| Online auctioneer eBay Inc. has acquired HomesDirect.com, a company that specializes in the sale of foreclosed properties. The Pasadena-based HomesDirect, was majority-owned by the venture-capital firm Idealab.
In 2000, HomesDirect sold 116,000 pieces of property, which were foreclosures backed by Housing & Urban Development loans and a majority of the Veterans Administration foreclosed properties.
eBay’s real estate category has grown since its launch in August 2000 and the Web site now sells a piece of real estate every 30 to 60 minutes or about 25 a day.
Plans are to keep HomesDirect as a separate Web site, but it will provide links to the foreclosure listings from eBay’s real-estate category.
HomesDirect says it sold 130,000 homes through its Web site in 2000. In total, the company says the properties it sold during that period were valued at about $9 billion. The company receives a flat listing fee for most of its property sales, not a commission based on the final value of the transaction. | 
