OnTheMarket CEO Jason Tebb is expected to remain in charge if and when the $100M takeover goes through, while one OnTheMarket shareholder has suggested that shareholders are being "mugged and should kick back" at Costar.

CoStar has also suggested that there will be no reduction in staff in the company, a workforce of approximately 180 people.

CoStar has vowed to invest £46.5M ($56.6M) into sales and marketing—six times OnTheMarket's current spend—to push OnTheMarket into unfamiliar territory—rivalling Rightmove for the number one spot in the UK.

Costar boss Any Florance has already gone on record with a bullish statement against incumbent market leader Rightmove, a company he says should not be operating at the margin it currently does:

"Public companies [like Rightmove] shouldn't operate at a 72% margin—it is to say that there's no way any company could ever compete in that space.

"Unless you're a taxing authority with control of the police, you can't scrape a 72% margin! There will be a couple of shakeups, a couple of rude awakenings.

"We believe the acquisition of OnTheMarket represents an attractive and efficient entry point into the £8 trillion United Kingdom residential property market.

"We see OnTheMarket as an important step in expanding our Homes.com residential network not only in the UK, but across Europe. We believe the market opportunity in Europe is over $10 billion, and we intend to participate aggressively in developing and expanding our residential marketplace network."

Costar's $100M offer represents a premium of £1.10 per share—but an OnTheMarket founder has urged the company's board to reconsider its decision.

Trevor Abrahmsohn has come out in support of the deal but questioned the value of a bid that he believes undervalues OnTheMarket's shares by 33%.

Abrahmsohn said:

"CoStar are not fools, they know that there is no room in the marketplace for a fourth portal (and it would cost too much anyway), and by the acquisition of OTM, de facto, they are buying market share on the cheap and we shouldn’t let them."

"If Costar or another big portal were instead to buy 50% of OnTheMarket at a discount, within a few months the shares would be over £2 or £3 based on hope value that such a wealthy partner would transform the fortunes of the company.

"Shareholders are being mugged and we should kick back."

Abrahmsohn suggested that OnTheMarket could and perhaps should be put up for auction so other portals like RealEstate.com.au can submit an offer.

Costar's interest in European portals was first publicised at the Property Portal Watch conference in Madrid in October, with Florance then going on the record to outline his plans for a European expansion. OnTheMarket was clearly already being tapped up, with news breaking less than two weeks later that Costar had submitted its offer for the portal.

Real Estate Works (REW), a property portal operating in the west of Canada, has put that idea to the test with the most innovative branding exercise to hit the portal world since Purplebricks coined the word 'commisery' in 2016.

At an average cost of $24,000 per episode, REW's new series, RealTours, consists of 14 episodes published for free on YouTube—with Series 2 already in production.

The numbers look good. Four episodes are live, they have generated 700k views, four million impressions, and 95% of viewers watch episodes through to the end.

But what makes this show so fascinating is that it is funded by the agents that appear in it—indeed, REW reports that Series 1 of RealTours actually turned a profit.

How did they do it? And how can agents replicate the concept of the show in their own market?

Online Marketplaces spoke to REW's President Simon Bray and VP  of Branding Justin R. Melville (pictured above) at the Property Portal Watch conference to find out more.

What has REW been working on?

Simon: We have a large real estate search platform, but we believe the home-seeker experience is more than just listings and inventory—it's about insight, commentary, and content that helps people make better decisions and builds confidence in their real estate journey.

What we've tried to do to meet that need is to build out an original content series from our own in-house production team and specialist realtors to make that happen.

What is RealTours?

Justin: RealTours looks like 14 episodes of Netflix-quality television, but what it really is, is a content universe that's powered by the people and places that most home seekers are interested.

It offers the opportunity to create a living resource for all home seekers that serves our partners well and takes our brand to the masses.

REW has managed to get realtors to pay for the production of the RealTours show—how did you manage this?

Simon: It's a good question.

It will depend on each of the realtors who got involved, but at the core of this idea is that realtors themselves want to build their brand with home seekers in the markets that matter to them.

