Before the blockbuster Home.com deal closed in January 2021, there was another mammoth property-related domain sale as CoStar Group acquired Houses.com at the end of 2020.
The news of the acquisition seems to have been largely missed by the domain name industry in the run-up to Christmas 2020, but Jamie Zoch of DotWeekly recently shone some light on the deal.
According to a press release that Zoch and Mark Thompson both shared, CoStar Group acquired Houses.com in anticipation of “its entry into residential real estate marketplaces.”
Around the same time, CoStar Group also acquired Bethesda-based real estate startup Homesnap for an undisclosed fee.
CoStar Group acquired Houses.com from Ideas Siero, an incubator that also owns domains such as Romance.com and Artists.com.
The acquisition price hasn’t been revealed, but an archival copy of the Houses.com domain from November 2020 shows the name was being offered for sale with a $1 million minimum offer value. The final sales price may be above or below this figure.
As of writing, Houses.com displays a landing page detailing CoStar’s acquisition of Houses.com. The name could soon be developed in a similar style to CoStar’s other assets including Apartments.com and Land.com.