The media giant News Corp has been getting pressure from investors to spin off its assets that are not part of its core business model. One of those is Move.com, the parent company of a few real estate marketplaces including realtor.com. Sources are saying that the company is in talks with PropTech company CoStar Group for an acquisition worth around $3 billion. News Corp has been struggling as of late but the sale will not be a loss since it bought Move in 2014 for $950 million.
CoStar has been expanding into the residential sector for a while. At the end of last year, CoStar teamed up with New York City’s largest real estate industry group, the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY), to roll out Citysnap, the NYC version of Homesnap, a real estate listing platform CoStar bought for $250 million in 2020. This acquisition would position it to compete with the other large residential marketplaces like Redfin and Zillow, both of which have struggled after failed attempts at “iBuying.”
CoStar faced regulatory opposition when it purchased LoopNet in 2011. While this acquisition is not as related to their core business of commercial real estate data and listing, it might still give regulators a reason to scrap the deal. Nothing definitive has been announced yet but if the two companies to come to an agreement look for its competitors to ask the FTC to look into if the acquisition would give CoStar too much power in the property search market.
