Immobiliare.it Owner Real Web Buys Leading Croatian RE Vertical Crozilla

The Luxembourgish portal operator Real Web has struck a deal to acquire the Croatian real estate vertical Crozilla from its founder Ante Tabak and the German firm Immowelt.

Crozilla was founded in 2006 in what Tabak describes as a "typical garage". The company was later bought out by Immowelt, which subsequently went on to form part of the Axel Springer-owned AVIV Group. Currently, Crozilla mostly competes with horizontal players such as Njuskalo (Styria Group) and Oglasnik (owned by a local publisher).

Terms of the deal were not disclosed by Real Web but a press release did specify that Real Web would take control of both Crozilla.com and sister site Crozilla-Nekretnine.com while AVIV Group would remain the majority shareholder of Digitalni klik, Crozilla's software development offshoot company.

The acquisition strengthens Real Web's position in the Balkans where it owns the Indomio group of portals as well as a majority share of the leading Slovenian real estate portal Nepremicnine. The group also owns and operates Immobiliare in Italy as well as Spitogatos in Greece and Immotop in Luxembourg.

"We are happy to join forces with Crozilla and we are sure that this collaboration will bring great benefits to users and Croatian real estate agencies and users interested in buying a house in Croatia. In fact, we will be able to ensure greater visibility for real estate listings in Croatia, which will be published both on Immobiliare.it in Italy and on Nepremicnine.net in Slovenia", said Silvio Pagliani, co-founder of Immobiliare.it

The acquisition was completed after a revamp of Crozilla's website and the portal will soon be getting a new app for mobile and tablet users according to a press release.