Gordon Morrell, Yardi's executive vice president and chiefoperating officer, comments in the statement: "PropertyShark'saggregation of real estate data from hundreds of sources into asingle property research website has changed the way real estateinvestors, professionals, and consumers educate themselves and makedecisions about property in hubs like New York and Los Angeles."Morrell says the incorporation of PropertyShark into Yardi'ssystems will expand its service nationally and "provide our clientswith fully integrated access to detailed property information."

Matthew Haines, PropertyShark's founder, started the company in2002 as a means to access "hard-to-reach property information heldby sellers, city agencies and brokers" in order to "make informeddecisions about real estate investments I was considering," Hainessaid. He said that the acquisition by Yardi will benefit "everyoneinvolved in buying, managing, and selling real estate based ontransparent and comprehensive research." Some of the types ofinformation provided by PropertyShark.com includes buildingdetails, ownership information, recent sales prices, propertyvalues and comparable sales, maps, for-sale and for-lease listings,foreclosures and pre-foreclosures, mailing lists, photos, andeducational classes on all aspects of property.

The purchase of PropertyShark follows Yardi's recent acquisition of Waltham,MA-based RentGrow. That acquisition, according to YardiSystems founder Anant Yardi, enabled Yardi to "meet a growingdemand among multifamily housing providers to incorporate creditchecks, rental payment history searches, background checks, andother applicant screening functions into their core propertymanagement system."