Homestore to Sell Credit Unit for $130 Million

Homestore.com, the leading home-sale listings provider on the Web, announced Tuesday that it has agreed to sell ConsumerInfo .com, its online consumer credit-reporting division, to credit-checking company Experian for $130 million in cash.

Experian, based in the United Kingdom and Orange, Calif., sells access to personal credit reports and advice on managing credit and debt, and has annual sales of $1.5billion. It is a subsidiary of GUS, Europe’s biggest catalog-shopping company.

Experian said it hopes to expand its American presence by purchasing ConsumerInfo.com, the biggest U.S. supplier of online credit reports. Established in 1995, the company has provided credit reports to more than 2 million customers. Its membership swelled to 778,000, from 492,000 a year ago.

The ConsumerInfo.com sale comes at a pivotal time for Westlake Village-based Homestore, which last week announced that it had improperly recorded $41.4 million of revenue in 2000. The restatement caused its loss for that year to balloon 27%, the firm said.

Homestore shares closed at $1.96 on Nasdaq, up 46 cents, after the news was announced. They had dropped 93% in the last year.

The company expects to be generating positive cash flow from operations by the end of the year, a spokeswoman said. Homestore continues to earn revenue from advertising and subscription fees.

The sale also is consistent with Homestore’s objective of concentrating on its “core constituents,” primarily agents, brokers and home builders.

“This transaction divests Homestore of a business that is not central to our real estate focus,” the company said.

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Bloomberg News was used in compiling this report.