In a call with investors and analysts Tuesday evening, Andy Florance, founder and CEO of CoStar Group, highlighted many of the notable results the Homes.com network has achieved over the past year. One of these achievements was site traffic, with the network recording more than 2.1 billion views and 100 million average unique visitors per month by 2025, according to Comscore data. Executives added that organic traffic rose 134% year-over-year and 21% month-over-month in January, marking a record high in traffic.
“We feel like we’ve achieved a good balance between SEM, SEO and direct traffic,” said Florance. “This allows us to optimize SEM for quality traffic and leads, not just pure quantity.”
To illustrate this, Florance noted that session duration increased nearly a minute annually to about four minutes and 30 seconds, while the bounce rate dropped from 63% in January 2025 to 41% in January 2026.
Additionally, Florance noted that lead volume increased 48% annually through January 2026, while lead volume for Homes.com member agents increased 187% annually, with subscribers paying to promote 216,000 active listings, approximately 9% of all homes for sale in the U.S. in the fourth quarter of 2025.
“We now have more than 31,000 agent subscribers, generating $100 million in annual revenue, 76% of whom have annual contracts,” Florance said. “For CoStar, this is the fastest organic sales build we’ve ever had for a new product. We’ve reached this sales level faster than our U.S. competitors, years faster. We’ve built a dedicated sales force of 600 salespeople to reach the top 750,000 agents in the industry.”
A clear path to increasing profitability with Homes.com
Looking ahead, based on the success of Apartments.com, Florance said he believes Homes.com can generate $4.75 billion in revenue and $2.85 billion in EBITDA within the next 13 years.
“Apartments.com has a very similar business model to Homes.com and initially grew at a measured pace, but has now reached a 13-year revenue ratio of $1.2 billion with very high margins. Apartment and residential growth is very similar right now.”
Florance also reiterated that CoStar is continuing its net investment in Homes.com by $300 million by 2026 as the company targets run-rate profitability by 2029 and full-year profit by 2030.
“We have a clear path to accelerate revenue growth and increase profitability,” Florance said. “Competing US real estate portals suffer from a lack of profitability and low growth, not because there are MLSs in the US, but because they have chosen an inferior business model. Unlike Homes.com, our US competitors’ primary business model is selling lower value leads to a much smaller audience, rather than marketing high-value homes. Selling leads for buyer agencies became their primary business model when their iBuying business models failed spectacularly.”
AI product is “best in class”
Florance also highlighted his company’s recently launched Homes AI product, which he said he believes is “the best and first fully integrated proprietary vertical real estate application in its class, built on the best strengths of the leading LLMs.”
“We strongly believe that Homes AI will drive greater engagement, support significant organic traffic growth and contribute to meaningful increases in agent subscriptions. Homes AI is a conversational or text interface with a highly intelligent artificial intelligence real estate expert that guides the home buyer through the search, exploration, comparison of homes, communities and valuations,” he said. “In the first week of release, Homes AI has a huge impact on user engagement. Site visitors using AI mode are on site for 16 minutes and 50 seconds, compared to four minutes and 24 seconds for non-users. AI users make almost four times as many searches, favorite seven times as many properties, view four times as many properties, and submit seven times as many email leads.”
Florance reiterated that CoStar plans to deploy this technology on its other platforms, a move he said will “result in a substantial competitive advantage for CoStar Group in the coming years.”
“CoStar Group is emerging as a clear winner in the age of artificial intelligence,” said Florance. “We are positioned to take a transformative share with the advantage that Homes AI gives us. We are using AI to save significant costs and improve our product offering and quality. We are launching new transformative products that would not have been feasible without our AI innovation.”
In addition, Florance explained how he believes the success of Homes.com will fuel growth for the entire company, especially when it comes to Apartments.com.
“Homes.com is our essential gateway to reaching the single-family rental market. Additionally, just over half of all renters begin their home shopping journey openly before renting or buying. Apartments.com needs Homes.com to bring those considering a purchase to the top of the rental funnel on one of our platforms,” he said.
While Florance did not directly address the letters that activist investors sent to CoStar earlier this year about Homes.com, he emphasized his confidence and belief in what he and his team are building at CoStar.
“The results and plan you heard today reflect what CoStar has always done. Build sustainable platforms based on proprietary data, manage them with discipline, and increase long-term shareholder value,” he said. “We have strengthened our governance oversight and capital allocation, we are matching strategy with clear financial priorities, profitable growth, expanding adjusted EBITDA and return on capital. We are scaling Homes.com as it strengthens our entire real estate ecosystem globally and the completeness of our data is done with a clear investment glide path.”
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