CoStar Group to Acquire Zonda

Acquisition adds the home building industry's leading B2B information platform and brings NewHomeSource.com into CoStar Group's family of marketplaces.

3 MIN READ

CoStar Group announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Zonda, BUILDER’s parent company, for $800 million in cash.

Zonda serves more than 3,000 customers across the home building ecosystem, including many of the largest residential builders, developers, suppliers, and lenders in North America. Its platform delivers end-to-end solutions spanning land acquisition, development planning, home building analytics, construction forecasting, community marketing, operational workflow management, and online new-home marketplaces. Zonda is an attractive B2B business with strong profit margins. The majority of its revenue is subscription-based, with an impressive 104% net customer retention.

At the core of Zonda is a proprietary, lot-level database covering new-home communities, land development activity, construction status, home sales, and builder operations. This data and the software built around it are deeply embedded in builder workflows and are widely used to support underwriting, land strategy, capital allocation, development planning, forecasting, and sales operations across the industry.

Zonda also operates NewHomeSource and Livabl, two leading online new-home marketplaces in the United States and Canada. Top home builders contribute listings directly to these marketplaces, giving buyers broad visibility into new-home inventory across the development ecosystem. Zonda’s platforms offer comprehensive listing experiences—including floor plans, virtual tours, pricing, incentives, and community details—designed to guide buyers from early research through purchase. Because these marketplaces feature new construction exclusively, they give builders highly targeted consumer marketing, lead generation, and merchandising—uncluttered by resale inventory.

According to the Census, the annual value of new residential construction in the U.S. approaches $1 trillion—a market materially larger than the annual rent rolls of the institutional apartment and office sectors that CoStar Group has so successfully monetized.

CoStar Group believes Zonda’s builder relationships, workflow integrations, marketplace platforms, and market intelligence will create meaningful cross-sell opportunities across the company’s commercial, residential, multifamily, lending, and analytics businesses.

The acquisition will also pair Zonda’s Envision visualization and digital merchandising capabilities with Matterport’s industry-leading spatial technology. Together, they will create richer digital experiences for builders and consumers and improve how new construction homes are marketed, visualized, and discovered online.

“Zonda has built an extraordinary business with deep relationships across the home building industry and one of the most valuable proprietary datasets in new home real estate,” said Andy Florance, founder and CEO of CoStar Group. “This acquisition extends CoStar Group’s leadership into a major new segment of the real estate industry and strengthens our ability to provide clients with comprehensive information solutions across every major real estate segment. We believe the combination will deliver deeper insights, workflow efficiencies, and analytics to the home building industry, while strengthening our core information offerings and significantly expanding our new-home marketplace capabilities.”

The acquisition is expected to be accretive to adjusted EPS in the first full year of ownership and to close in the second half of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions and required regulatory approvals.

BofA Securities is serving as financial advisor and Latham & Watkins LLP is serving as legal advisor to CoStar Group.
 

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