The Citysnap actual property search portal contains properties on the market and lease in New York Metropolis. It additionally represents the newest chapter in a rivalry between CoStar and Zillow.
After launching into an intense rivalry with Zillow that included accusations of “blackmail,” CoStar formally launched a residential actual property portal Thursday that can tackle Zillow within the market.
The brand new portal, dubbed Citysnap, was first introduced final October and is a venture CoStar labored on in partnership with the Actual Property Board of New York (REBNY). It options each for-sale properties and leases in New York Metropolis, and on its web site touts itself as “designed by New Yorkers, for New Yorkers.” Listings one Citysnap are taken from REBNY’s Residential Itemizing Service information feed, which in line with an announcement from CoStar offers shoppers “correct, up-to-date, and complete listings, arming them with a strong new device within the seek for each residential leases and properties on the market.”
Credit score: Citysnap
As of Thursday afternoon, the entrance web page of Citysnap’s web site included a search function that allowed shoppers to pick their desired location, in addition to instruments to slender searches by worth and residential measurement. The search additionally lets customers select between leases and houses which might be on the market.
Under the search fields, Citysnap’s homepage included a couple of primary speaking factors touting the location’s strengths, adopted by highlighted new listings damaged out by neighborhood.
Credit score: Citysnap
Customers who click on on a list will discover photographs and different data akin to what different portals embrace on their listings. Nevertheless, Citysnap listings additionally prominently function a window that invitations shoppers to contact the itemizing agent.
CoStar additionally launched a cellular app model of Citysnap Thursday. Customers of the app are first requested to say whether or not they’re shoppers or actual property brokers. Brokers are then prompted to enter their credentials, whereas shoppers are requested to register. Nevertheless, shoppers may also skip the register course of and instantly start looking out properties — that are unfold throughout all 5 of New York Metropolis’s boroughs.
In an announcement Thursday, CoStar founder and CEO Andy Florance stated he’s “thrilled” that his firm is “offering this highly effective new device for actual property brokers and brokers to assist their shoppers discover the fitting house within the metropolis.”
Andrew Florance
“New Yorkers not need to depend on out-of-date, inaccurate itemizing data or be related to brokers and brokers who don’t know something in regards to the house they’re serious about, making a tough course of even tougher,” Florance stated.
The remark seems to subtly shade the best way beforehand present portals deal with listings in New York, and in doing so followers an ongoing rivalry between Florance’s CoStar and rival Zillow. The rivalry first burst into public view in January 2021 when Florance stated throughout Inman Join Now that the “residential agent is Zillow’s competitor.”
He went on to argue that Zillow might in the end “get rid of about 30 p.c of Realtor positions.”
Although Florance stated on the time that CoStar was “not Zillow’s competitor,” that modified in October when CoStar introduced it might quickly launch a residential portal of its personal. That portal, Citysnap, now competes immediately with Zillow’s StreetEasy, which equally focuses on listings in New York.
Florance has additionally progressively change into extra specific in his critiques of Zillow. Final October, for example, he likened Zillow’s practices to “blackmail” and, in a really thinly veiled reference to Zillow, steered there was an organization “hijacking” listings and behaving just like the mafia.
Such feedback sparked a significant buzz in the actual property {industry}. Although many brokers companion with Zillow to get leads, the corporate can be controversial within the agent group. Consequently, some {industry} members welcomed the prospect of a Zillow rival like CoStar, which has giant warfare chest and years of expertise (albeit primarily within the business actual property area).
Whether or not Citysnap is now in the end successful with with brokers and shoppers stays to be seen. However options such because the contact window that connects brokers and shoppers look like at the least an try to steer would-be consumers to the individuals who have listings.
In Thursday’s assertion, Ninve James — REBNY’s senior vp of residential brokerage companies and merchandise — described Citysnap as a “recreation changer for New York Metropolis actual property professionals and shoppers alike.”
“It has been a privilege to work with over 500 industry-leading corporations and over 12,000 REBNY members to construct an progressive search portal that addresses the wants of New York Metropolis brokers and brokers,” James added, “whereas additionally enabling shoppers to entry the identical up-to-date and in depth stock of listings and information that {industry} professionals belief and depend on.”
