Zillow Hires Former Realtor.com President To Run Its B2B Business

Online real estate marketplace Zillow today announced that it has hired Errol Samuelson, the former president of Realtor.com and chief strategy officer of Move, Inc., as its “chief industry development officer.” Samuelson will take executive oversight for the company’s business-to-business products and tools, including services like Diverse Solutions, which helps real estate agents market their business, and AgentFolio, a communication platform for buy-side agents and their buyers.

Samuelson, who has about 20 years of experience in the real estate industry, will report directly to Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff. Samuelson became the president of Realtor.com in 2007 and joined Move, Inc. in April 2013.

“We’re thrilled for Errol to join the Zillow family. We’ve long admired Errol for his leadership as well as his perspective and approach in advocating on behalf of the real estate industry to embrace and leverage evolving technology and times,” said Rascoff in a statement today. “We place tremendous value on fostering great partnerships and building innovative products that support our industry partners, and Errol is the right person to lead this new role.”

The move also shows how important the B2B business has become for Zillow, which went public in 2011. While the company started out as a real estate search service for homebuyers when it launched in 2006, it quickly expanded into other real-estate related services as well. For the most part, the company has done this through acquisitions. Just last year, for example, it acquired Buyfolio (which has now become AgentFolio). Diverse Solutions was acquired in 2011.