CoStar's Bid To Buy Realtor.com From News Corp Ends With No Deal

CoStar Group's bid to add the company that owns Realtor.com to its real estate data and listings empire has fallen apart.

News Corp announced Tuesday that it "is no longer engaged in discussions" to sell Move Inc. to CoStar. The firms had been in discussions on a deal that would see Move, which controls Realtor.com and several other real estate domains, sold to Bethesda, Maryland-based CoStar for roughly $3B, Bloomberg previously reported.

Neither News Corp nor CoStar, which confirmed on an earnings call Tuesday that the deal was off the table, has provided details on why.

CoStar operates a dominant commercial real estate data platform, and also owns Apartments.com and several other multifamily listing sites. It has acquired Homes.com and Homesnap in recent years as it has looked to increase its portfolio of residential listing platforms. 

This isn't the first acquisition target CoStar has failed to close. Its $700M bid to acquire CoreLogic in 2021 was rejected after CoreLogic cited concerns about antitrust scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC authorized a lawsuit over CoStar's attempt to acquire RentPath in 2020, citing a potential monopoly in the apartment listings sector. Redfin later acquired RentPath instead.

CoStar reported its fourth-quarter earnings after markets closed Tuesday, reporting $124M in quarterly profits and almost $2.2B in revenue over all of 2022. CoStar CEO Andrew Florance said in a statement with the earnings release that after growth in its Homes.com division, the company plans "to increase our residential investments in the year ahead."

CoStar's shares were down nearly 16% in after-hours trading following News Corp's announcement and its earnings release.