TL;DR
CoStar Group will acquire Zonda, the leading new home construction data and market platform, for $800 million in cash. The deal fills the latest gap in CoStar’s real estate data empire, which already spans commercial, multifamily, residential resale and space data through more than 40 acquisitions totaling $7.3 billion.
CoStar Group agreed to acquire Zonda, the leading provider of new home construction data, homebuilder software and residential real estate markets, for $800 million in cash. The deal, announced on ThursdayIt is expected to close in the second half of 2026 and will grow adjusted earnings per share in its first full year.
Zonda serves more than 3,000 clients across the homebuilding ecosystem, including many of the largest residential builders, developers, suppliers and lenders in North America. Its platform covers the entire lifecycle of new home development, from land acquisition and construction forecasting to community marketing and online marketplaces, and tracks more than 500 housing metrics.
Filling the void of new construction
CoStar has spent the last 15 years building what is arguably the most comprehensive real estate information platform in the world. Its CoStar Suite dominates commercial real estate research. Like other data platform operators consolidating their marketsThe company has methodically expanded through acquisitions, completing more than 40 deals for approximately $7.3 billion during that period.
Apartments.com now generates $1.1 billion in annual revenue. Homes.com, the company’s residential brokerage marketplace, has grown its subscribers by 337% since the first quarter of 2024 and claims to be the second-largest and fastest-growing residential real estate marketplace in the United States. CoStar completed its $1.6 billion acquisition of Matterport, the artificial intelligence and 3D digital twins company, in February 2025.
The pattern is clear. CoStar covered commercial real estate through its flagship product, multifamily rentals through Apartments.com, residential resale through Homes.com and Matterport, and the built physical environment through Matterport spatial data. New home construction was the remaining gap. Zonda fills it.
What Zonda really does
Zonda was created through the 2018 merger of Hanley Wood, a B2B information services company serving the U.S. residential construction industry, and Meyers Research, a provider of real-time market data for home builders. Private equity firm MidOcean Partners orchestrated the combination and rebranded it as Zonda in 2020. The $800 million sale to CoStar represents the type of PE exit that has become typical in the SaaS and data platform sectorwhere specialized vertical data companies are created through accruals and sold to larger platforms.
Zonda’s three core products are subscription-based data and intelligence covering the new home market, online marketplaces for new homes in the US and Canada, and a suite of virtual home appraisal software tools including visualization, personalization and tours. The data tracks everything from lot availability and permit activity to pricing trends and community-level absorption rates.
CoStar’s financial situation
CoStar reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of $897 million, up 23% year-over-year, and expects full-year revenue of $3.8 billion, up 18% from 2025. Adjusted EBITDA is projected to reach $770 million, up 83% from 2025 and a margin of 20%. The company has the balance sheet to absorb an $800 million cash deal without significant strain.
The stock, however, has not reflected operational momentum. CoStar Stock Has decreased approximately 49% in the last six monthsa decline driven partly by heavy investment spending at Homes.com and partly by broader market skepticism about the residential business’ profitability timeline. CEO Andy Florance has been buying shares on the open market, purchasing more than 70,000 shares at prices between $34.67 and $36 earlier this year.
The issue of data monopoly
With Zonda, CoStar will maintain dominant or leading data positions in all major segments of the U.S. real estate market. Proptech startups build AI-powered tools Companies engaged in real estate development, valuation or investment will increasingly find that the underlying data they need flows through CoStar pipelines.
That consolidation entails the same dynamics seen in other data platform markets. A single operator controlling an industry’s benchmark data can set prices, shape how participants view their own market, and create switching costs that entrench their position. CoStar’s argument is that integration creates value: Homebuilders using Zonda data will be able to list on Homes.com, track competitor prices through CoStar analytics, and market to renters through Apartments.com, all within one ecosystem.
Whether that integration creates value or simply concentrates pricing power will depend on execution. For now, CoStar has spent $800 million to ensure that the next generation of real estate intelligence It runs on your platform, not someone else’s.
