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With its latest possession, Costar Group has again turned up to be one of the top competitors in the real estate industry. On the 14th of April, the giant property data provider reported that it has concurred to buy Homes.com.
CoStar plans the agreement to close by the midpoint of this year, for a cost price of $156 million in cash. According to CoStar's press statement, the company anticipates that its newly acquired portal will increase CoStar's revenue by $5 million to $10 million. Moreover, Costar expects that Homes.com will fulfil this estimation in the second half of 2021.
In his statement, CEO and Founder Andrew C. Florance expressed his delightment in adding Homes.com to the Costar family. He conveyed that Homes.com will operate in conjunction with Homesnap's agent software and marketing solutions by CoStar to develop a service that will assist agents in selling properties faster and at better rates. Implying towards the existing residential listing portals, the Costar head said they serve neither consumers nor their agent's desires. They specifically sell ads on top of agent listings and are constantly providing competing brokerage services.
Additionally, these websites make money by steering prospective homebuyers away from listing agents and toward unfamiliar buyer agents who advertise on top of selling agent listings. However, Costar's merger will bring the practice to a stop. Their goal in combining Homesnap and Homes.com is to assist agents in marketing their listings favouring the 'your listing, your lead' concept, contrary to maximum market players.
A quick overview of each company.
CoStar Group
Headquartered in Washington.DC, CoStar Group is one of the world's largest suppliers of commercial real estate marketing services, insights and data. Besides the United States, it also serves in other countries, including Spain, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Canada. Since its establishment in 1987, the company performs extensive, ongoing research to generate and retain the world's largest and most thorough private real estate database. Its marketing services comprise branding, real estate listings syndication, reputation management and generation of potential consumers. CoStar's shares trade on the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations with a market capitalization of $35.66 billion. The organization went public after securing $22.5 million in an initial public offering in 1988. Some of its biggest takeovers are Apartment Finder, BizBuySell, RentPath, Lands of America, STR, Inc, LoopNet, and Apartments.com. CoStar Group has a track record of destroying competitors and being callous in courtrooms due to a robust legal team. Making a total revenue of $1.66 billion in 2020, it is looking forward to driving sales to the extent of $1.925 billion to $1.945 billion this year.
Homes.com
Owned by Dominion Enterprises, Homes.com, Inc links customers with real estate agents by a more competent house hunt platform. Its portal and mobile applications provide customers with the details they need to search for their first or next residence, and cutting-edge resources like Homes.com Match and HomeShare making the home-buying process interactive, easy, and efficient. Homes.com has over 25 years of experience servicing the real estate market and can support real estate professionals excel online by providing brand and property advertisements, search engine marketing, and speedy response lead generation. In 2018, it was the fifth-largest commercial property website in the United States regarding traffic customer base. Headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, the company has branches spread all over the country. Confirming to some sources, Homes.com has earned $38.5 million so far.
As per Dave Mele, Home's President, he and his team are excited to work with their new CoStar counterparts. He believes that this collaboration will help expand the Homes.com identity and develop new strategies that give customers and agents more marketing options.
Over the first quarter 2021 financial results conference call on April 27, 2021, CoStar Group expects to bring forth more details about the Homes.com purchase.
