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CoStar names Felix Kusch president of Homes.com after two-year vacancy
By Real Estate Wire Staff, . Real Estate Wire.
CoStar Group has named Felix Kusch president of Homes.com, the company announced Monday. Both Real Estate News and HousingWire reported the appointment, with HousingWire adding the financial context that makes the timing notable: CoStar's residential segment posted its first profitable quarter in Q2 2026, generating $12 million in adjusted EBITDA, a $41 million improvement from Q1, while Homes.com revenue rose 66% year over year to $28.5 million.
Kusch comes to the role with over 15 years of portal experience in Europe. According to Real Estate News, he served as interim CEO of Immoweb, Belgium's top residential search portal, in late 2020 and the first half of 2021, then spent more than three years as CEO of Immowelt, the second-largest portal in Germany. HousingWire adds that before those roles he led M&A work at Axel Springer Digital focused on European real estate marketplaces and served on the boards of Meilleurs Agents and Lamudi. Most recently, per Real Estate News, he was chief commercial officer at netgo for roughly seven months before joining CoStar.
Kusch will report directly to CoStar founder and CEO Andy Florance, with the broader Homes.com team reporting to Kusch.
The appointment closes a vacancy that opened in May 2024 when David Mele, who had led the portal since 2014 and stayed on after CoStar acquired Homes.com in 2021, left to pursue what he described to Real Estate News as "an opportunity outside of the real estate industry." Mele has since been serving as president of Pool Scouts.
Both Florance and Kusch framed the hire around Homes.com's "Your Listing, Your Lead" positioning, which routes inquiries directly to the listing agent rather than selling leads to competing agents. "Our model and his are the same: you win by putting the property and agent first, not by selling agent's leads to multiple agents," Florance said in the announcement, as quoted by both outlets. Kusch, in his own statement, described the approach as "the same fight I've spent my career in: earning trust by promoting the property, not shopping the lead."
Real Estate News noted that CoStar had earlier this year outlined a plan to reduce its investment in Homes.com and has faced shareholder pushback over continued spending on the portal. Florance has maintained that the investments are paying off and that the company remains focused on reaching the top position in U.S. residential search.
The financial inflection point is the detail that changes the read on this hire. A new president arriving alongside the first profitable residential quarter gives Kusch a cleaner mandate than his predecessor had: the question is no longer whether Homes.com can survive the investment phase, but whether it can convert early revenue momentum into durable market share against Zillow and Realtor.com. What neither report establishes is Kusch's specific growth targets, his timeline, or how CoStar plans to balance continued investment against the shareholder pressure Real Estate News flagged. Those answers will likely surface on the next earnings call.
Source: https://www.realestatenews.com/2026/09/14/homes-com-names-new-president-after-2-year-leadership-gap