In today’s Financial Review, Zoe Samios wrote:
CoStar has spent more than $22 million buying Homes.com.au in a sign of how the American real estate giant plans to reshape the local property listings industry after it acquires Domain in a $3 billion takeover.
CoStar, one of the world’s biggest real estate listing platform providers, already operates Homes.com in the United States. It will pay $22.8 million to buy the local domain from a company founded by property developer Pat Carbone in 2018, two sources with knowledge of the transaction said.
Many Australian domain investors and entrepreneurs contacted us here at Assets Australia today, wondering if the actual domain “Homes.com.au” sold for $22.8 million on its own, of if the whole company behind “Homes.com.au” was part of the deal, and the domain was worth a couple of million dollars.
Zoe Samios’ article went on to say:
“It is a clear, strong and memorable URL,” Florance said (Andy Florance, chief executive of CoStar). “Owning the brand gives us the optionality to go to market with flanking brands or to make a big statement with a major rebrand. Our goal is to give vendors and agents more value for their investment and buyers a more enjoyable experience.”
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, so we can dig deeper on hopefully finding out exactly how much the Homes.com.au domain name actually sold for.
This is what the homepage of Homes.com.au looked like in April 2024:
the article says it sold for $22 million. is this right? realestate.com.au had better watch out!
That seems very high. I douby they paid that much.
Wow! What a name & what a sale if indeed it is true!
A little birdy told me, Mr Yeast, that the business and database and technology was worth next to nothing even though multi millions were raised a few years back. It seems the domain name itself may have indeed been a majority of this buying price.