These realtors want to be seen as the local experts and celebrate that with our large consumer audience. That's the value they get out of partnering with us for this show.

Meanwhile, I think the way we packaged the product was appealing to them; realtors know they will be involved in a high-production level that they couldn't achieve on their own. We're putting cameras on the front of cars, we drive around neighbourhoods, we use drones—this isn't a project that a realtor can easily put together on their own.

Justin: I can think of more than one realtor who signed up who told us that they put zero money in marketing—they don't buy bus shelters, they don't take out ads. For them, this represented a $24,000 investment in their brand, as opposed to a sales driver. They wanted to be part of the experience itself, not just the output.

For them, being a part of Series 1 of RealTours was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; you can only appear in Series 1 once!

Series 1 is complete, Series 2 is on its way. What's your advice to any would-be copycats who want to try this format in their market?

Justin: It's doable. All we're talking about here is creating authentic, evergreen content that's useful and serving it in a place where it is useful and needed. It's a recipe that can be followed in pretty much any market.

However, if I can put our success down to anything, it's probably the extensive investment we put into understanding who we are, who we want to be, and how we see our partners and our product.

RealTours represents all of that work—beyond that, it's just a media asset at the end of the day.

I brought Gabriel Isserlis, CEO at PropTech startup Tutti—the "AirBnb for creative spaces"—into the conversation at this point. He asked the following question:

My portal is far smaller than yours—less budget for us, less budget for our users. What suggestions do you have for building a similar content marketing product that doesn't break the bank?

Simon: I don't think it's necessarily about replicating the partner-pays model. Tutti has unprecedented access to the creative industry, which was a great enabler for us, so I would lean on that—work with some great creators and put their names on the map. Working in the creative industry means there is a massively collaborative aspect to it. That's how I would approach it.

Meanwhile, it's about framing the creative opportunity differently. The platform is fantastic, with interesting and unusual real estate that is accessible to the market in a novel way. Showing your real estate in the light that it is intended to be used is equally fascinating. It's not just about the property, it's about imagining an event, a film shoot, or a music video—it's a great starting point for a successful YouTube channel, which is where we publish RealTours.

My advice to other proptechs is not to rely on the partner-pays model as your primary motivation—just look for great collaborators.

Justin: Inspiration is a currency in the creative space, and creative spaces are a canvas.

As a business, you want people to acquire your canvas for their own needs. It's therefore about making your target audience imagine the possibilities and potential of the creative spaces on your portal.

If I were creating a content machine for creative spaces, I would want to participate with creatives who make great art—if you can connect them to your customer, and use them as a portal to inspiration, that currency will gain inherent value over time.

Goldman Sachs and Apollo Global Management Inc. are working with a group of four other companies—including U.S. lenders Sixth Street, HPS Investment Partners and ICG Capital—to prepare the loan that will reportedly be used by the Permira and Blackstone consortium to buy out Adevinta.

Bloomberg noted that the deal would be Europe's largest-ever direct lending deal.

The Adevinta takeover story, which became public in September, represents what appears to be the first step of an influx of American investment in the multi-trillion European real estate industry.

Europe's online classifieds industry is looking increasingly attractive for U.S. companies. Should the takeover go ahead it would represent the second large deal made for U.S. money to take over European portals in a short space of time.

Breaking news today confirmed that US-based CoStar is set to acquire British number three portal OnTheMarket for a reported $100M—a matter of weeks after CEO Andy Florance told the Property Portal Watch conference that he was eyeing up an overly fragmented European market.

The award for 'Quote of Property Portal Watch 2023' went to Ryan Gallagher, CEO at Iovox, who used his time on stage to share a warning for companies jumping on the AI bandwagon.

We caught up with Ryan after he took to the stage at Property Portal Watch. Here's what he had to say on topics including charlatans, hiring, and why Iovox continues to sponsor the conference.

Is leveraging AI dependent on the right hires—or partnering with the right providers?

You have to partner with the right providers. But you have to be very, very careful because there are so many risks involved.

