysnap, which CoStar launched last year to rival Zillow-owned StreetEasy in New York City. Mele said Citysnap — which is co-operated with the Real Estate Board of New York — will continue operating without changes.

Agent app Homesnap Pro will soon become Homes Pro to replace the old app interface. Homesnap’s website will also redirect users to Homes.com by the end of the year.

The date of Homesnap’s fade to black isn’t set in stone, but some multiple listing services are already turning away from the platform. Bright MLS, the nation’s second-largest MLS, will stop providing Homesnap as a core offering at the end of the month and is encouraging users to transition clients to MLS-Touch in the coming weeks.

— Holden Walter-Warner