Ebay exec will lead Rupert Murdoch’s real estate charge

David Doctorow, a senior executive at eBay, will be the new CEO of Move Inc., the News Corp. subsidiary that operates Realtor.com.

Effective Feb. 3, Doctorow will take the helm from and report to Tracey Fellows, who is News. Corp’s president of global digital real estate.

“David is a thoughtful, dynamic leader with vast experience in contemporary digital commerce, and thus the ideal individual to take charge at Move,” News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson said in a statement. At eBay, Doctorow was head of global growth, and he previously led marketing and strategy at Expedia.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. edged its way into the real estate listings space in 2014, when it acquired Move Inc., the parent Realtor.com, for $1 billion. It’s been directly taking on Zillow, taking out ads touting its greater reach.  The company said in a statement that Realtor.com’s number of unique visitors has doubled since the acquisition.

In November, Realtor.com said it would be moving into offering “adjacencies,” such as mortgages as the overhaul of its lead generation platform continues. But unlike Zillow and other newer players, it has so far stayed out of the burgeoning iBuying space, describing it as too capital-intensive.

“What the hell does Zillow mean?” Murdoch said at a 2015 gathering of real estate agents in Midtown. “We know what ‘realtor’ means.” –TRD Staff