Realogy Makes a Deal
The hobbled real estate and relocation services provider, even after getting downgraded, makes a consolidation play.
January 22, 2010
Realogy Corp., the New Jersey-based, privately-held provider of real estate and relocation services, bought Primacy Relocation, a similar firm based in Memphis, Tennessee, for its subsidiary Cartus Corp.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed and a company representative declined to comment on any future dealmaking plans.
Primacy has 700 employees in 25 offices globally; Matt Spinolo, who has served as the company’s chief executive for the last 10 years, will join Cartus and work under Kevin Kelleher, Cartus’ president and CEO.
Cartus is based in Connecticut and has 2,500 employees globally. Realoty’s other brands include Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, Century 21, Coldwell Banker, the Corcoran Group and Sotheby’s International Realty, among others.
The Standard & Poor’s rating service assigned a C to Realogy Corp.’s proposed $475 million second-lien term facility loan due in 2014. Icahn Partners controls $150 million of that loan, which was exchanged for $218 million in senior toggle notes. The company itself has a negative outlook and a rating of CC with S&P; an analyst with the ratings service said its exchange was “tantamount to default given the distressed financial condition of the company.”
A Realogy representative declined to say what he thought the deal’s effect on the company’s credit rating would be.
Lately, real estate and REIT plays have increasingly surfaced as market prognosticators have been eager to believe many property markets hard hit by the recession have hit a bottom.
Other recent real estate deals includes PE firm Stephens Group's partnering with Buyers Protection Group to buy LandAmerica Financial Group; Oaktree Capital Management also launched in 2009 a lending unit to finance residential real estate developments.
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