Realtor.com Moving Headquarters to Texas from California

News Corp’s Realtor.com is relocating its California headquarters to Austin.

The listings giant closed its former headquarters in Santa Clara a few months ago in favor of its office at at 901 East Sixth Street.

There was “no better place” for the company to call home, said Damian Eales, CEO of Realtor.com’s parent company and News Corp subsidiary Move.

The move would make the Texas capital the company’s top hiring location, which it identified as the best recruitment base and interstate talent attractor for senior technology and marketing roles, Eales said.

“In Santa Clara and Silicon Valley, it’s hard to become an employer of choice because you’re up against all of the tech behemoths, whereas in Austin, you’ve got this incredible vibrancy of a startup tech hub. We felt that, in this location, we could be a big fish in a relatively small pond,” he said.

Realtor.com’s Austin office was already the company’s largest in the country following Move’s acquisition of the Austin-based proptech company Opcity in 2018, said Eales, who moved to Austin from New York when he became CEO in June 2023.

Texas is leading the way in tackling the affordable housing problem, another factor in the move, Eales said. Affordability was the No. 1 reason stated by interstate movers to Texas last year, followed by a favorable climate and employment opportunities, Realtor.com’s Texas housing report said.

Texas was the No. 1 state for home-building permits, accounting for 15 percent of the U.S., with only 9 percent of the nation’s population, the report said. Texas home prices soared during the pandemic’s boom and bust, but the state bounced back sooner than others, remaining relatively affordable, said Danielle Hale, Realtor.com’s chief economist.

The Austin area has attracted several tech companies over the years. Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, moved from San Francisco to Bastrop last year. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to bring its content moderation and trust and safety teams out of California and into Texas, presumably to Meta’s office building on Third Street in downtown Austin. Meta joined Musk’s companies in planning to reincorporate in Texas from Delaware as well.

Eales dined with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and News Corp President Robert Thomson at the governor’s mansion last week, said Gary Farmer, past chair of Opportunity Austin, who was at the dinner.

States leaning into Donald Trump’s economic vision of lax regulations and business-led growth will be ripe for success, resulting in a “national economic renaissance,” News Corp’s Thomson said.