Skeletons at HomeStore.com

What a tangled web of intrigue at HomeStore.com...I remember when the public offering was made and there was a "lottery" system for allocating shares to members of the NAR. It seems like some were more priveleged than others...take Joe Hanauer for example. He is now the Chairman of the Board of this public company, but in the initial offering he had obtained some shares under his name, but what may not be evident is that one of his companies also obtained a large percentage of the shares. It was not clear to the person on the street that Mr. Hanauer was the controlling person in that company. It appears that this was done to avoid detection of how much stock he actually controlled. In any case, it smells funny...

If you have been reading the real estate industry news lately, you will know that two of the principals of HomeStore from the past have been convicted of major fraud crimes involving the company. Stuart Wolff was just sent to jail, and Peter Tafeen has also been in the news. What you may not know is that HomeStore has paid over $22 Million to these two men to help them with their legal costs! I would think that the shareholders would be up in arms!

In addition, HomeStore has an outstanding obligation to pay to one of our competitors, Cendant, approximately $2.3 Million, plus almost 4 Million shares of HomeStore stock. This is all a result of some behind the scenes monkey-business that resulted in a class-action lawsuit. That lawsuit is not resolved yet.

And so the big news now is that HomeStore has announced that it is changing its company name to Move.com. Funny, though, they announced the name change prior to the shareholders voting on it. I guess Mr. Hanauer may control enough of the stock to name it anything he wants without any other shareholders votes...

If I had been involved in all of these shenanigans, I would want to change my name, too!!!