Online ad marketplace Reply.com Inc. has acquired HomeGain Inc., a provider of leads and marketing solutions to real estate agents, from Classified Ventures LLC.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
HomeGain’s home-valuation tool, which predated Zillow’s, made HomeGain.com a popular destination for consumers, although the listings site is no longer ranked among the top 20 real estate sites by Experian Hitwise.
Reply.com’s online marketplace allows users to buy or sell online ad campaigns, setting filters for price and volume. Reply.com owns and operates destination sites including iMotors.com, Contractors.com and MerchantCircle.com.
“We are thrilled to be adding HomeGain advertisers and consumers to our marketplace,” said Payam Zamani, founder and CEO of Reply.com, in a statement. “Their brand is well-known in the real estate industry; they have long-standing relationships with many publishers; and they have a loyal following of real estate agents and brokers. We look forward to building on that foundation and growing HomeGain significantly in the future.”
HomeGain Chairman Dan Jauernig, who is also the CEO of Classified Ventures, called Reply.com “the perfect place for HomeGain to thrive in the future.”
Last month Reply.com said it had reached more than 1 million advertising auctions per day, and hired Chris Mancini as chief marketing officer.
HomeGain was founded in 1999 by Inman News Publisher Brad Inman, who sold the company to Classified Ventures in July 2005. Classified Ventures operates Cars.com and Apartments.com, among others in the auto and rentals space.
Inman News General Manager David Stein is a veteran of both HomeGain and Reply.com. Before becoming general manager of Inman News in January, Stein worked with Inman at HomeGain and TurnHere, and most recently was Reply.com’s vice president, real estate.