CoStar Group, a commercial real estate data and analytics firm, announced Wednesday it’s purchasing Ten-X, the company behind real estate auction platform auction.com and its accompanying commercial auction platform ten-x.com. The sale is for $190 million in cash.
“Together, Ten-X and CoStar plan to create a new end-to-end commercial real estate platform, combining LoopNet and CoStar’s unmatched online audience of buyers with Ten-X’s clear leadership in online auctions for both performing and distressed assets,” CoStar Group CEO Andrew Florance said in a statement.
In a statement, Florance said he believes a surge of distressed properties will hit the market and that the company’s combined platform will support the market’s recovery.
“Combining our complementary capabilities is expected to create significant benefits for brokers and the institutions they represent by exposing their properties for sale to the biggest pool of potential bidders on the most trusted digital transaction platform and delivering fast and reliable trade execution,” Florance said.
Ten-X was launched in 2009 — as the last recession tore through the housing market — with a goal to provide a platform for liquidating the large volume of commercial real estate assets that came on the market. The platform has since evolved in one of the industry leaders for digital commercial real estate transactions, facilitating roughly $24 billion in sales.
CoStar operates two heavily trafficked online marketplaces for commercial properties and land lease and sale, LoopNet.com and CoStar.com. Together, the websites draw approximately 10 million in transactions.
After the sale, CoStar plans to integrate Ten-X’s platform into its own websites.
“Today, only 1 percent of all commercial real estate sales transactions take place online,” Steve Jacobs, CEO of Ten-X, said in a statement. “Just like CoStar Group, we are focused on driving volume and efficiency and have devoted ourselves to addressing the massive, untapped demand for digital commercial real estate solutions.”
“We see significant demand for a one-stop shop platform that provides solutions across the entire transaction continuum and we are delighted to combine our complementary capabilities and strengths with CoStar to meet that demand.”
