A lot of high-flying tech firms have launched in greater Boston armed with patented technology, or a good idea and enough talented management that they attract venture investment and -- hopefully -- some customers.

One local firm, Domania.com, aims to help consumers who are wrestling with what is the biggest investment of most people's lives: their home.

The company, which can trace its roots back to 1989, earlier this year changed its name and re-launched its Web site, formerly known as HomePriceCheck.com. It has attracted financing from Internet powerhouse CMGI (Nasdaq: CMGI) by building a business generated from public records of home sales.

The company's site gives home buyers and sellers tools to search and compare home prices using actual records of sale documents.

Its flagship tool, called HomePriceCheck, compares the price of homes in specific geographic areas, such as on a neighborhood block or in a particular town or city.

The Web site also has a tool to estimate the property tax cost to homebuyers, and tax rates for specific towns.

The site essentially gives consumers the tools to conduct research on what the fair market price is on homes, and introduces them to sellers in the process. However, there are no actual classified ads on the site.

Last fall CMGI invested $5 million in the firm, which recently relocated from Cambridge to Soldiers Field Road in Boston to accommodate the firm's growth, said Domania.com board member Guy Bradley, who also a general Partner at Andover, Mass.-based CMGI@Ventures.

Domania.com has grown to 45 employees from three employees since early last summer.

"When CMGI invested in Domania, that gave them the money to really start building their Web presence," said Bradley, who said the site is seeking a second institutional round from outside investors.

The company is generating revenues but Bradley said he could not disclose specific sales figures.

However, since the firm's re-launch last month, page views have increased 500 percent over the site's earlier traffic, according to recent press release issued by the firm.

The company was founded by Cornell Business School classmates Steve Kropper and Francine Rivkin. Kropper serves as Domania.com's president, while Rivkin is chief operating officer.

Originally a telephone-operated home pricing service called INPHO, the firm later partnered with Massachusetts real estate publisher Banker & Tradesman to form HomePriceCheck, and in 1996 the Web site www.homepricecheck.com. At that time, the firm began to cover real estate nationwide.

The firm generates revenues from brokers' fees, or about one-half of one percent of the sale on a new home. The brokers find Domania.com's homebuyers through software on the Web site which monitors browser behavior.

However, the brokers in its network don't cold-call or e-mail homebuyers. The Web site "dynamically" introduces broker offers to buyers through Domania.com, said Bradley.

"(The broker) can tell when people are starting to think about moving," he said.

Domania.com attracted CMGI's attention because of its management team, and the fact founders Kropper and Rivkin had generated distribution agreements with Web portals America Online and Yahoo! Real Estate, among others, "without paying a dime," Bradley said.

"The real estate market is a very large market. These guys had built up a good set of data assets," Bradley said.

CMGI has investments in or owns over 65 Internet firms, among them Navisite (Nasdaq: NAVI) and AltaVista. Its market capitalization today is $18 billion.

Domania.com competes with other online home buying sites, but typically also partners with them because the firm licenses its HomePriceCheck tool, said Bradley.

However, the firm competes directly with Valhalla, N.Y.-based MonsterDaata.com Inc. (OTCBB: MDDC), a similar public-records home sales comparison and content site.

COMPANY: Domania.com Inc.

INDUSTRY: Consumer online real estate content and services.

PRODUCT/SERVICE: HomePriceCheck, an online tool that allows homebuyers to compare prices of homes in a specific geographic location using public records. Also: Value Check, an online tool that estimates the value of a particular home based on historic records; and Property Tax Tools, an online service that allows homebuyers to find out property tax rates, and to estimate the property tax on a particular home.

YEAR FOUNDED: 1989 as INPHO, and later, HomePriceCheck. It was re-launched in February as Domania.com.

MANAGEMENT: President Steven Kropper, Chief Operating Officer Francine Rivkin, board member and General Partner at CMGI@Ventures, Guy Bradley, and board member Douglas Rossback, a senior vice president for electronic commerce at Radian Guaranty Inc., a unit of Radian Group Inc. (NYSE: RDN) and a mortgage insurance lender.

INVESTORS: $5 million in the fall of 1999 from CMGI@Ventures, the investment arm of Andover, Mass.-based CMGI (Nasdaq: CMGI), an Internet holding company.

EMPLOYEES: 45.

FISCAL YEAR REVENUES: Would not disclose.

CUSTOMERS: Homebuyers, real estate brokers and agents, and portal sites interested in those audiences.

PARTNERSHIPS: Yahoo!, America Online (AOL), The Motley Fool, Dow Jones.

COMPETITORS: MonsterDaata.com.

CONTACT: Director of Communications John Stevens at Domania.com, 1360 Soldiers Field Road, Boston, Mass., 02135. Phone: 617-779-2112, 617-779-8996 (fax). Web site: www.domania.com.