CoStar Group Acquires UK’s largest commercial property marketplace Realla
LONDON, 11 Oct 2018/ CoStar Group, the leading global provider of commercial real estate information, analytics and online marketplaces has announced its acquisition of Realla, the UK’s largest public portal specialised in commercial property.
CoStar is the world leader in operating digital CRE marketplaces, and attracts 40 million unique visitors a month across its North American and European websites. The CoStar network includes LoopNet.com, the number one commercial property marketplace and Apartments.com, the number one apartment marketing site. Over the past 5 years CoStar Group has invested billions of dollars into building the world’s leading online property marketplaces, generating hundreds of millions of leads resulting in millions of successful commercial property transactions for our clients.
In the UK, the industry’s need for effective, sector-specific web marketing remains unmet, because most portals primarily serve the residential space, and are not positioned to showcase commercial property effectively.
This acquisition is strategic for CoStar. Not only has Realla been extremely successful at creating the UK’s largest commercial property-specific listings platform, with good brand recognition and excellent traffic, it has also developed a wealth of expertise in capturing listings data in other European markets, which fits well with CoStar’s pan European expansion strategy.
With a single point of data entry, we plan to allow clients to expose their listings to the largest audience of CRE professionals inside the CoStar product and also make them visible to almost a million tenants and investors on the web via Realla. This means agents and landlords can cover more bases efficiently, with a one-stop solution.
“Across the world, marketing commercial properties is moving to digital marketplaces, away from wood-based products like magazines, flyers, and boards” said Andrew C. Florance, CoStar Group founder and Chief Executive Officer. “Realla is the UK’s most comprehensive commercial property digital marketplace - and when combined with the CoStar information solution it is expected to offer the best of tools for marketing properties, valuations and facilitating transactions.
Andrew Miles, Realla’s CEO added: “We are excited to become part of the CoStar Group. We believe this will enable Realla to accelerate its growth, supported by the terrific resources of CoStar. We believe we can build the single most effective marketing solution for the UK property industry. The commercial property sector deserves a high quality sector-specific online marketplace to better serve agents and owners.”
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About CoStar Group, Inc.
CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGP) is the leading provider of commercial real estate information, analytics and online marketplaces. Founded in 1987, CoStar conducts expansive, ongoing research to produce and maintain the largest and most comprehensive database of commercial real estate information. CoStar is ranked by Fortune as one of the 100 fastest growing companies in the world. Forbes ranks CoStar as one of the 20 most innovative companies in the world. Our suite of online services enables clients to analyze, interpret and gain unmatched insight on commercial property values, market conditions and current availabilities. LoopNet is the most heavily trafficked commercial real estate marketplace online with approximately 5 million monthly unique visitors per month. Apartments.com, ApartmentFinder.com, ForRent.com, ApartmentHomeLiving.com, Westside Rentals, AFTER55.com, CorporateHousing.com, ForRentUniversity.com and Apartamentos.com form the premier online apartment resource for renters seeking great apartment homes and provide property managers and owners a proven platform for marketing their properties. CoStar Group’s websites attracted an average of approximately 40 million unique monthly visitors in aggregate in the second quarter of 2018. CoStar maintains over 100 offices throughout the U.S. and in Europe and Canada with a staff of over 3,800 worldwide, including the industry’s largest professional research organization. For more information, visit www.costargroup.com.
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About Realla
Launched in summer 2016, Realla is a free-to-list search engine for commercial property. It displays the largest public index of available commercial real estate in the UK. Realla also offers a software product, called Realbase, which provides a dedicated, all-in-one commercial property marketing & data management platform for agents and landlords. Realla’s mission is to provide a better search experience for commercial tenants and investors, and deeply support agents and landlords in their digital marketing efforts to drive more, better quality enquiries and increase deal velocity. Realla was founded by Andy Miles and Ian Parry and has over 100 corporate customers across the commercial real estate sector.
This news release contains "forward-looking statements" including statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements include, but are not limited to, statements about CoStar Group's expectations, plans, objectives, and intentions and other statements including words such as "hope," "anticipate," "may," "believe," "expect," "intend," "will," "should," "plan," "estimate," "predict," "continue" and "potential" or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. Such statements are based upon the current beliefs and expectations of management of CoStar Group and Realla and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from the results anticipated in the forward-looking statements. The following factors, among others, could cause or contribute to such differences: the risk that CoStar’s UK and pan European business and expansion plans change from current expectations; the risk that Realla is unable to benefit from access to CoStar’s resources as expected; the risk that the Realla business may not be combined successfully with CoStar’s UK business or in a timely and cost-efficient manner; the risk that the combination does not produce the expected results or benefits, including acceleration of Realla’s growth; the risk that CoStar’s product development plans change or that new functionality, including single point of data entry, are not released when and as expected; the risk that business disruption relating to the Realla acquisition may be greater than expected; the risk that synergies and expected operating efficiencies from the acquisition of Realla may not be as expected, may not be fully realized, may take longer to realize than expected or may not drive revenue and earnings growth; and the risk that the combination and integration of Realla will disrupt CoStar's UK operations or result in the loss of consumers, property owners or key employees. Additional factors that could cause results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements can be found in CoStar's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2017, and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2018, each of which is filed with the SEC, including in the "Risk Factors" section of those filings, and the Company's other filings with the SEC available at the SEC's website (www.sec.gov). CoStar assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
