U.S. EXPANDING PROBE OF HOMESTORE.COM.Byline: Robert Monroe Staff Writer THOUSAND OAKS Thousand Oaks, residential city (1990 pop. 104,352), Ventura co., S Calif., in a farm area; inc. 1964. Avocados, citrus, vegetables, strawberries, and nursery products are grown. - The Justice Department is expanding its antitrust Antitrust The antitrust laws apply to virtually all industries and to every level of business, including manufacturing, transportation, distribution, and marketing. They prohibit a variety of practices that restrain trade. investigation of Homestore.com, the country's largest online real estate services site, following the announcement of its planned purchase of a rival, officials confirmed Tuesday. Homestore's dominance of the online real estate listing market had already drawn the attention of federal investigators when it struck the deal with realty realty n. a short form of "real estate." (See: real estate) REALTY. An abstract of real, as distinguished from personalty. Realty relates to lands and tenements, rents or other hereditaments. Vide Real Property. giant Cendant on Oct. 27 to buy the latter's company's Move.com portal. Homestore operates Realtor Realtor In the United States a designation used to describe a member of the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Notes: The term "realtor" is a registered trademark and encompasses agents, brokers and associates who are members of a real-estate firm associated with .com, the official site of the National Association of Realtors The National Association of Realtors (NAR) is made up of residential and commercial realtors who are brokers, salespeople, property managers, appraisers, and counselors, and others working in the real estate industry. , and counts four of the top five real estate sites within its network. Homestore would gain access to the Century 21, ERA and Coldwell Banker franchises controlled by Cendant and add to the 90 percent of all U.S. homes listed on its sites. The deal would be worth nearly $1 billion if approved. ``The antitrust division is looking at the possibility of anticompetitive an·ti·com·pet·i·tive adj. That discourages competition among businesses: anticompetitive foreign trade restrictions. practices in the online real estate industry,'' said Justice Department spokeswoman Gina Talamona. ``We're also looking into a proposed transaction regarding Move.com and Cendant.'' Officials of Thousand Oaks-based Homestore were unavailable to comment on the matter Tuesday. Move.com officials in San Francisco San Francisco (săn frănsĭs`kō), city (1990 pop. 723,959), coextensive with San Francisco co., W Calif., on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which are connected by the strait known as the Golden could not be reached. Kurt Swauger, executive vice president of Agoura Hills-based RealtyOnline Network, said rivals alleging a monopoly on Homestore's part are wrong. Swauger's own aggregate site links Internet Internet Publicly accessible computer network connecting many smaller networks from around the world. It grew out of a U.S. Defense Department program called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), established in 1969 with connections between computers at the visitors to listings posted on several real estate sites. RealtyOnline is in talks with Homestore.com to form a business relationship, Swauger said. ``If you're a direct competitor of Homestore, you're going to view it as a monopoly because it's a direct threat to your model,'' Swauger said. ``Our take is they're blowing it out of proportion.'' Swauger said that the basis of complaints is that Homestore has a control over for-sale listings and other content he doesn't believe it really has. Individual real estate agents and home sellers, wanting maximum exposure, will still list houses for sale and apartments for rent on as many sites as possible. Microsoft spokesman Jim Cullinan said that the Redmond, Wash., company has received a request for information from the Justice Department seeking information, but did not specify the information sought. Microsoft operates Homestore's main competitor, HomeAdvisor.com. Talamona would not confirm that her agency has contacted other real estate sites. Homestore stock closed Tuesday at $38.13, down 88 cents, or 2.2 percent, in moderate trading on the Nasdaq. |
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