RealEstate.com Purchased For $8.25 Million

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