By Shaina Mishkin
Retailer Bed Bath & Beyond is buying a real estate brokerage.
At first glance, the home goods retailer's purchase of Fathom Holdings, a brokerage with shares that closed at 63 cents on Tuesday, is as confusing as that tongue twister. But the former Overstock is making good on a strategy its CEO detailed in February to transform the home goods retailer, which took on the Bed Bath & Beyond name after the latter's bankruptcy, into a one-stop shopping for homeownership.
Time will tell the viability of the strategy. Other companies billing themselves as a start-to-finish housing tool have had a rough year in light of a still-struggling housing market and the threat of industry and tech disruption.
The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2026, the companies said in Wednesday morning releases. It implies a $53.38 million equity value for Fathom, the company wrote in SEC filings.
The acquisition will "complement Bed Bath & Beyond's Everything Home strategy and accelerate the company's vision to create the nation's first end-to-end homeownership platform," the company wrote in a release.
"People buy homes from one company, finance them through another, furnish them through a third and renovate them with someone else," Bed Bath & Beyond CEO Marcus Lemonis said in a statement.
Through the Fathom purchase and other acquisitions, "we believe these capabilities will operate seamlessly within neighborhoods across the country, enabling us to serve homeowners in more intelligent, connected and meaningful ways."
Bed Bath & Beyond was down 3.1% in afternoon trading after the announcement, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Fathom was 79% higher.
Today's Bed Bath & Beyond isn't the one of yesterday's big box stores and paper coupons. After Bed Bath & Beyond filed for bankruptcy in 2023, home goods chain Overstock.com acquired its intellectual property and later rebranded itself.
In its 2025 annual report, Fathom, which offers brokerage, mortgage, and title services, said it had approximately 14,135 agent licenses. The majority of the $420 million in revenue it reported derived from its real estate brokerage operations, with additional revenue from its mortgage and title businesses. It reported a $20 million loss.
Fathom went public in July 2020 at $10. It operates a "cloud-based brokerage," meaning it doesn't have brokerage offices. It uses its own technology to manage its brokerage operations.
Through one lens, the deal is just another deal in the housing space during the continuing lull in sales. Larger deals in recent years have included Berkshire Hathaway's takeover of the public home builder Taylor Morrison, the brokerage Compass's purchase of Anywhere, and mortgage originator Rocket's deals for both the brokerage Redfin and mortgage servicer Mr. Cooper.
Through another, it's a perplexing time to break into the existing-home sale market. Other companies that have in recent years broadened their purview to stretch across multiple pillars of the real estate ecosystem have not been rewarded by investors this year.
Zillow Group, which calls itself the "housing super app" and offers agent marketing and technology, rental listings , and mortgage products, is down 53% this year as of afternoon trading Wednesday. CoStar Group, the commercial software and data giant that is growing its for-sale Homes.com home search portal, is down roughly 55%. Rocket is down 33%.
The macroeconomic outlook isn't helping. Home sales this spring remained at low levels while mortgage rates remained lodged above 6% for most of the year. The Mortgage Bankers Association, an industry group that publishes monthly forecasts, expects mortgage rates will remain stuck around 6.5% through 2028. A rise in the 10-year Treasury yield, a mortgage rate indicator, was pressuring stocks in the industry after Wednesday's Federal Open Market Committee statement and press conference.
As companies linked to housing wait out the market, they are also contending with threats from tech. Artificial-intelligence fears shook real estate services stocks along with the broader market earlier this year. Google's recent announcement that it would expand its home listing ads at the top of mobile search results didn't help.
Bed Bath & Beyond's transformation is just beginning. "Unfortunately, I don't have much to say about it, as BBBY has no history in the space," Alicia Reese, who covers Bed Bath & Beyond at Wedbush, wrote in an email to Barron's. "The company has only recently begun outlining its 'Everything Home' vision, and this Fathom acquisition aligns with it but is only an early step in that overall vision."
Write to Shaina Mishkin at shaina.mishkin@dowjones.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 17, 2026 16:00 ET (20:00 GMT)
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