To Andy Florance, CEO KeXing Grouptrade secret litigation action company., parent company of listed portal rival real estate agent networkthe recent lawsuit filed against his company is a complete “PR stunt.”
“Essentially, you create a false story and then use a relatively junior person as a pawn, and then you get a story,” Florence said. “The question is why? What was their strategy? Realtor.com is owned by News Corpthis is a global, super-sophisticated media organization run by the Murdoch family, so they take a tough approach in the media field.
In response to Florence’s comments, a Realtor.com spokesperson said the company does not “comment on pending litigation.” The court documents speak for themselves.
Florence said he believed the lawsuit was filed against CoStar Group and former Realtor.com employee and current employee James Kaminsky. home network Employee motivation is part of the listing platform’s recent woes, which has led to the company lagging according to CoStar’s metrics Zillo and Homes.com are locked in a so-called “portal war.”
“The numbers are clear. The numbers are proven – our Homes network has 156 million unique visits per month and they have 72 million, so we’re about 84 million ahead of them in monthly visits, which is great for them It’s nine alarms, which is a big problem,” Florence said.
Additionally, Florence expects the real estate industry to change through the changes outlined in Business Practices. National Association of Realtors The commission lawsuit settlement is better suited to Homes.com’s “your listings, your leads model” rather than the model used by Realtor.com, which Florance calls “lead diversion.”
“They take the leads that come in, trick homebuyers into thinking the person they’re calling is the listing agent, and then sell the leads to other people, and agents hate that business model,” Florence said. “We “See they’re unhappy with Zillow’s approach, but some agents are confused and think Realtor.com is part of NAR and it has their best interests at heart.”
Florance noted that Zillow has been working to diversify its products over the past few years and is moving away from its lead transfer model, which he believes is a smart decision because he believes the lead transfer model “won’t survive.” .
“Realtor.com responded by doubling down on diverting leads and then doing a PR stunt to confuse everyone,” Florence said. “This is just the reality of how the company operates, and they are very aggressive in the media space.”
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in California, Move claims Kaminsky stole trade secrets to help fuel Homes.com’s rapid growth. Hired by Homes.com in March.
Move said Kaminski accessed Realtor.com files during June of this year without being discovered, even though he left the company in January and joined CoStar in March. According to the complaint, Kaminski “accessed Realtor.com’s information at least 37 times after CoStar hired him,” and in doing so violated federal and state computer fraud laws.
Move alleges that the documents Kaminski accessed included information about Realtor.com’s planned content; ideas for future stories; metrics showing user traffic; contact lists; a list of Realtor.com employees and their salaries; and other private business information.
According to Florence, while the lawsuit says Kaminsky was leading a team of writers at Homes.com that was developing a product similar to Realtor.com’s news and insights pages, Kaminsky actually edited Apartment Listing Description. Before filing the lawsuit, Florence said he had never heard of Kaminsky.
“I’ve never met him,” Florence said. “I talked to five or six people before I found one who was willing to help me find him. I did feel bad for this guy. He was actually a writer and all of a sudden he was in the media for this crap News Corp. is also pursuing him.
Florence said CoStar will support Kaminsky throughout the proceedings, assuming he actually did nothing wrong.
To Florance, the escalation of the feud between the two companies is not surprising given Move’s track record, which includes suing Zillow in 2014 after Errol Samuelson resigned from Move and joined Zillow on the same day. Move claimed in its 2014 lawsuit that Samuelson and Zillow stole trade secrets and proprietary information and then worked to cover up the alleged theft. The two parties reached a settlement in 2016, with Zillow paying $130 million to Move.
Despite similar claims, Florence believes any comparison between the sets ends there.
“I think it’s a complete mismatch,” Florence said. “We’re not talking about an executive, we’re talking about a guy who works as an apartment writing editor.”
Ultimately, Florence said he didn’t think the lawsuit would become a story, calling it “pretty silly and kind of pathetic.”
“I think it’s just a confusing application and a knee-jerk reaction where the whole process doesn’t go well,” Florence said. “I think it’s because the ‘you list your lead’ model that we’re doing is going to be A great project from Realtor.com and agents prefer it.
