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Homestore Changing Its Name to ‘Move’
Homestore, Inc. has announced that it will be changing its name to Move, Inc. to coincide with an expanded commitment to offering consumers comprehensive real estate listings, decision support tools and access to qualified move-related service providers. This enhanced consumer focus will enable Move to create even more effective advertising venues for a broader range of advertisers.
Move, Inc. will have three consumer offerings: Realtor.com, Move and Welcome Wagon. The new name unifies the company's strategy of providing a platform for connecting consumers with Realtors®, home builders, rental property owners and other move-related advertisers before, during and after a move.
Homestore's offering, HomeBuilder.com, is the official new home Web site of NAHB.
New Product Offerings
Along with the new brand, this spring the company will launch an all new real estate search engine site, Move.com, as well as additional products and features designed to provide the best consumer content available. Consistent with that goal, Homestore has acquired Moving.com, a best-in-class online provider of consumer moving tools and access to qualified moving services.
The company's new offerings include:
- www.move.com — The new Move.com Web site will replace Homestore.com, HomeBuilder.com and RENTNET and will serve as a comprehensive move and real estate listing search engine. The site will give consumers the most extensive selection of real estate listings available by providing access to Realtor.com listings, along with new home and rental listings from all over the Web.
- New Homes and Rentals Business Model Changes — With the launch of Move.com, the company will be adopting many elements of the highly successful Realtor.com business model for new home and apartment industry customers. This will include free basic property listings and a Showcase Listing product for customers who want to enhance their properties. In addition, home builders and rental owners will have the opportunity to purchase prioritized Featured Listings as well as traditional text advertisements on a cost-per-click basis.
- New Realtor.com Products — Realtor.com will add a community component to its site designed to enable customers to promote their local communities and to interact with consumers online. Together with Realtor.com's leading position in audience size and listings content breadth, this new user-generated content will allow the company to create the best online consumer real estate experience available. Realtor.com will also be adding Featured Listings to its search results, available on a cost-per-click basis, free virtual tour distribution for Showcase™ customers, new mapping technologies and a Featured Comparative Market Analysis product to generate CMA leads.
- Top Marketer™ Launch — The company announced the formal launch of its new cost-per-lead business for agents. This product works in conjunction with Top Producer's industry-leading 7i lead management system.
- Welcome Wagon and Realtor.com Integration — The Welcome Wagon® Local Business Directory will be prominently located within the new community pages on Realtor.com, creating contextually relevant advertising opportunities for Welcome Wagon's merchant advertisers. Welcome Wagon's new mover gift will be offered directly to consumers by participating Realtors and will be promoted within Realtor.com.
- Moving.com Acquisition — The company announced the acquisition of the Moving.com business from TMP Directional Marketing, LLC. Moving.com provides consumers with offers from qualified movers, truck rental and self-storage providers, as well as access to a sophisticated mortgage rates directory. Moving.com's move-related tools, including their lender directory, will be integrated by Move to improve the consumer experience on Move.com, Realtor.com and Welcome Wagon. Moving.com's "Find an Apartment" functionality will be powered by Move's new property search tool.
Upon full launch of the new Move.com Web site, the company's NASDAQ stock symbol will change from "HOMS" to "MOVE."
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