Zillow acquires Trulia
Zillow Announces Acquisition of Trulia for $3.5 Billion in Stock:
“The combined company will maintain both the Zillow and Trulia consumer brands, offering buyers, sellers, homeowners and renters access to vital information about homes and real estate for free, and providing advertising and software solutions that help real estate professionals grow their business. At closing, Trulia CEO Pete Flint will remain as CEO of Trulia reporting to Zillow CEO, Spencer Rascoff, and will join the Board of Directors of the combined company. In addition, at closing, a second member of Trulia’s Board of Directors will join the board of the combined company. Further operational and organizational details will be announced at closing.”
Holy shit.
Trulia consolidates
Trulia lays off 85 Market Leader employees
Ian Morris, 4 other top Market Leader executives transitioning to consulting roles
From Inman News:
“In an email to employees, Trulia CEO Pete Flint said the reorganization was not taken lightly.
“We’re taking this step because the growth opportunities we saw at the time of the acquisition are clearer than ever,” Flint said. “So today, we are aligning our teams to make that Trulia one, unified organization optimized to create one set of product offerings. Our more nimble team will bring new products and services to market even faster, delighting customers and boosting our growth in 2015 and beyond.””
Anyone who didn’t see this coming doesn’t understand how acquisitions work.
Interested to see Ian’s next chapter and kind of sad to see him go. He’s been in the game for so long its hard to imagine him not there.
Nationstar rising…
Interesting analysis about Nationstar, RED’s new owner.
Nationstar moves one step closer to total mortgage market domination
Jacob Gaffney, HousingWire.com
“Nationstar is moving one step closer to total mortgage market domination.
During the call, Bray discussed at length the acqusition of digital real estate marketplace Real Estate Digital, expected to close in the next quarter. RED is a fee-based real estate services company that provides online marketing, data, transaction management and digital media solutions.
“We intend to utilize RED’s capabilities to build HomeSearch 2.0, which will include search functionality and industry-leading residential real estate data,” he said. “This data will allow consumers, realtors and investors to research properties and more importantly, transact in a number of ways.”
In the end, Nationstar expects to provide end-to-end real estate and mortgage services with exceptional customer service, which will deliver “a customer for life,” Bray said.
In other words, total mortgage domination.
Search, sell, list, buy, title — you name it and Nationstar is going to provide it through its HomeSearch.com platform.
“Our macro goal is to capture a fee component of as many U.S. real estate transactions as possible,” Bray said.
Sounds like Zillow 3.0
And at another point in the call he adds this gem:
“We see an opportunity to leverage our heritage as a non-agency servicer to provide financial solutions to the developing market that could include portions of the nearly 68 million under-banked consumers and 72 million millenials in the United States. We are currently evaluating non-agency and expanded purchase mortgage strategies.”
That’s loads of money waiting to be had and Bray is convinced his company has an honest shot at a big portion of it.
And from what I know about Nationstar, he very well might be right.
I’m not too versed on banker speak, what does “non-agency and expanded purchase mortgage strategies mean”? I hope it doesn’t mean, what I think it means.
Thanks for the heads up @tcar
Nationstar acquires Real Estate Digital (RED) for 18 million in cash.
NATIONSTAR REPORTS FIRST QUARTER 2014 FINANCIAL RESULTS & STRATEGIC ACQUISITION
“Nationstar Mortgage Holdings Inc. (NYSE: NSM) (“Nationstar”), a leading residential mortgage services company, today announced that its fee-based real estate services business, Solutionstar entered into a definitive agreement to acquire substantially all of the assets of Real Estate Digital and its affiliate for USD 18m in cash in May.”
This is the HUGE news. Back in 2011 Jay Gaskill structured a management buy out of the franchise/broker and agent division of LPS. A mere 3 years later they flip for 18 million.
For those who don’t know, RED basically powers online real estate. They have one of the largest pools of IDX feeds in the industry, powering many large brokerages, including HomeServices brokerages along with Berkshire Hathaway and also Real Living. They act as a data provider for many other 3rd party software companies. And of course they are the data aggregator for NAR’s Realtor Property Resource (RPR). This brings about many questions.
