Responding to its vast growth, HomeAway Inc., the Austin-based online marketplace for vacation rentals, announced July 9 that it will be building its fourth permanent Austin office at The Domain.

The new office will be in a five-story, 114,665-square-foot building known as Domain 2 and will be located at 11800 Domain Blvd., across from the Whole Foods Market slated to open this fall. HomeAway plans to move into the building in the second half of 2014, and the company signed an 11-year lease, according to a news release.

HomeAway has 1,300 employees worldwide, a 167 percent increase since 2010. The company saw a 34 percent increase in employees in Austin to more than 650 since March 2012, according to a news release.

The company's headquarters is in downtown Austin at Fifth Street and Lamar Boulevard where it has a second office near the same intersection. Its third office is located in the Penfield Complex on South Congress Avenue, and in early 2012, HomeAway signed an 18-month lease for a temporary space in the Research Park Plaza center at 12301 Research Blvd.

HomeAway Public Relations Specialist Jordan Hoefar said the company will move operations from the Research Park office to The Domain when the new building is completed.

Co-founder and CEO Brian Sharples asked employees where in Austin the new office should be located, and The Domain area won, Hoefar said. Being in proximity to the new Whole Foods that is opening in the fall was also a factor, he said.

"It will provide a great environment for the employees," Hoefar said.

Other similarities to the downtown headquarters are that the new office will have retail on the first floor, and HomeAway will occupy the remaining four floors. The building will have the capacity to hold 750 employees and will have a similar fun travel theme that the other offices have incorporated, Hoefar said.

Domain office buildings

Construction began on the Domain 2 building the first week of July, said Chad Marsh, a principal with Endeavor Real Estate Group, which planned and designed The Domain. Domain 2 will be directly across the street from another office building, Domain 1, that is still in the works.

Marsh said Endeavor also plans to begin construction in the next 30 days on another office building, Domain 7, which will be located on Burnet Road north of Esperanza Crossing. That building will have six stories and 222,000 square feet of space. Marsh said that no tenants have signed on yet.

An existing office building, Domain 6, or Domain Gateway, at 2900 Esperanza Crossing will be vacated soon after an announcement from OneWest Bank that it will be laying off all 725 employees out of that facility starting Aug. 31. That building, which has five stories and is 174,000 square feet in size, is owned by KBS Realty, which is based in Newport Beach, Calif.