OnlineMarketplaces reported that back in November that Connells had made an offer to purchase rival Countrywide for £82 million. Countrywide’s board has accepted the offer which will eradicate all of Countrywide’s debts, invest in its technology, branch network, and staff, stabilize and enhance its business to optimize customer, employee, and stakeholder satisfaction.
David Livesey, Connells Group Chief Executive, said:
“Our primary motivation for the acquisition is to invest in and grow the Countrywide business. We believe that we have the right management team, strategy, and investment firepower to work with the talented teams at Countrywide and lead Countrywide into a bright future.”
This is huge. Both companies are juggernauts in the UK, having also played major roles in the development and launch of Rightmove. Both companies list on the major properties portals servicing the UK, including Rightmore and Zoopla. The acquisition can do nothing but improve the experience for agents involved.
Anthony Codling, Twindig, said:
“We believe this is the best result for Countrywide because Connell’s has a tried, tested, and successful management team.
“Connells will focus on an operational turnaround which will be in the best interests of both employees and the business whereas a Private Equity buyer would have focused on a financial turnaround, seeking to maximize financial returns at the point of an exit rather than being committed to the business for the longer term.”
Mexican property portal, Inmuebles24, has launched a survey to find what specifics LATAM homebuyers are looking for when it comes to the purchase of a home. It’s not surprising that the pandemic has shifted consumer behavior in many sectors and real estate wasn’t immune to its own taste of transformation.
In the survey, the platform found that in Latin America, the pandemic has resulted in an uptick of people interested in moving.
The survey has broken it down by country and how many people are interested in changing homes as a result of the pandemic. The three countries with the highest percentage of survey takers looking to move are:
When it comes to how Latin American house-hunters find homes for sale or rent, the survey found that 49% of those surveyed would choose to look for a home through online portals. Of that percentage, Mexicans (40.8%) and Argentinians (59.6%) were the most likely to use online portals.
Other highlights from the survey include:
Those wishing to move in the near future were categorized like this:
Other factors the survey covered revealed that the pandemic has changed the needs a person has when it comes to a home, something that surveys run by real estate companies around the world have also found- bigger houses, office space, and away from metro areas.
As announced in a LinkedIn post yesterday, OLX Europe head, Sergey Gapochenko, has stepped down from his role at the company.
In the post, Gapochenko wrote:
“Today marks the last day of my 7+ year tenure with #olxgroup. It's been an amazing journey where I gave the whole of myself and got even more back.
“My role has been changing in scale and nature over the years. Now I feel like this is the moment for me to cut ropes. I'm taking a break before starting my hopefully next big thing.”
Gapochenko has spent the last seven years dedicated to optimizing OLX Europe as the Head of New Ventures. Before he was promoted to Head of New Ventures, Gapochenko held two prominent positions as General Manager, first as GM Ukraine & Central Asia, which he held for 5 years between 2013 and 2018, then as GM Europe & Central Asia, OLC Markets for a year and seven months.
Gapochenko has deep experience in digital media, having worked for a number of media businesses before joining OLX.
The American rental portal operator RentPath has announced that it is to drop the deal that would have seen rival CoStar buy out the floundering company for some $587 million in the face of an antitrust lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission earlier this month. The all-cash offer would have seen US commercial real estate giant CoStar take on RentPath portals Rent.com and ApartmentGuide.com, a scenario deemed to be detrimental to competition in the rental market as CoStar already owns and operates the rental portals Apartments.com, ApartmentFinder.com and ForRent.com.
While the disintegration of the deal is bad news for CoStar, which has signalled its intent to move further into residential real estate with the purchase of Homesnap earlier in the year, it may yet prove to be catastrophic for RentPath which was in the process of filing for bankruptcy prior to CoStar's offer. The Atlanta based company's bankruptcy plans reportedly remain in place with the backing of lenders and the assistance of an experienced asset management team.
Now that CoStar's takeover bid for RentPath has been foiled, the companies will go back to treating each other as rivals: Yesterday afternoon CoStar-owned rental portal Apartments.com was boldly claiming on LinkedIn that it had surpassed 1 billion users for the year.
It seems that although CoStar's purchase of Homesnap successfully ran the antitrust gauntlet earlier this month, the same antitrust rhetoric coming out of Washington that has been alarming the big silicon valley tech companies recently has been shown to have some teeth. One other deal which CoStar CEO Andy Florance has said his company is keen to get over the line which may also fall foul of the FTC is a mooted takeover of commercial real estate company CoreLogic which, if it went ahead, would see CoStar build on its already formidable position in the commercial sector.
