Real estate information giant CoStar Group Inc. has struck a deal to acquire home sales platform HomeSnap Inc. for $250 million.
D.C.-based CoStar (NYSE: CSGP) will acquire the Bethesda residential real estate software company in a transaction expected to close before the end of 2020. The deal will add Homesnap's 150 employees to CoStar's roster.
Homesnap, an online and mobile platform that connects real estate agents with their clients and manages their workflow, is used by more than 300,000 agents nationwide. Its public residential real estate portal has 1.3 million property listings.
The acquisition will bring the total number of brokers and agents using CoStar group platforms up from 100,000 to more than 400,000, the company said. It will also double the number of property listings across CoStar’s portfolio of brands, bringing the total to more than 2.6 million.
“The acquisition of Homesnap will enable us to enter a new space and expand the total addressable markets in which we can compete,” said CoStar Group founder and CEO Andy Florance. “We will continue to differentiate our residential real estate portal and solutions by working solely to help agents market their listings and their brands, which is in sharp contrast to other portals that increasingly advertise on top of agent listings and offer brokerage services directly.”
Florance also hopes that the Homesnap acquisition will allow CoStar to “deepen our collaboration with MLSs [multiple listing services] nationwide.”
The Homesnap acquisition follows at least two others for CoStar this year. The Apartments.com owner acquired rental property marketing outfit RentPath LLC for $558 million in February and three divisions of Irvine, California-based Ten-X LLC for $190 million in May.
