RealEstate.com Purchased For $8.25 Million

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According to TechCrunch.com in what may well be the buy of the century in the domain name world, Market Leader, (NASDAQ: LEDR) a provider of online marketing and technology solutions for real estate professionals, this morning announced the acquisition of RealEstate.com.

A Market Leader spokesperson informed TechCrunch.com  that the purchase price was $8.25 million.

At that price, IMHO it certainly one of the best buys in the last 5 years in the domain space.

Considering that not only did Market Leader get the domain name for $8.25 million but it also “a network of more than 250 participating brokerage companies and “hundreds of other real estate domains” certainly makes an incredible buy.

According to the SEC filing Market Leader actually acquired almost 400 other domain names as part of the deal.

It’s pretty amazing of all the publicly traded companies in the real estate space including builders, REIT’s multinational brokerage companies just to name a few, the domain winds up getting bought by a company that is trading at only a $53 Million dollar market cap.

Marchex by comparison has a market cap of over $350 Million

The seller is LENDINGTREE, LLC a mortgage company which is also publicly traded on the NASDAQ (TREE) and also has a market cap of around $57 Million

The domain is registered with Brand protection company Mark Monitor.

Shares of Market Leader are up about 8% today trading at $2.24

Shares of Lending Tree are up $.01 at $5.25 a share

Had Lending Tree put the domains up for sale in a very public way, I believe the domains alone would have fetched $25 Million or above.

Consider that some knowledgeable people in the new gTLD space think that some of the best generic extensions could sell for $25M or above, this is simply a killer buy

 

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Comments

  2. Jeff Edelman says

    That’s one of the best domains in the world. Certainly an incredibly great buy at only 8.25 million. And yes, it’s a major mistake that none of the biggest players in the Real Estate business didn’t buy it for more than that.

  8. MHB says

    George

    Agreed and appreciate for a company with a market cap of $55 million to spend 15% of it on one purchase is a big move yet after the purchase it could be a dog no more

  10. Brad says

    This is an amazing buy. It is a top 5 domain IMO. It is similar to a name like Insurance.com when you consider the category defining nature and the industry it represents.

    I would think it could have potentially reached a much higher price on the open market. There are a lot of big companies who would have been interested.

    Brad

  11. don says

    dont forget, tree is a part of the IAC..barry diller owned ventures, which appeart to be solely focussing on the dating space, giving up on ask.com as well, their model with realestate.com was flawed from the get go….its a great buy, this domain has changed hands a number of times in the last 10 years without success in developing out, I believe it was purchased for around 1 million back in 1999 and then part of an acquisition by lending tree, would be interesting to know what the hundreds of other domains are…

    the reality is that the online real estate space has been a complete bust, look at realtor.com, housevalues.com, reply.com, zillow.com (still not profitable)…this is a space no one has figured out how to monopolize correctly beacause for the most part all of the inforamtion is free, with 6% commissions on 180k homes, their is roughly 10 k for companies to try and capture on most median home sales, real estate is simply way to fragmented..

  12. John says

    Was this a private sale that then became public?

    @Jeff – Could it have been that the buyer approached the seller quietly without alerting the other big real estate companies, therefore keeping the sale price lower?

  17. owen frager says

    ie- He’d rather spent $500 million in TV ads because the domain alone doesn’t offer a differentiating advantage like the lending tree spots do- get three competitive bids and when we put banks to fight for you, you win… something like that the domain doesn’t convey that’s needed in branding- however the domain in branding makes a statement of authority which could be worth something if Barry cared about more than immediate sales- how much do we spend for a lead and how much do we sell if for

    Once again the buyer is a software app confirming what I’ve been saying all along-software names versus search and lead names have the most value! Because here branding and stature DOES matter and leads don’t because they have distribution already.

  19. LDS says

    I believe the originally owner sold it to LT for $25 million back a long time ago.

    From what I recollect, the original owner hand registered it plus about 20 out incredible names and has slowly sold them all off.

  21. Hal Meyer says

    It’s an amazing deal for the buyer. It sold way under value by just about any measure except the Obama factor. It probably has tons of backlinks and gets loads of type-ins and SE traffic. “Real estate” is a huge search phrase. Realtors have big advertising budgets.

    The bad news is that the real estate business is highly regulated. In the US, every state has different rules. I believe some states even require licensing for “real estate marketing” as a separate category in addition to standard real estate brokerage requirements.

    Still, the domain has incredible potential. When the economy comes back, this domain could go cha-ching in a big way!

    I am a former licensed real estate agent and former licensed real estate broker. I currently own the domain name RealEstateForSaleByOwner.com

  23. Samit Madan says

    Wait, so according to what LDS is saying above, the domain was sold at a loss this time around?