NCOME raises around US$490,000 in a pre-seed funding round led by startup incubator and accelerator, Venture Catalysts, and venture capital fund, PointOne Capital.
Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, Co-Founder and President, Venture Catalysts, and 9Unicorns (which also participated in the round) said:
"NCOME represents the next phase of the industry's exponential growth trajectory and is addressing a massive market white space with its unique service offering.”
NCOME, having launched this year, is an escrow-as-a-service platform that offers its clients a digital escrow service that seamlessly integrates innovative technology together to streamline what is traditionally a conventional process. The startup was developed by two veterans within the fintech and proptech sectors, Vineet K Singh and Ritesh Tiwari. Singh has launched a number of successful businesses within the last two decades and Tiwari has worked with global organizations such as Omnio, Ensygnia, Barclays, and JP Morgan Chase.
Vineet K Singh, Co-founder, NCOME, explained:
“Escrow-as-a-service is a huge, under-served opportunity and we feel privileged to be among the first movers in this space. Our initial traction is outstanding and more importantly industry-agnostic and it vindicates our belief that we are solving a large problem and a large, profitable business can be built in doing so.”
On its participation in the funding round, Archana Priyadarshini, General Partner, PointOne Capital, said:
“We believe NCOME will be democratizing the escrow service, which is very much needed for the gig economy and rise of marketplaces. It will usher in a new era of secure transactions for both buyers and sellers.”
Possibly bolstered by success in the face of a global crisis, Zillow CEO and Co-Founder, Spencer Rascoff, has hinted at two new projects for 2021 in a self-published year-end review. While 2020 has been filled with ups and downs, Rascoff has had a particularly busy year, including startup launches and changing positions on boards of directors.
The projects in question are two new companies where he’s using help from his early-stage venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny Lab, to fund.
Rascoff explained in the review that one of the projects is named Recon and is in partnership with his daughter. The second project, however, is still a secret with a close launch date.
On Recon, Rascoff wrote:
"We're finalizing the v1 product and our launch plans right now, so watch this space for more info and sign up to be invited for early access if you'd like."
The momentum is up as Rascoff spent 2020 launching startups and shifting positions on various boards. He launched media company dot.LA earlier this year, as well as a special purpose acquisition group, and a startup for prospective buyers investing in second and vacation homes, Pacaso. Rascoff started 2020 on the board of Zillow then switched to the board of Palantif Technologies.
More news pertaining to virtual tour popularity spike. Idealista has launched a new service that goes beyond just 3D virtual tours, offering a more complete and personalized experience.
Called Videovista, the service offers both prospective homebuyers and agents alike, a way to virtually tour a property without leaving their office or living room. More than one user can tour a single property at the same time, saving time and scheduling issues for all parties involved.
Luca Frassi, Co-CEO of Idealista Italia told sources:
"Videovisita allows up to 12 connections to be hosted on the platform, so in the case of connections with more people, the number of people involved also increases. So the real estate agent can organize real open houses with potential buyers who visit the property simultaneously and the user to involve professionals to be advised.”
Videovista does more than just facilitate virtual tours, it offers a way to generate customers for agents by differentiating them from competitors by offering a market-first product that is not only technologically advanced but with safety in mind.
Frassi further explained:
"It was obviously born to respond to the need for social distancing due to Covid but our idea is that like many tools that have spread in this period, from video calls to online shopping, it will become a standard because it has been tried and used and used more out of necessity than out of will, but it has convenience and advantages that will make it a tool of normal use.”
This isn’t idealista’s first move towards a more contactless real estate process, as it recently launched a completely digital contract tool in order to promote social distancing while also optimizing its offerings to be simple, efficient, and more convenient.
Zoopla Group (ZPG)’s home products and services comparison division, Red Ventures (RVU), has acquired 100% of Rastreator.com’s portals Penguin Portals and Preminen for 560 million euros. The agreement also affects Confused.com, the ZPG’s first comparator launched in the UK in 2002, Rastreator.com, the French comparator Lelynx.fr, as well as Rastreator.mx.
Penguin Portals and Preminen are part of a global network of financial service comparators in the UK, Spain, France, and Mexico.
With the acquisition of Penguin Portals, RVU will be able to expand its offerings into the insurance sector as Rastreator specializes in insurance. Other specialties include comparisons for telephony, finance, auto, travel, and energy rates.
This is just another example of ZPG moving into tertiary markets to offer better services to its clientele within the real estate industry.
As you may have read in our newsletter, OnlineMarketplaces.com has been undergoing something of an overhaul over the last few months. As part of the revision, we have been going over everything we have written in 2020 and analysing our output to make some changes to how and what we write. The analysis has given us some great insight into what you, our audience, engage with and unsurprisingly stories around mergers and acquisitions seem to be the most popular. With that in mind, we have put together a retrospective of the year according to the most read M&A stories on OnlineMarketplaces over the last 12 months.
