CoStar Group Agrees to Buy San Diego Firm

CoStar Group Inc., a major provider of commercial real estate information, will pay $102 million in cash and stock to acquire San Diego-based Comps.com Inc., which collects and distributes comparable building sale information nationwide. Comps.com would operate as a subsidiary of Bethesda, Md.-based CoStar Group. Under the deal, Comps.com shareholders have the option of exchanging each of their shares for $7.50 in cash, or 0.314 CoStar share. The transaction, which is expected to be finalized during the first half of 2000, must be approved by shareholders of both companies. The stock of Comps.com, which was originally called Comps InfoSystems, has been on the decline since the firm went public in May at $15 a share. Comps.com shares remained unchanged at $7.28 in over-the-counter trading.