WEEKLY NEWS ROUND UP – 10/11/23
A roundup of the week’s top property and proptech news stories in partnership with Proptech-X
- CoStar Group acquiring OnTheMarket is not the prime reason Rightmove may be in trouble
- PriceHubble acquires Urbanease, pursuing its ambitious growth plan in France and Europe
- 4Sale – Kuwait’s classifieds platform launches online Real Estate Brokerage ‘4Sale Realty’
CoStar Group acquiring OnTheMarket is not the prime reason Rightmove may be in trouble
Though the deal is not yet done it would seem that CoStar Group is intent on acquiring OnTheMarket and replicating its Apartments.com and Homes.com portal play, by quickly supersizing existing lower ranked property portals. Many know that though I have no commercial tie with OnTheMarket or its CEO Jason Tebb, I have been a big fan of both for a very long time, and I think this deal is an important part of the UK’s real estate evolution.
My day job is helping Proptech founders get from MVP to exit, working on a 1:1 basis with the founders, many of my clients are and have been UK estate agency centric, though we have clients worldwide in a number of verticals, but success or failure of a digitally run Saas model business always after market fit is established, boils down to how it operates. And this is where Rightmove has brought possible destruction upon itself.
The real reason that Rightmove’s share price is now trading at 463p down from 588p, is not because the fundamental model of digital advertising of property assets has hit a WeWork or FTX moment, where all of a sudden the business is built upon sand. No the reason Rightmove is in so much danger is that its business model never evolved.
Explicitly, Rightmove’s ‘failure to embrace the so called ‘proptech’ revolution has left it a financially wounded dinosaur’ whose only revenue strategy is now to squeeze it clients annually until the pips squeak.
Those of you who follow me will recognise that I am borrowing my own quote I used in The Daily Telegraph in 2020, when LSL made noises about acquiring the failing agency Countrywide PLC,
For clarity the full quote, from The Daily Telegraph article in Feb 2020 was ‘analyst Andrew Stanton warns: “Estate agencies of the future will be based on captured data and analytics which provide a clear narrative of what the customer likes and wants.” He adds: “A personalised, tech-based service – with connection across digital platforms and smart phones – means there will be less need for hundreds of branches.” Stanton says that Countrywide’s failure to embrace the so-called ‘proptech’ revolution has left it a “financially wounded dinosaur” and that any merger with LSL is really a hostile takeover, with LSL setting the terms.
PriceHubble acquires Urbanease, pursuing its ambitious growth plan in France and Europe
PriceHubble, a leader in performance data solutions for real estate and finance, announces the acquisition of French company Urbanease, a leader in land sourcing and urban planning data solutions, highly complementary to PriceHubble. This strategic step enables PriceHubble to further bolster its strong presence in the French market while expanding its product offering.
Following Dataloft and WhenFresh in the UK this year, this third acquisition in only a few months reaffirms PriceHubble’s ambitious growth strategy in Europe and its mission to provide its clients with the best performance data solutions for the real estate and finance industries.
Founded in 2019, Urbanease is a French B2B SaaS company providing real estate professionals with unique urban data analytics and prospecting solutions. With a user base of over 12,000, Urbanease has proven the quality and scalability of its technology, showcasing its ability to meet the growing demands of the real estate and financial industries over the years.
The acquisition of Urbanease strengthens PriceHubble’s strong ongoing growth, doubling down on one of its core markets. It is also a proactive response to its customers’ strong interest in further integrating hyperlocal data and qualitative land analysis.
Urbanease’s proprietary datasets and solutions, already used by industry leaders, perfectly complete PriceHubble’s offering, unlocking new use cases for its customers in France, like the sourcing of new development opportunities and real estate prospecting.
“We are delighted to have the Urbanease team join us, a team we know well and with whom we already share strategic customers. We have been very impressed by the deep local expertise and the quality of the technology Urbanease has developed, and we look forward to writing the next chapter of PriceHubble together,” explains Alexis Radjabi, Chief Sales Officer for Western Europe at PriceHubble.
4Sale – Kuwait’s classifieds platform launches online Real Estate Brokerage ‘4Sale Realty’
Premium digital experience is looking to shake up Kuwait’s $12 billion real estate market, offering commercial and residential property for anyone to buy, rent, and sell effortlessly in Kuwait
PRESS RELEASE Kuwait City, 6 November 2023 – 4Sale, Kuwait’s largest online classifieds platform, announces the launch of its new real estate experience, 4Sale Realty. Aiming to shake up Kuwait’s property market and revolutionise the buying, renting and selling experience in Kuwait. The immersive digital experience employs interactive 3D tours of listed properties for users to explore and an accurate measurement tool that allows users to see granular dimensions for each property.
4Sale Realty’s dedicated real estate agents manage property listings end-to-end, from curating listing details and 3D tours to prospecting potential tenants or buyers and broking the deal. Combining on-the-ground property expertise with a bespoke technology solution, it aims to be the most engaging and interactive real estate experience in Kuwait. Kuwait’s economy is set for solid growth in 2024 with GDP estimated to increase by c. 2.5%. The real estate sector in particular is expected to accelerate driven by increased demand for property from Kuwait’s youthful population.
Tarek Sakr, Chief Executive Officer of 4Sale, said:
“4Sale never sits still, and we are delighted to launch 4Sale Realty to our customers in Kuwait. Housing demand is projected to rise continuously, and the sector is ripe for technological disruption. We have developed a digital real estate experience to transform the process of buying, selling and renting property in Kuwait. Part of 4Sale’s rapid growth is driven by a deeper expansion into key verticals – such as real estate where we already had a strong market position – and I am very excited for consumers to experience it.”
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