WASHINGTON, Nov. 20, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CoStar Group, Inc., owner of Apartments.com, today announced an agreement to exclusively power the apartment community listings on the websites owned and operated by News Corp (NASDAQ:NWS) (NASDAQ:NWSA) (ASX:NWS) (ASX:NWSLV) subsidiary Move, Inc.– realtor.com®, Move.com, and Doorsteps.com – with advertiser content from Apartments.com and ApartmentFinder.com.
The Apartments.com apartment community listing information complements realtor.com®'s listings content, which is derived from relationships with agents, brokers, landlords and residential property managers nationwide. The agreement is designed to increase traffic across CoStar's and Move's rental sites with the goal of enabling more leads, faster responses, and increased revenue opportunities for both companies. As part of the relationship, Move websites will now offer even more choices, properties and insights for prospective renters as well.
Apartments.com is the most heavily trafficked apartment rental website and has more listings than any other apartment rental site. Realtor.com® is the fastest-growing online real estate destination for home buyers, sellers, renters and dreamers, with audience growth of 43 percent during the first three quarters of 2015. Doorsteps.com and Move.com are leading destinations for local rental listings, homebuyer education and tools for real estate professionals.
"Our relationship with realtor.com® means that for one of the lowest price points in the industry and the convenience of a single point of contact, we will now promote our advertisers' communities across six major apartment and real estate rental websites," said Andrew Florance, CoStar Group Founder and Chief Executive Officer. "The Apartments.com Network is now clearly the most heavily trafficked family of apartment rental websites. We expect to drive an even greater increase in lead flow to our advertisers' communities."
"We're excited to provide our users access to an unsurpassed selection of apartment listings and new, high quality content dedicated to our renter audience," said Ryan O'Hara, Chief Executive Officer of Move. "We look forward to featuring this content in the coming weeks and delivering an even more valuable experience to renters looking for their next home on realtor.com."
The deal extends the Apartments.com rental content to six leading websites including Apartments.com, ApartmentFinder.com, ApartmentHomeLiving.com, realtor.com®, Move.com, and Doorsteps.com. "Renters generally visit multiple websites in their search for an apartment – so it's important to feature our advertisers' communities across multiple websites with diverse character, personality, and functionality," said Florance. "In addition to having massive site traffic, we believe that realtor.com® uniquely serves potential renters who aspire to purchase their dream home."
The Apartments.com Network is expected to grow even stronger with December's re-release of ApartmentFinder.com after a $30 million renovation. When CoStar Group re-launched Apartments.com earlier this year it enjoyed an immediate and sustained boost in traffic, high consumer satisfaction, and a surge in advertising sales.
Florance continued, "We've invested $1 billion in the multifamily sector to deliver the best results for all of our audiences, whether they're advertisers, consumers, property managers, investors, or lenders. The name CoStar itself communicates that we view our efforts as a co-starring role with multifamily agents and brokers to best serve clients. We are very pleased to now have the opportunity to align with realtor.com®, and the professionalism the organization embodies."
About CoStar Group, Inc.
CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) is the leading provider of commercial real estate information, analytics and online marketplaces. Founded in 1987, CoStar conducts expansive, ongoing research to produce and maintain the largest and most comprehensive database of commercial real estate information. Our suite of online services enables clients to analyze, interpret and gain unmatched insight on commercial property values, market conditions and current availabilities. LoopNet is the most heavily trafficked commercial real estate marketplace online with more than 10 million registered members. Apartments.com, ApartmentFinder.com and ApartmentHomeLiving.com currently form the premier online apartment resource for renters seeking great apartment homes and provide property managers and owners a proven platform for marketing their properties. CoStar Group operates websites with over 23.7 million unique monthly visitors in aggregate as of September 2015. Headquartered in Washington, DC, CoStar maintains offices throughout the U.S. and in Europe and Toronto with a staff of approximately 2,850 worldwide, including the industry's largest professional research organization. For more information, visit www.costargroup.com.
About Apartments.com
Apartments.com is the leading online apartment listing website offering renters access to information on more than 500,000 available units for rent. Powered by CoStar, Apartments.com is supported by the industry's largest professional research team. Apartments.com researchers have visited and photographed over 400,000 properties nationwide, and make over 1 million calls each month to apartment owners and property managers to collect and verify current availabilities, rental rates, pet policies, fees, leasing incentives, concessions, and more. Apartments.com offers more apartments than other apartments websites, and innovative features to help renters refine their searches, including map searches, a Polygon™ tool to draw their own search area on a map, and a "Plan Commute" feature that lets them search for rentals in proximity to a specific address. Apartments.com creates easy access to its listings through a responsive website and iOS and Android apps, and provides unmatched exposure for its advertisers through an intuitive name, strategic search engine placements and innovative emerging media. Apartments.com reaches millions of renters nationwide, driving both qualified traffic and highly engaged renters to leasing offices nationwide. For more information: www.apartments.com.
About Move, Inc. and realtor.com®
Move operates the realtor.com® website and mobile experiences, which provide buyers, sellers and renters of homes with the information, tools and professional expertise they need to discover and create their perfect home. News Corp acquired Move in November 2014, and realtor.com® quickly established itself as the fastest growing online real estate service provider in 2015 as measured by comScore.
As the official website of the National Association of REALTORS®, consumers know they can look to realtor.com® for the most comprehensive and accurate information anytime, anywhere. With relationships with more than 800 multiple listing services (MLS), realtor.com® has more than 3 million for-sale listings, which account for more than 97 percent of all MLS-listed for-sale properties. More than 90 percent of the listings are updated every 15 minutes. Move supports real estate professionals by providing many services to grow their businesses in an increasing digital, on-demand world, including ListHub™, the nation's leading listing syndicator and centralized intelligence platform for the real estate industry; TigerLead®; Top Producer Systems®; and FiveStreetSM and Reesio as well as many free services.
For questions regarding the newly announced strategic content relationship, contact:
Kimberly Howland, CoStar Group, Inc., khowland@costargroup.com Office: (202) 623-5252; Cell: (202) 660-2767
Janice McDill, Move, Inc., Janice.McDill@move.com Office: (408) 558-4620; Cell: (312)307-3134
This news release includes "forward-looking statements" including, without limitation, statements regarding CoStar's and Move's expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future. These statements are based upon current beliefs and are subject to many risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. The following factors, among others, could cause or contribute to such differences: the risk that the relationship between CoStar and Move does not produce the expected results when expected or at all, including increased leads, traffic, exposure, faster responses and increased revenue opportunities for CoStar and Move; the possibility that advertisers do not gain exposure to the number of unique visitors stated in the release; the possibility that the renovated ApartmentFinder.com site is not released when expected; and the risk that the relaunch of ApartmentFinder.com does not produce the results expected or when expected, including increased traffic, consumer satisfaction and sales. More information about potential factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, those stated in CoStar's filings from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including in CoStar's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2014, and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2015, each of which is filed with the SEC, including in the "Risk Factors" section of those filings, as well as CoStar's other filings with the SEC available at the SEC's website (www.sec.gov). All forward-looking statements are based on information available to CoStar on the date hereof, and CoStar assumes no obligation to update such statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
