According to a Press Release just issued, the company that owns Condo.com and Houses.com is the buyer of the domain names owned by Rick Schwartz, Property.com and Properties.com which Rick tweeted as being sold for $4M + equity in the new venture
Here is the press release:
Condo.com and Houses.com, two leading online residential real estate portals, today announced the acquisition of the category domain names: Property.com and Properties.com. Property.com is well-positioned to succeed as the Company’s third real estate portal, differentiated by the additional property types offered within the massive commercial real estate market. In addition to a comprehensive database of residential inventory, the site will showcase office space, retail properties, multi-family buildings, warehouses, industrial space and land from all over the world.
Richard Swerdlow, CEO of Condo.com, Houses.com and now Property.com stated “the acquisition made perfect sense for us. We are now able to leverage our online real estate platform, licensing and team to expand into the broader global commercial property market – including office, retail, industrial and land. It is exciting to have the opportunity to create leading online real estate portals across all property types, satisfying a growing global demand from property owners, buyers and sellers that are increasingly using the web for property searches.” The commercial real estate market is one of the largest asset classes in the United States with over $11 trillion in value and the potential size of the marketing and data services industry for commercial real estate professionals is approximately $30 billion. “We hope to secure market share through the use of our platform and category domain expertise,” he added. The combination doubles the company’s potential market size.
The domains were acquired from Rick Schwartz, an entrepreneur known as the “Domain King” who previously sold Candy.com, iReport.com and other high-trafficked domains, and who also puts on a leading domain name industry trade show. Owning the category domain name provides traffic, enhanced name recall and brand credibility that would otherwise take years to build. Schwartz stated “it was only a matter of time before these domains ended up in the right hands. I am very happy to be partners with the Condo.com and Houses.com team and know that with the proper execution of their plan for the domains, we will have an extremely valuable web asset.” Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The acquisition is well-timed with the momentum in the online real estate market, including Zillow’s (Nasdaq: Z) successful IPO today.
What a great acquisition for this company.
The perfect domain with the perfect company.
Congrats To Rick and the Buyer.
Finally speaking of Zillow (included in the press release above) that stock went public today and had a wild ride
The IPO price was $20.
The first trade was at $45
The stock went as high as $60 then plummeted closing at just over $35 after hitting as low as $32.50
🙂
congrats rick!
imagine his payday when they go ipo with equity in firm as well. not just the 4 million cash!
awesome!
ps rick..one thing you need to tell them is stop running adsense on condo.com and keep there traffic on site.. LOL…
reminds me of target.com and letting the shopper go elsewhere.
strike one from what im seeing on condo.com
CCongrats to Rick,
I’m pretty close with the owner of housesworld homesandrealty and other related names.
Looks like the investment bank who handled the IPO for Zillow priced it too low.
Domain ended up in the right hands. Congrats to Rick S.
In another news: Sexdotcom changed their site into video sharing site.
wow i know the owners well, congrads to the buyers !
I wonder how much equity Schwartz received.
Any guesses?
Hal
With the amount of cash he got for the domains I would say 5% in equity would seem to be the right amount.
Just goes to show that you need to be patient in this industry. I’m sure there was a lot of work involved to come to an agreement. It’s also a matter of timing. What I mean by that is simply that there may not be an end user interested in your domain name this year but perhaps next year when the economy recovers or a company learns more about the benefits of owning a generic domain name.
This sounds like one of the most perfect fits imaginable….Brilliant!
Well done, Rick…Just a terrific deal, by the sound of it…And, an example to us all, because its a great example of how to leverage value from a domain asset by showing how a domain is not simply a web address – a thing to be ‘developed’ – but, an integral part of the core strategy of an organisation….and therefore worth a great deal.
Hi Rick
Can you resell my
SafeCondo.com
SaveCondos.com ??
Real Estate domains are great assets to own. Congratulations to all parties involved, well done.
-Peter
DenverRealEstate.com
DenverHomes.com
DenverRental.com
Rick,
Aren’t you glad you finally got rid of those crappy domains?
Congratulations.
You are the man !!!
so the first buyer of property.com went into default! why because of the wrong execution..the focus was residential not commercial..so the content is king.
in the age of fb, apps, mobil and all other entry points to the consumer here we have an end user that understands the value and aggergated the generic domains together to form a portfolio that exceeds the value of the individual domains.this type of end user is far and few between.ricks residual percentage was between 3-5%
This is great news. And ditto what Doug said above …
“Just goes to show that you need to be patient in this industry.”