Zillow buys the MLS of the Hamptons

HREO will be the yin to StreetEasy's yang, says Susan Daimler

HREO interface
HREO interface

New York City isn’t enough for Zillow — it’s taking on the Hamptons too. Under its StreetEasy subsidiary, the real estate database company acquired prominent Long Island real estate portal Hamptons Real Estate Online, or HREO.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, according to Investopedia.

As part of the acquisition, Zillow will also own software that HREO offers to real estate professionals for listing management and distribution, called RealNet and Open RealNet Exchange.

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HREO and StreetEasy are “intrinsically linked to one another,” StreetEasy general manager Susan Daimler said in a statement. “[T]he Hamptons and NYC. It’s a natural pairing.”

Seattle-based Zillow acquired StreetEasy for $50 million in 2013, and bought out its closest competitor, Trulia.com, for $2.5 billion in 2015, after which its revenue rose by over 300 percent. The company’s stock price jumped 63 percent in the last year, and it turned a profit by the third quarter of 2016.

Zillow coughed up $130 million in June to settle a lawsuit with Move Inc. and the National Association of Realtors, which sued the former over alleged theft of trade secrets after it poached two Move execs in 2014. [Investopedia] — Cathaleen Chen