Inman

More M&A in real estate tech

HomeActions, which helps real estate agents drum up new business by helping them email newsletters to prospects, says its client base will grow to more than 5,000 real estate professionals with the acquisition of Houston, Texas-based ContactDirect.net LLC.

ContactDirect President Dan Davila will join HomeActions as a consultant to help migrate customers to HomeActions Power e-Prospecting System.

Once the deal closes, HomeActions says it will be sending out 4 million newsletters a month on behalf of its clients.

“The acquisition brings an expanded customer base to HomeActions, which our platform can easily manage,” HomeActions CEO Barry Friedman said in a statement.

In November, Florida-based HomeActions announced that it had added new features such as targeting for niche clients and markets, sales lead notices, real-time alerts, in-page support features and social media integration. ContactDirect customers will gain access to those and other features of the platform.

Mergers and acquisitions in the residential real estate sector are hot, and getting hotter. Last year Zillow announced it was buying Trulia, after acquires a number of smaller firms including PostletsHotPadsStreetEasy,RetslyMortechBuyfolio and RentJuice. Realogy bought ZipRealty, and realtor.com operator Move Inc. was snatched up by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Move itself had previously acquired ListHub, Point2’s syndication business, and gobbles up small players like Doorsteps, SocialBiosRelocation.comFiveStreet and TigerLead.