And there are so many charlatans out there, we know this ourselves, even with dealing with basics like getting companies to transcribe calls—you can't do it. They say "Yes, we're a European company," and then you find out that all the people who are working on these calls are in some other country, so you're immediately breaching regulations.

It's a common problem and it's why we just started building everything in-house.

Meanwhile, many of the models are very mystical—do you understand what models this person using? Is it trained in-house? Is it a shared learning model?

My advice? The best thing for businesses to do is to hire at least one person who fully understands AI and can guide you to the right partners to use—because if you go in blind and trust providers, you're going to end up in trouble.

If you can get the right hires, good luck, but it's really hard!

How does an "average Joe" differentiate the charlatans and the snake oil salesmen from the real experts?

Hire somebody who can who knows what to look for. When it comes to AI, you have to be able to understand what you're looking for. You don't need to understand everything, but you do need to know how to ask the right questions.

What are some of the use cases for AI via Iovox?

Iovox helps people mine calls and communications for gold.

We transcribe calls and pick out details that would otherwise go unnoticed—does this person need to sell a house? Do they need a mortgage? Have they already bought a house? Have they already spoken to one of your competitors?

Then we go one step further. Did we handle this call correctly? Did we follow up fast enough?

We had this one company with 1,000 different locations. Some of them had a variable close rate of 40%-90%. Our solution allowed us to analyse why one location was able to close transactions at more than twice the rate of their peers.

What kind of findings were you able to establish from this example?

It was a combination of a lot of factors. Some people were handling calls lazily, some were accidentally referring business elsewhere, or the employees handling calls were too busy to follow through on promises to pass on the caller's details to another facility in the same company.

With Iovox, we were able to significantly increase the capacity of the quality assurance team, of just eight people, from spot-checking 1% of calls to 100% of calls and therefore allow them to make proper, sensible decisions without manually transcribing calls.

Last question. You're a repeat sponsor at Property Portal Watch. Why come back and do it again?

Honestly, this place is great. We don't sponsor much, but this is the conference where we really get to see what's going on in the industry.

We're big on relationship building, and the conference provides us with the opportunity to spend more time with our clients in spite of them being so international.

Meanwhile, we gain access to the other 50% of attendees who are new companies, and new leads.

But ultimately this is a great conference—we wouldn't sponsor it if it weren't. There's high-quality people here, there's high-quality learning every time we come here, we meet new people every time we come here—and we get to meet the old people who are so important to us and what we do.

The startup is "positioned as a dating service for tenants and landlords" according to its communications team, while its goal is to compete with the likes of Rightmove and Zoopla.

Krispyhouse is free to list for landlords and offers an instant messaging service for tenants and landlords to communicate in real-time—which will require tenants to create a free account to use. A private video calling is also included.

Krispyhouse intends to raise a funding round through Crowdcube, with the company's website linking to a "register your interest" to invest in the startup for as little as £10.

According to the company's website, a successful investment will lead to a UK-wide expansion among other things.

The company's founder is Anthony Kyriacou, an entrepreneur and real estate agent with a specialism in rental property. He said:

"People are time poor these days, so a rental property site that can provide a streamlined user experience is crucial. Krispyhouse allows renters, landlords and estate agents to ‘get a move on’, with an easier and quicker way to manage housing communications.

"We are excited to have launched our funding round on CrowdCube, to support our growth and ambition to offer a UK-wide service."

According to the Google Play Store, the krispyhouse app has so far amassed circa 100 downloads.

The startup has already partnered up with rental agencies including Zevet Properties and Highcastle Estates—with roughly 2300 rental listings currently available on its platform.

Krispyhouse is the third challenger to emerge out of the UK in 2023, following behind Jangle and Jitty.

The new tag will show listings that have had their status changed from 'Under Offer' or 'Sold Subject to Contract' back to 'For Sale'.

The UK's number two portal says it added the new tag in response to high fall-through rates—with approximately 40% of sales failing to complete at the moment.