April - EMPG Merges with OLX in The Middle East
The deal announced in April saw OLX owned horizontal dubizzle and EMPG owned property vertical Bayut join forces and form a potent market-leading alliance in The UAE. The operation included an investment injection of some $150 into EMPG from OLX and other investors and made the Dubai based business one of the region's first unicorns, a fact that did not go unnoticed among an Emirati press corp keen for a tech success story.
This deal wasn't the last big merger that either party would enter into in 2020. Prosus owned OLX has always been open to pragmatic offers, and the horizontal marketplace giant was busy negotiating a similar deal with Central American market leader Encuentra24 at the same time as the EMPG deal was made public.
May - EMPG Agrees to Acquire Lamudi Global
Another EMPG deal announced at the height of lockdowns across the world, this story saw enormous interest as Lamudi's portals in Indonesia, The Philippines (where it has a claim to be market leader) and Mexico were snapped up by EMPG. Though the deal was hardly a surprise as Lamudi's previous owner Rocket Internet had sold its interests in the Middle East to EMPG 12 months before, it did represent further consolidation of several important and growing markets and gave EMPG a foothold in Latin America.
July - Adevinta Reaches Agreement to Buy eBay Classifieds
Quite simply the biggest classifieds deal ever made, eBay's sale of its classifieds division to Schibsted offshoot Adevinta was not without its twists and turns. There were several interested parties keen to make a deal including Adevinta rival and fellow classifieds giant Prosus / Naspers as well as several of the large VC funds. You can read our deep dive into the deal exploring all the key questions around this $9.2 billion agreement here.
September - APAX Sells idealista for €1.3 Billion
After a frustrating route to IPO for the Southern European market-leading property portal, its majority shareholders APAX Partners put the company up for sale. Although there was reported interest from PropertyGuru backers KKR and Zoopla owner Silver Lake, the eventual €1.3 billion winning bid came from pan-European VC company EQT Partners.
EQT followed up their headline purchase of idealista and its assets in Spain, Portugal and Italy with a subsequent buyout of Italian property portal Casa.it the #3 player in the country in a deal which Casa.it CEO Luca Rossetto told us all about at Property Portal Watch's 2020 European Edition in November.
October - Adevinta Sells Fincaraíz, Avito and Tayara to Frontier Digital Ventures
Having just agreed to acquire eBay Classified for $9.2 billion, Adevinta was always going to need to raise some capital and pare down its expenses and assets. In October the company did just that by divesting from some of its non-core classifieds titles in a deal worth $56 million. For its money, international classifieds operator Frontier Digital Ventures gained leading property portal Fincaraíz in Colombia and leading North African horizontal sites Tayara (Tunisia) and Avito (Morocco).
November - OLX Completes Purchase of Grupo ZAP
Having been agreed at the start of the year, the biggest deal in Brazilian property marketing got long-awaited approval from the country's competition authorities. A merger reportedly worth a little over half a billion dollars, the deal saw the VivaReal and Zap portals allied with the horizontal marketplace site OLX Brazil, a joint venture between Adevinta and Prosus, cementing a seemingly impregnable position of market leadership in the rapidly growing Brazilian market.
November - CoStar Acquires Homesnap for $250 Million
Until 2020 CoStar had been known as a data company which had a leading position in the marketing of commercial property through its specialist portal LoopNet. In November when the company used some of the $745 million it had borrowed earlier in the year to fund the acquisition of Homesnap, any doubts about its intentions to move in on Zillow's turf in the residential market were thoroughly dispelled.
Homesnap works with MLSs across the country to build out public-facing portals for them and in doing so standardise an often haphazard and inconsistent use of data which has traditionally benefitted Zillow. CoStar's CEO Andy Florance has been categoric in his criticism of US residential market leader Zillow and following his company's acquisition of Homesnap gave a forthright interview about CoStar's intentions in the residential market.
The Homesnap deal was not the only interesting buyout CoStar was involved in this year. The Washington based company plunged $587 million into the acquisition of floundering rental portal operator RentPath, a deal which has reportedly run afoul of the Federal Trade Commission. Perhaps even more interestingly, CoStar has been snooping around data company Core Logic and earlier in the year acquired European commercial property data company Emporis.
We're sure there will be many more mergers and acquisitions in the property portal space in 2021. Read all the details around them on OnlineMarketplaces.com.
Tempocasa is betting it all on technology and a younger, more innovative digital future congruent with the company’s philosophy and the brand’s history.
