CoStar and LoopNet To Join Forces

CoStar Group, Inc announced Wednesday that it has entered into an agreement to acquire LoopNet,
Inc. the leading online commercial real estate marketplace, in a transaction valued
at approximately $860 million.

CoStar said it believes the combined company will be the premier online resource
for researching, analyzing, and marketing commercial real estate properties, and
the combination of the two companies' complementary services will position the
combined firm to provide even more comprehensive market coverage, deliver
enhanced research, analysis and marketing options, and offer greater
efficiencies for customers throughout the $11 trillion commercial real estate
industry, ranging from large, national brokerage and institutional market
players to small, local brokers and owners.

The boards of directors of both companies have unanimously approved the transaction, which is expected to close by the end of 2011.

Florance noted how the two firms developed completely different business models
to address the challenges of aggregating content across the massive, complex and
constantly changing commercial real estate market, an asset class in which an
estimated nearly $3 trillion dollars in transactions occur annually.

"Each model excels at tracking a differing major segment of the
industry, but neither comes close to covering the entire industry," Florance
said. "Once the combination of LoopNet and CoStar is complete, we believe that
we will deliver a higher quality marketing solution to LoopNet’s customers and a
higher quality information solution to CoStar’s customers."

With the
addition of LoopNet’s complementary listings, CoStar will have a database with
approximately 2 million active listings.

"We believe that this more
complete coverage will significantly reduce our customers’ total costs, save
them time, and help them to better serve their customers. In turn, we believe
that will help us win many more new customers," Florance added. 
by: Tim Trainor

Baytown real estate