Joseph Shew, who joined the company as CFO only in February, abruptly resigned yesterday. Shew was unavailable for comment today, and a Homestore.com spokesman would say he left only for "personal reasons."

Though Homestore.com offers a limited amount of investment-property listings, it was primarily formed about four years ago to market homes and residential real estate services over the worldwide web. It quickly garnered about 95% of all US home listings, thanks partly to its ties to the National Association of Realtors and the National Association of Home Builders–the two largest trade groups involved in America's residential real estate market.

The company was still reporting strong revenue growth earlier this year, even as many other real estate web sites continued to cut back or had already gone out of business. In fact, some analysts say, Homestore.com actually benefited from the consolidation because it eliminated many of the company's competitors while also allowing the firm to pick up those with the brightest outlooks for pennies on a dollar.