In a move to invest in innovation and the digital transformation of the Italian real estate market, Tempocasa Holding is joining Wikicasa. Wikicasa has officially consolidated four of the biggest real estate groups in the country under its shareholding structure with the addition of Tempocasa.
Valerio Vacca, Tempocasa’s Communication and Marketing Director, stated:
“Tempocasa has decided to invest directly in Wikicasa for two reasons: firstly because we believe it represents technological innovation in the real estate sector; secondly because it is a project that unites the most important real estate groups in Italy with the aim of improving the professionalism of the agents and the experience of the final customer who makes use of professionals.”
Tempocasa’s entry into the capital helps Wikicasa complete its growth plan, adding an important piece to its shareholding structure, already owned by Tree Real Estate Groups (Gabetti, Professionecasa, and Grimaldi), RE/MAZ, and most recently, the Tecnocasa Group.
With this agreement, Tempocasa looks to offer its affiliates a better service and a possible system or network for future professionals to join and tap into.
Pietro Pellizzari, CEO of Wikicasa, explained that the investment helps confirm “the trust of professionals in the Wikicasa project,” and that the agreement will ultimately benefit Italian agencies the most, moving forward.
“Now what makes the difference is no longer being present or not on the web, but the quality and positioning strategy. More and more real estate agents decide to invest in differential tools and projects that enhance the activity carried out by professionals compared to those who are not.”
It's that time of the year when editors look for angles for retrospective pieces on the year that was and speculative articles on what may be to come. This year, for obvious reasons, the content doing the rounds feels a lot more pertinent than usual and several property portals have released articles based on their own search data or that of Google to uncover how home search changed in 2020 and how it may change further in 2021. We've summarised the findings from a few leading property portals' editorial departments to try to find some common themes in search trends from around the world.
The Italian property portal has delved into Google's Trends data for its annual review of search trends. Unsurprisingly they found a massive surge in interest for virtual tours around the time of lockdown as well as a general increase in searches for terms related to an increase in living space such as 'detached' and 'garden'. The portal also registered more searches for properties located away from big cities reflecting a trend seen among many countries' property hunters.
The UK number two portal releases semi-regular articles around its search data trends partly to help its agent customers understand what inventory to go after. This year those agents may be paying special attention to properties with features such as gardens and balconies, search terms which ranked #1 and #8 respectively on Zoopla's 2020 list of most searched features. Also prominent in British house-hunter minds this year have been "secluded" properties (#6 on the list) and "rural" properties (#5). Other terms relating to a desire for increased living space such as "annexe" (#9) and "detached" (#4) also feature in the top ten terms.
The agent-owned property portal has released its findings on its users' search intent in 2020 and the theme of users seeking more space as a reaction to lockdown is prominent. The portal reported an uptick of 78% for those searching for outdoor space with the balcony/terrace tickbox option being particularly popular among users. There has also been a marked increase in the number of searches executed on the portal for land across the country.
Instead of a retrospective, the US market leader gives us an insight into what it believes the most desired features may be in the world of real estate in 2021. The desire for increased space seen elsewhere is present with Zillow editors predicting that homes with a 'backyard oasis' will be a trend in the coming year. Also predicted to be important in the new year are amenities conducive to intergenerational living as people seek to maximise time with relatives by moving in with them as well as 'homecation' amenities such as swimming pools, firepits and a lakeside dock. The most important coming trend according to Zillow however is the so-called 'Zoom-room', as more people work from home the home office is likely to become a must-have for many Americans according to the portal's research.
Whether we see 'Zoom-room' appearing in the lists of portal search filters in the coming year remains to be seen, but clearly there are lessons not only for the portals themselves but for agents and home builders to pay attention to in the demand side data coming from property portals' query data here.
Leading Russian property portal company Cian has signed a deal to acquire regional competitor N1 from media group Hearst Shkulev. The acquisition will strengthen Cian's position in several Russian regions as N1 is an important player in regional cities such as Novosibirsk (where N1 is headquartered), Yekaterinburg and Omsk.
Cian is acquiring a 21-year-old portal company of some 200 employees which boasts, according to its own data, some 2 million monthly users, 50 million page views per month and 1.5 million property listings. The buyout will not have come as a surprise to many in the region, with Cian Director Maxim Melinkov admitting that his company has been keeping an eye on N1 for some time: “We have been watching the N1.ru company for a long time. Now the interests of the buying and selling parties have coincided to a mutual benefit,"
N1's parent company Hearst Shkulev, which in turn is owned by French media giant Lagardere Group, primarily deals in print and online journalism and as recently as November sold its jobs classifieds title Zarplata.ru to HeadHunter Group.
