Zonda

Zonda is a housing market data, research and media company listed in this directory with Newport Beach, California, as its location and zondahome.com as its official website. It supplies the American and Canadian homebuilding industries with new-home data, analytics, advisory services and trade publications, and operates consumer-facing listings platforms for newly built homes. The company was created in its modern form by the 2018 merger of Hanley Wood, a long-established business-to-business information company for residential construction, with Meyers Research, a provider of real-time housing market data and advisory services, and it adopted the Zonda name in October 2020.

The combined business serves homebuilders, land developers and brokers, mortgage lenders, financial institutions and building product manufacturers. Its stated mission is to advance the home building industry on the belief that better homes produce better lives and stronger communities, and its data and commentary on housing supply, new-home sales and builder sentiment are regularly cited in coverage of the United States housing market.

Origins in Hanley Wood

Zonda's oldest roots lie in Hanley Wood, founded in 1976 by Michael M. Wood and Michael J. Hanley. Hanley Wood grew into the leading business information company serving residential construction, combining trade magazines, data services and events. Its publications included Builder, the official magazine of the National Association of Home Builders, Architect, the official magazine of the American Institute of Architects, as well as titles such as Multifamily Executive, Affordable Housing Finance, Pool and Spa News and the Journal of Light Construction.

The company changed hands several times, including a sale in 2005 to JPMorgan Partners, later CCMP Capital, and it expanded its data operations by acquiring Metrostudy, a housing market research firm, in January 2013. That acquisition signalled the direction the whole business would take: from publishing about housing toward measuring it, market by market and subdivision by subdivision.

The Meyers Research Merger and the Zonda Name

In December 2018 the private equity firm MidOcean Partners acquired Hanley Wood and merged it with Meyers Research, which it had also acquired. Meyers Research brought real-time market data and advisory services for homebuilders, led by Jeff Meyers, who became chief executive of the combined company. The merger joined a media and data business with a research and analytics business that served substantially the same customers.

In October 2020 the combined company rebranded as Zonda, taking a name already used for one of its data products. The new identity organised the business around three pillars: data intelligence, engagement through events and lead generation, and media and awareness through its trade publications. The company explained the change as an effort to align and unify a wide range of acquired businesses and products under a single, data-centred story.

Data and Advisory Services

Zonda's core product is housing data. It tracks new-home communities, lots, sales, pricing and inventory across United States markets, and provides the analytics builders use to decide where to buy land, what to build and how to price it. Its advisory teams support land acquisition, feasibility and portfolio decisions, and its economists and analysts publish research and forecasts on housing demand, supply constraints and the outlook for residential construction.

The company has repeatedly bought firms to deepen that capability. In 2020 it acquired Bird.i, a United Kingdom satellite imagery and artificial intelligence company, later rebranded Zonda Satellite, and Belfiore Real Estate Consulting, a Phoenix-area residential research firm founded in 2006. In 2021 it acquired Urban Analytics, a Canadian multifamily and urban data company, extending its data coverage across Canada.

Media and Publications

Through its Hanley Wood inheritance, Zonda remains a significant trade publisher. Builder, Multifamily Executive and Affordable Housing Finance, among other titles, report on the business of homebuilding, development finance and design, and serve as channels through which the company's research reaches the industry. Its media platforms, events and webinars inform and connect builders, developers and suppliers, and generate the audience relationships that support its data business.

This combination of publisher and data provider is characteristic of modern business information companies: the publications create authority and reach, while the subscription data products create recurring revenue and detailed market knowledge that journalism alone cannot match.

Consumer Listings Platforms

Zonda also faces homebuyers directly. In April 2021 it acquired the Canadian new-home search platform BuzzBuzzHome, renamed Livabl in April 2022. In February 2024 it announced its intention to acquire Builders Digital Experience, operator of NewHomeSource.com, a new construction listing site, a transaction that made Zonda the largest provider of new construction home listings in North America. The company said its listings offering already reached approximately two million home shoppers monthly at the time of the BuzzBuzzHome acquisition.

These platforms list newly built homes and communities, connecting builders who need buyers with shoppers who specifically want new construction, a segment poorly served by general property portals that concentrate on existing homes.

Geographic Scope

Zonda's operations cover the United States and Canada. Its data products follow housing markets across the major metropolitan areas of the United States, and its Canadian acquisitions added both multifamily data and consumer listings coverage in Canadian cities. Its satellite imagery capability, acquired from a British company, is a technology asset applied to its North American housing data rather than a separate consumer business.

The company is listed in this directory with Newport Beach, California, a Southern California location consistent with the West Coast roots of Meyers Research and with the concentration of homebuilding and land development activity in the region.

Clients and Audience

Zonda serves a diverse cross-category audience within housing. Production homebuilders and smaller regional builders use its data to plan communities. Land brokers and developers use it to value and position land. Mortgage lenders and other financial institutions use it to understand local market risk and opportunity. Building product manufacturers use it to forecast demand for materials and fixtures. Multifamily developers and investors use its apartment and urban data for the rental side of the market.

Because these audiences overlap, the company's model is to give shared clients a single route into housing data and information, combining subscription databases, advisory relationships, events and publications under one roof.

Digital Presence

Zonda's digital presence centres on zondahome.com, which presents its data products, advisory services, research and media brands, and on its consumer listings sites, Livabl and NewHomeSource.com, which serve home shoppers. Its publications operate their own established websites, including Builder's online edition, through which Zonda research and housing commentary reach a wide professional readership. The company also distributes findings through professional social channels and industry webinars.

Ownership and Significance

Zonda was assembled and owned by MidOcean Partners, which maintained a long-standing focus on business-to-business information services. In May 2026 it was announced that Zonda would be acquired by CoStar Group for 800 million dollars, in a transaction bringing its homebuilding information platform and NewHomeSource.com into CoStar's real estate portfolio, with CoStar stating its intention to create richer digital experiences for builders and consumers in marketing and discovering new construction homes.

Whatever its ownership, Zonda's significance lies in its position astride the data of the new-home market. Housing supply is one of the most consequential economic questions in the United States, and the company that tracks, at community level, what is being built, where, and at what price holds information that builders, lenders, policymakers and journalists all need. Zonda built that position by fusing a venerable trade publisher with modern data businesses, and its figures and forecasts have become part of the standard evidence in debates about America's housing shortage.