    In fact if LT spent 3x on the domain ‘a long while back’, that purchase in itself could be reason they had to sell the company.

    After all $25mm is almost 50% of the total of the total market cap, of either company in this transaction!!

  24. Philip says

    How was this structured ?
    “Considering that not only did Market Leader get the domain name for $8.25 million but it also “a network of more than 250 participating brokerage companies and “hundreds of other real estate domains” ”
    Were the brokers given leads based on areas? under licence.

  25. domains says

    @mhb plan on buying stock ? Could be well worth it at 2.30 a share

    Also if a company that eyes on going public- there view is probably let’s buy as many solid names as we can before we report to share holders imo. Get everything done before IPO.

    So yes going from private to public company does need to disclose in there filings

    Also Rick is going make a shit load when company goes IPO with equity. Again private companies now.

  27. don says

    Pricing…compare this to the toys.com or insurance.com sales, I think 8-10 million is probably spot on, do you really believe it would have sold for 10-20 million on the open market, then to who?

    I dont think there were really that many buyers, look how long it took property.com to flip for under 5 million

  31. MHB says

    Alt

    yes and no

    Ron Jackson who is the official gatekeeper of such records and rightfully so, will probably not include it, as there was something else other than just a pure domain sold, a site, 250 “agents” customer lists etc and there were 400 other domains sold as well.

    So its not a “pure” domain purchase for one domain.

  32. Internet Media says

    RealEstate.com was developed by Lending Tree as a hybrid real estate brokerage brand. They created bricks and mortar local operating entities, all company owned. RealEstate.com generated tens of thousands of real estate leads (inquiries) per month from the million plus unique visitors per month. Overtime, RealEstate.com had closed most or all of the bricks and mortar operations and presently operates as a real estate lead generation company in the mid-large MSA markets across the country. Real estate brokerages pay on a revenue sharing model per closed transaction.

    This was way more than a pure domain sale. RealEstate.com is an incredible internet brand.

    Peter
    DenverRealEstate.com

  33. Sameh says

    619,366 Unique Visitors from US alone last month according to Compete, 34k Alexa Rank, #3 in Google for “Real Estate” plus the other domains involved in the sale. It’s the bargain of year for sure and maybe for many years to come.

    Was it sold based on current revenue multiple? I’m also not sure why LendingTree didn’t try to setup a public auction first or contact other companies?

    Congrats to Market Leader! I’m sure they can’t wait to get their hands on the domain/website.

  35. M. Menius says

    An incredible domain name & sale. Reminded me of Business.com and Loans.com, that level of quality. Can’t help but think that Lending Tree could have parlayed that into something more special than it was. Would like to see the list of the other domains included in the deal to see if any were geo targeted names like city + realestate.com.

  36. 3D is my life, is it yours too says

    Domain sales are looking strong in the face of global economic turmoil as markets stand on the brink. Are domain names safe haven assets now? Possibly, as growth on the Internet is likely to continue to boom even as world economies enter recessionary periods. Domains should be seen as an asset class both as speculative investments and as a store a value since supply of top names is limited and demand will continue to grow unabated for the foreseeable future.

  40. Internet Media says

    Will a new gTLD called (dot)RealEstate be coming soon? If so, “Priceless”….

    Peter
    DenverRealEstate.com

  42. don says

    I listened to part of the broadcast…your plug was in the first 5 minutes… I may circle back for the whole thing at some point…they mentioned that they got newhomes.com in the deal and may develop this as a seperate brand down the road, and that the other domains bring in around 250k visits per month, they also highlight the direct navigation benefit of the realestate.com url, its a great listen for those in the domain/seo space as it really validates the biz model and should be used in future negotiations for anyone trying to sell niche, targeted portfolios or vertical specific domains.

    Not sure if they listed any other names, and have not been able to find this anywhere online yet, although I only made it to the 17 min mark of a 43 min presentation.

  47. Randolf says

    I’m listening to the broadcast as writing and it starts quite interesting. Would really like to see what other names are part of the portfolio but only newhomes.com is mentioned.

    It appears that re.com is also part of it and these domains are also hosted on the same host, along with hundreds of rather crappy realestate-related domain names:
    domania.com
    serviceright.com
    performlocal.com
    itsoldfor.com

  48. Lise Raev says

    Definitely an interesting move. A smart one, too, considering the market for new homes right now. It’s kind of amazing that domain names go for so much.

  49. George Kirikos says

    TechCrunch and others are now reporting that Trulia is acquiring Market Leader for $355 million, or an implied stock price of $11.33 (combo of cash plus shares). That’s a $300 million gain in market cap since acquiring RealEstate.com in September 2011 (less than 2 years ago) for $8.25 million, when the stock (symbol LEDR) was trading at just over $2/share.