Additionally, properties with the Back to Market tag will be pushed to the top of the results page, and the tag looks like this:

Source: Zoopla.co.uk — the property initially listed in April 2023

Zoopla says it will also work to educate consumers on being more forgiving of listings that are returning to the market, with home buyers unfairly assuming that a return to the market is a sign of failings during the survey process—when more likely causes a deal fall through include the rejection of a mortgage or a break in the chain.

Nikki Cole, director of national sales at Zoopla, said:

"We’re pleased to launch this much-requested feature for our agent's customers—which should provide a simple way for them to boost interest for a property that has just come back to the market.

"Back to the market properties often have serious sellers that are willing to progress with a sale and we’re looking forward to highlighting this to the thousands of in-market buyers that visit our website and social channels every month."

Zoopla, the long-time number-two portal behind market leader Rightmove, posted a £6.2M loss in 2022 despite increasing its revenue by nearly 20% year-on-year.

Zoopla's parent company Zoopla Property Group's property division was recently rebranded as Houseful.

In a press release this week, Urban Money says its prediction represents more than double 2023's full-year figures of INR153 billion ($1.8bn) in FY22-23, accounting for 35% of Square Yards' total revenue in that period.

Urban Money said last year's figures included the facilitation of the disbursal of loans via banks and non-bank financial companies on the way to Square Yards recording revenue growth of 70% year-on-year for the Indian financial year ended March 2023:

Tanuj Shori, CEO at Square Yards, said:

"We identified this fundamental gap in 2019 and cracked this space in the last four years, emerging as the largest mortgage marketplace in the country."

Square Yards operates in India, Australia, Canada and the Gulf, while Urban Money is present in over 250 cities.

The firm clearly has a strong strategic focus on improving its digital capabilities, including a recent team-up with videogame developer Epic Games.

Meanwhile, Square Yards has filed no fewer than 18 international patent applications across the fields of virtual and augmented reality, extended reality, artificial intelligence and data applications as it seeks to strengthen its hold on intellectual property.

But this bootstrapped startup based out of Hungary—operating with just six people—is about to land in the US, with a New York launch in two weeks and a nationwide rollout by the end of November.

Not bad for a business that only launched its private beta less than one month ago.

Propertizer caught our attention on its way to winning the Pitch Club competition at the Property Portal Watch conference in Madrid in October 2023, beating 12 other entrants from around the proptech and portal world.

I spoke with Peter Orban (CEO) and Daniel Kovari (CBO) after they picked up the trophy.

Pictured is Daniel with Pitch Club judge and iovox CEO, Ryan Gallagher

What does Propertizer do?

Peter: Propertizer tells you how much money you can make from any property, whether you're renting it, flipping it, or investing in it in the long term. We make money by selling our API to property portals.

When did the business launch?

Peter: We're quite young. We launched our private beta in September and we are closing very soon.

We're only in Hungary for now but in two weeks we are launching in New York, and in one month we launch to the whole of the US, so it has been a very fast journey for us.

How is the business funded?

Peter: We're a bootstrapped business. We fundraise in 2024.

What are you looking for from an investment?

Peter: Good question. Not just funds, but we're looking for connections across the whole industry so we can grow our knowledge of real estate globally.

Daniel: If we can get our foot in the door with the help of an investor, having a strong partnership like that would be the perfect fundraiser for us.

Which markets are you looking at?

Peter: Good question. It depends on the partners, but we're looking primarily at the US, European and LATAM markets—in this order.

Where did the idea for the business come from?

Daniel: We were friends before the launch. Peter built the first FSBO (for sale, by owner) hybrid model agency in Hungary that gathered a lot of key customer feedback from agents and mom-and-pop users. Meanwhile, I was working in mergers and acquisitions on the transaction side of commercial real estate.

I was trying to find an investment property in Hungary and I was shocked at how much information was missing for me to make a sound decision about where to buy and why. There was nowhere for me to go, nowhere.

When I thought about it, I realised that if it is difficult for me—with a professional background in finance—to find what I need before I purchase a property, then how can a regular buyer possibly understand the financial value of a property?

Once we realised that Peter's technological and business background—and my financial and investment background—were perfectly aligned for us to build on each other's knowledge, the idea for the business became much more complete.

