Florance Highlights "Vast Opportunity" as CoStar Group Acquires Domain for $1.92Bn

CoStar Group has acquired the Australian portal operator Domain Holdings Australia for AUD 3Bn (USD 1.92Bn).

Domain shareholders received a cash payment for their shares, and the company will be delisted from the ASX imminently. Domain shareholders, including majority shareholder Nine Media, overwhelmingly approved the takeover earlier this month.

Andy Florance, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CoStar Group, said:

“Today marks an important milestone as CoStar Group and Domain officially come together to redefine the Australian property market. For too long, agents, buyers and vendors have faced an unbalanced marketplace dominated by an intention to extract value rather than deliver it. Our vision is different. We are building a more compelling user experience at a lower cost—driving greater value for agents, vendors, and buyers alike. We are the agent’s ally, and we will never operate at their expense.

“Agents and vendors are being squeezed by legacy models that raise prices without raising value. That ends here. CoStar Group’s entry into Australia is about creating a sustainable, pro-agent, pro-buyer and pro-vendor marketplace—one that invests in better content, better tools, more traffic, and a superior user experience, while lowering costs. We dismantled market dominance in the U.S. by transforming Homes.com into a true agent-friendly platform, and we are ready to apply that same proven playbook in Australia.”

Jason Pellegrino, President of Domain, said, “This transaction reinforces the strong fundamentals of Domain and represents compelling value for customers. With CoStar Group, we believe Domain will accelerate its ability to deliver innovative solutions and greater opportunities for customers, while maintaining its trusted place in the Australian property market.”

The acquisition will see CoStar, best known as a commercial real estate data specialist in the United States, enter the Australian residential marketplace industry as it continues an aggressive international expansion strategy into markets with well-established market leaders.

CoStar now competes with American giant Zillow, British powerhouse Rightmove, and, as of today, News Corp's REA Group, a runaway market leader in the lucrative Australian market via realestate.com.au.

Backed by the ambitious Florance and billions of dollars in cash, Domain will now undergo a renovation (and potentially the launch of a partner portal, Homes.com.au) to take market share away from realestate.com.au, a business that Florance branded 'vulnerable' due to unsustainable price hikes over the past decade.

"Portals are moving into a place where they don’t think the customer figures into the equation. The customer clearly is being disregarded," said Florance on big-name portals like idealista, Rightmove and REA Group.

"I believe you can compete and grow," Florance told Online Marketplaces in October 2024, while a source revealed that CoStar believes Domain "can be a market leader in Australia" if the business backs Domain with "the necessary investment."

CoStar's entrance into Australia has several purposes. A continent's worth of real estate data, a homebuying audience conditioned to fund the marketing of their own property, a market leader Florance previously described as "unsustainable", and an underperforming rival with major room for growth.

Put into context, Domain made less than 10% as much money as CoStar in the 2023 financial year, the most recent figures available for both companies, and CoStar generated three times as much revenue in its most recent filing (Q2 2025) as Domain did in the entirety of 2023.

CoStar's most recent big-ticket acquisition was the $1.6Bn deal for the digital twin specialist Matterport in March 2025, with the Group confident that it will continue to complete two acquisitions a year for the foreseeable future, "and perhaps some acceleration," according to Florance.

With Australian and British portals snapped up, the question is where CoStar will focus its efforts now.

Internally, the company is already underway with a strategic review targeting the monetisation model of its American residential portal Homes.com, while headlines have been few and far between out of OnTheMarket in the UK. Shareholders would be forgiven for asking to see some movement to take market share away from Rightmove and Zoopla. At the same time, CoStar continues to absorb the innovative but loss-making Matterport.

Domain has been the focus of the Group's headlines in the past few months, but with an aggressive strategy now ready for its next target, challenger portals around the world will be on CoStar's radar, with names including Zoopla and Fotocasa mentioned as potential acquisition targets.