Better Homes Real Estate
To Be Revived by Realogy

Realogy Corp., which owns the Coldwell Banker and Century 21 real-estate brands, plans to relaunch another brokerage chain called Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate.

Realogy, Parsippany, N.J., said it has reached a 50-year agreement to license the Better Homes and Gardens brand name from Meredith Corp., a publisher in Des Moines, Iowa, that produces the magazine of the same name. Terms weren't disclosed.

Realogy, owned by the private-equity firm Apollo Management LP, intends to seek franchisees for the Better Homes real-estate brand nationwide and expects that offices under that name will begin opening in mid-2008.

The plan marks a return of a brand well-known in the real-estate industry from 1978, when Meredith created a Better Homes brokerage chain, until the late 1990s, when General Motors Acceptance Corp., then a unit of General Motors Corp., acquired the chain and changed the name to GMAC Real Estate.

The Better Homes brand, resting on the wholesome reputation of a magazine that dates back to 1924, is attractive because it is "so deeply tied to the concept of owning and improving one's home," Realogy said.

Richard A. Smith, Realogy's vice chairman and president, said plans for the chain show that the company is "looking beyond" the current slump in home sales and preparing for an eventual rebound. He said the Better Homes brand should help fuel Realogy's long-term growth.

As part of the agreement, Realogy plans to tap into Meredith's consumer database, which includes 85 million names, for marketing the Better Home brand.

The agreement marks the second time in four years that Realogy has licensed a brand to create a brokerage network. In February 2004, Realogy began licensing the Sotheby's International Realty name from Sotheby's Holdings Inc., an auction company.

Although Realogy already owns two of the best-known U.S. real-estate brands in Century 21 and Coldwell Banker, Mr. Smith argued that adding more brands to the roster makes sense. He cited a report by the National Association of Realtors that about three-quarters of all residential real-estate brokerage firms aren't affiliated with any franchise.

Before the Better Homes chain was sold in 1998, it had 1,500 offices in the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico and elsewhere. Realogy and its franchisees currently have about 15,000 real-estate offices world-wide.

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