CoStar Acquires French Commercial Real Estate Publication Business Immo

The American commercial real estate specialist CoStar has acquired the French business real estate industry publication Business Immo for an undisclosed sum.

Business Immo was founded in 2004 and is described as the leading source of information for the French commercial property market with 300,000 unique monthly visitors, 2,000 subscribers and 100,00 followers across social media.

Commenting on the acquisition, CoStar CEO, Andy Florance said: “We are actively building out our news, information and marketplaces in Europe and France is one of the most important real estate markets in the world with an estimated €40 billion in annual investment transaction value. There is a close intersection of commercial real estate news and information and this connection is very important for CoStar Group, as the value of our news brings people to the platform.

Business Immo delivers outstanding independent news services and has an excellent reputation among brokers, owners, lenders and other real estate market participants. We are looking forward to welcoming the Business Immo team to CoStar Group, including its highly-respected leadership team who will continue to run the business.”

Sandra Roumi, Président Déléguée of Business Immo said: “Our strategy based on news, events and commercial real estate training is a perfect fit with CoStar Group, and together we will pursue growth in our activities with a focus on best-in-class information technology.”

CoStar has been active in Europe for many years and owns portals across three countries (Realla in the UK, Belbex in Spain and BureauxLocaux in France). The company generated $66.5 million of its $1.9 billion in 2021 revenue outside of America.

The latest acquisition follows on from CoStar's purchase of French commercial real estate portal BureauxLocaux.com back in October of 2021. The NASDAQ-listed firm is increasingly targeting M&A opportunities overseas after coming under increased scrutiny domestically from the new FTC administration and failing to secure deals for portal network RentPath and commercial real estate data specialist Core Logic last year.