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Chicago, and Emeryville, CA, (July 1) /PRNewswire/ -- Classified Ventures, a strategic joint venture owned by six leading media companies including Belo Corp. (NYSE: BLC - News), Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI - News), Knight Ridder (NYSE: KRI - News), The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI - News), Tribune Company (NYSE: TRB - News) and The Washington Post Company (NYSE: WPO - News), today announced that it has acquired privately-held HomeGain, Inc., a leading firm in the online real estate marketplace. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
HomeGain is a premier online lead and real estate marketing resource, providing consumers with direct access to top-rated real estate professionals, while giving agents and brokers the products and tools to conduct and manage their online marketing. Richard Sommer will continue to serve as CEO of HomeGain and will also become president and general manager of Classified Ventures' real estate vertical, overseeing the operations of HomeGain and Homescape, a current Classified Ventures property.
"By joining forces with Classified Ventures, HomeGain adds a powerful marketing and business partner to help accelerate its growth and deliver more value and innovation to consumers, agents and brokers," stated Sommer. "This combination will position HomeGain for market leadership in the online real estate marketing industry."
"Classified Ventures' acquisition of HomeGain expands our product offerings in the online real estate category," added Daniel Jauernig, president and chief executive officer, Classified Ventures. "HomeGain's strong management team, broad product suite and established presence in the market make it a perfect fit with our strategic objectives."
"HomeGain is joining with some of the foremost publishing brands at an exciting point in the evolution of the real estate industry," said Bradley Inman, HomeGain founder and publisher of Inman News. "HomeGain is the story of a successful start-up Internet company that survived the dotcom bust and thrives today. When launched, HomeGain offered referral-fee services to Realtors but has evolved into a marketing-based pay-per-click model for the entire real estate industry. This gives agents and brokers a compelling marketing advantage on the Internet, as more than three quarters of all home buyers start their search on the Web."
HomeGain will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Classified Ventures and will retain its headquarters in Emeryville, California.
About Classified Ventures
Classified Ventures is a strategic joint venture among six media companies whose objectives are to collectively capitalize on the revenue growth in the online advertising categories of real estate, automotive and rentals. To execute on its objectives, Classified Ventures has created three leading businesses -- Homescape, Cars.com and Apartments.com. Homescape delivers online real estate solutions to a network of over 150 newspapers.
About HomeGain
Established in 1999, HomeGain is the definitive source for Online Real Estate Marketing. It's the place where buyers and sellers are connected to agents and brokers, where online leads are turned into record-breaking sales. Agents and brokers can leverage the Internet to conduct the business of real estate with a wide variety of products and services that let them create customized online marketing solutions that meet the varying needs of their business. With four million visitors a month and more than 300 partnerships, including Yahoo!, Google, MSN, AOL, CNNfn, CitySearch, Fox News, and more, HomeGain is one of the leading online lead and marketing resources for the industry. Visit www.homegain.com
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