realestate.com.au Ltd Acquires atHome Real Estate Websites in Luxembourg, France, Belgium and Germany

Today the REA Group (realestate.com.au Ltd, ASX:REA, and its subsidiary companies) announced the signing of its third European acquisition in 14 months, the atHome group of real estate sites for 4.5 million euros (AU$7.5 million).

atHome operates five real estate sites covering Luxembourg (residential and commercial sites), the Wallonie region of Belgium, the Lorraine region of France, and the Trier region of Germany. Over 500 agents use the sites; the business is profitable and is rapidly growing.

“The acquisition of the atHome group of sites continues to build out our European operations by providing the REA Group with a presence in four new markets,” said Simon Baker, Managing Director of the REA Group. “The high quality of the local management team is an attractive element of this acquisition.”

Baker said the REA Group will work with atHome’s management team to solidify its market-leading position in Luxembourg and to continue to drive its expansion into Belgium, and selected regions of France and Germany.


KEY COMPONENTS:
Key components of the acquisition include:

* * *atHome.lu: The largest real estate website (traffic measured by CIM) in Luxembourg and one of that country’s 10 top websites of any category by traffic.

* * *atOffice.lu: A real estate portal for Luxembourg’s commercial real estate market.

* * *atHome.be: Launched in September 2005, this site is the second most popular site in the south of Belgium, which borders Luxembourg.

* * *atHomeLorraine.fr: Launched in October 2004, this is the leading real estate website for the North Lorraine region of France, which borders Luxembourg.

* * *atHome54.de: Launched in April 2006, this site targets the area around Trier, Germany, from whose postal code it derives the 54 in its name.

* * *51% equity stake in Altowin, a leading provider of office management tools for real estate agents in the Belgium market.

In addition, atHome also partners with RTL (Radio Television Luxembourg) to provide real estate television and radio programming in Luxembourg.


RECORD TRAFFIC
This news comes on top of the REA Group's record month in January, with 6.8 million unique visitors to its network of real estate websites.


ABOUT THE REA GROUP/realestate.com.au Ltd
realestate.com.au Limited (ASX:REA) and its subsidiary companies, known as the REA Group, make up a global online real estate advertising company head quartered in Melbourne, Australia. The company operates realestate.com.au, realcommercial.com.au and propertylook.com.au in Australia; propertyfinder.com and the London Property News in the UK; and allrealestate.co.nz, realcommercial.co.nz and propertylook.co.nz in New Zealand. Also, on completion of the REA Group’s latest acquisition of Italian website casa.it (anticipated to occur in February 2007) it will operate the market leading residential website in Italy. The REA Group's businesses also include estate agent office management tools and web design services, mortgage brokering, and real estate print publishing. The REA Group had revenues of AUD$61m in FY 2006, is used by more than 12,000 agents, has approximately 6.8m unique visitors per month (Nielsen NetRatings, Omniture), is profitable and has a current market capitalization of more than A$680m. As a listed company, realestate.com.au operates as an independent entity.


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