My congrats go out to the entire team at RED.
Stay tuned for big news this Thursday.
2014 is shaping up to be a wild year!
Google buys Nest for 3.2 billion.
“Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that it has entered into an agreement to buy Nest Labs, Inc. for $3.2 billion in cash.
Nest’s mission is to reinvent unloved but important devices in the home such as thermostats and smoke alarms. Since its launch in 2011, the Nest Learning Thermostat has been a consistent best seller–and the recently launched Protect (Smoke + CO Alarm) has had rave reviews.”
Now that’s an expensive smoke detector.
Zillow acquires StreetEasy for 50 Million in cash.
Zillow to Acquire StreetEasy, New York’s Leading Real Estate Website
“StreetEasy attracts nearly 1.2 million1 monthly unique users, primarily home shoppers in the New York region. This acquisition gives StreetEasy the resources to further invest in product development and grow its audience, while offering Zillow® clear market leadership in the country’s largest and most important real estate market.”
Earlier this year we had heard the Zillow wasn’t planning any acquisitions in 2013, I guessed they changed their minds. With the recent stock run up, who can blame them. No mention of any significant revenue’s from StreetEasy.
And speaking of Zillow stock, they are offering 5 million Class A shares. Looks like 2.5 Million of them are coming from Zillow’s CEO Spencer Rascoff, Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink. Nice payday.
Why Move, Inc. bought Doorsteps.
“Doorsteps educates and empowers buyers in a well-designed, visual and streamlined way to equip them for home ownership from start to finish. It provides a shared online workspace between buyers and agents, resulting in smarter lead generation and matching. Connecting people with loan officers early in the buying process ensures they can guide clients to the best loan options and financial services to help them — well before closing on a home.”
Seems like this is more of an “acqui-hire”, and a damn smart one. Some might find it a bit counter-intuitive to buy a company focused on buyers in a red-hot sellers market but I think there is a larger trend here. The trend is design.
Doorsteps is beautifully designed. And when I speak of design I’m not talking about how the site looks (which is beautiful BTW) but how the mission of the company flows through their entire app. Design is becoming more and more important to consumers now. Apple has led the way in this, people just don’t want a product to work, but they want their products beautiful and easy to use.
When you look at the recent changes that MOVE, Inc. has been making (new logo, site design, etc.) you can tell that design is becoming a big focus. The question is will they be able to make these changes more than skin deep.
Congrats to Michele Serro and her great team at Doorsteps and Move, Inc. Things are getting super interesting in this space and I can’t wait to see what this infusion of talent will bring to Realtor.com.
Warren Buffet gives shout out to Ron Peltier of HomeServices
Some interesting tidbits from Warren Buffet’s annual letter to shareholders.
Letter to Shareholders, Warren Buffet.
“Since then, however, the company has regularly added residential brokers – three in 2012 – and now has about 16,000 agents in a string of major U.S. cities. (Our real estate brokerage companies are listed on page 107.) In 2012, our agents participated in $42 billion of home sales, up 33% from 2011.
Earnings jumped from 39 million to 82 million. I told you Buffet was good for real estate.
Additionally, HomeServices last year purchased 67% of the Prudential and Real Living franchise operations, which together license 544 brokerage companies throughout the country and receive a small royalty on their sales. We have an arrangement to purchase the balance of those operations within five years. In the coming years, we will gradually rebrand both our franchisees and the franchise firms we own as Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices.
I wasn’t aware they could buy the remaining shares from Brookfield in 5 years.
Ron Peltier has done an outstanding job in managing HomeServices during a depressed period. Now, as the housing market continues to strengthen, we expect earnings to rise significantly.”
Significantly indeed. Interesting stuff especially when you put these facts against Stefan Swanepoel’s talk at Clareity’s Executive MLS Conference last week. Consolidation is becoming the norm in real estate.
