CoStar to buy Zonda from MidOcean Partners

Private equity firm MidOcean Partners has signed a definitive agreement to sell Bora Inc. and its subsidiaries, known as Zonda, to CoStar Group, according to a company announcement on Friday.

Zonda is a North America-focused data, marketplace and software platform built around the new-home ecosystem. Its products span land discovery, homebuilding, home discovery and homebuying and are delivered through three main offerings: subscription-based data and intelligence that cover more than 500 housing metrics across North America, new-home marketplaces in the U.S. and Canada, and a suite of software tools for virtual home evaluation including visualization, customization and tours.

During MidOcean’s ownership, Zonda completed nine add-on acquisitions, expanded its geographic coverage and invested in proprietary and patented AI-driven data collection and workflow tools, the firm said. MidOcean reported that Zonda more than doubled in scale, materially expanded margins and delivered more than 50 consecutive quarters of year-over-year annual recurring revenue growth across multiple housing cycles.

CoStar Group, which has built a dominant position in commercial real estate data and online marketplaces, has been expanding further into residential. Adding Zonda’s builder-focused datasets, marketplaces such as NewHomeSource and Livabl, and its workflow software could deepen CoStar’s presence on the new-home side of the business and eventually give lenders and real estate agents more granular insight into pipeline supply, especially in fast-growing Sun Belt and exurban markets.

Sara Badham, a managing director at MidOcean, said in the announcement that the firm and Zonda’s management team sought to build “the preeminent platform for data, insights and technology across the residential housing ecosystem” and backed that strategy with investments in acquisitions, technology, product and talent.

Jeff Meyers, founder and CEO of Zonda, said MidOcean’s “strategic insight, operational support, and capital partnership were instrumental in transforming Zonda into the platform it is today” and added that Zonda expects to “continue to deliver exceptional value” to customers as part of CoStar’s larger platform.

Houlihan Lokey Capital served as lead financial advisor to MidOcean and Solomon Partners Securities also advised the company. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher was MidOcean’s legal counsel. Financial terms of the transaction and an expected closing timeline were not disclosed in the announcement.

This article was written by Brooklee Han and generated with the assistance of HousingWire Automation, then reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.