We started development in October 2022, and one year later we are ready to roll out across the US.

What makes you think you won Pitch Club?

Daniel: I would love to know what the judges thought and why they felt that way about Propertizer, it would be great feedback.

I believe what makes us stand out is our authenticity and the simplicity of the product itself. Peter has coded products and built businesses for the past ten years so we were able to pitch the idea in quite a simple, straightforward way.

Obviously, the backend is the most complicated part, but the way our core business works is incredibly intuitive, to the point where even people with no financial background can understand the value of the information our product gives them.

Peter: The idea of simplicity is key. The product is simple, which means the pitch was simple, and it resonates with audiences because anyone can understand it.

How will AI impact the industry?

Peter: A super cool question.

AI will definitely change the market. Not with big things, but with small things.

AI will allow the industry to optimize processes but not change the landscape of how real estate technology works.

In Hungary, our real estate market has a big problem because we don't have locations for properties. With AI, we can extract location data from the text of the property description and so on. I think this is the direction of the AI for real estate companies.

However, I doubt AI will change the way we search for or sell property in the next 10 years.

What does 2024 look like for Propertizer?

Daniel: We can't mention the names of the countries and the companies we are talking to but we are finalising discussions with a few portals.

It's going to be all about expanding into other markets. We're live in Budapest, New York is coming soon, and then the whole of the US. That will definitely be our focus market next year.

We don't just want to penetrate the market, we want to build knowledge in the user base and teach people how our tech can be used in a way that is really, genuinely beneficial for them.

What will Propertizer look like in five years' time?

Peter: Our five-year timeframe is to work directly with the biggest real estate portals globally to provide them with real data not just for investors, but for visitors.

We'll also have a standalone portal—and that's how it will be!

Tell us about your experience at Property Portal Watch.

Daniel: We've been to other conferences before but the sheer amount of useful information that we've received is just astounding.

A particular highlight was Dubizzle Group talking about how they used SEO to dominate Google, and we'd never heard anything like that in our lives.

It's our first time here, and we've really enjoyed it. We've learned a lot compared to other conferences, and the networking opportunities here are just out of this world.

We'll for sure be back again and we'll hopefully make it for the LATAM conference in 2024.

In the coming months, Opendoor will be the first integrated API tool and primary cash offer solution to power eXp’s ExpressOffers platform.

The partnership will give eXp Realty’s 90,000 agents the ability to request cash offers for qualifying properties on behalf of their clients, directly from their eXp dashboard.

They will also be able to present Opendoor offers alongside the option of listing the client's home on the market—providing sellers with an option to choose how they move.

eXp's agents can also participate in the 'Opendoor for Agents' rewards program, which makes them eligible to receive a commission from Opendoor—on top of any previously negotiated client commission—for every eligible transaction that originates and closes on their portal.

Opendoor already collaborates with US portals including former iBuyer Zillow and News Corp's Move Inc subsidiary Realtor.com.

While Zillow went through a high-profile exit from the iBuying space in November 2021, Opendoor has persevered with iBuying and has steadily widened its reach by partnering up with the likes of Redfin and Zillow itself.

But the firm felt compelled to lay off 22% of its workforce in April this year when 560 people lost their jobs as Opendoor moved to recover from losses in excess of $1.4Bn in 2022.

Opendoor is owned by real estate veteran Eric Wu, who resigned as CEO in 2022 to be replaced by then-CFO Carrie Wheeler.

]]> https://www.onlinemarketplaces.com/articles/opendoor-and-exp-realty-announce-partnership/feed/ 0 https://www.onlinemarketplaces.com/articles/fotocasa-introduces-real-estate-quality-seal-in-spain/ https://www.onlinemarketplaces.com/articles/fotocasa-introduces-real-estate-quality-seal-in-spain/#respond Fri, 06 Oct 2023 09:46:48 +0000 https://www.onlinemarketplaces.com/articles// Fotocasa has introduced a 'real estate seal of quality' for agents to show off their credentials—the first real estate portal to launch a certification of this type.

Fotocasa has awarded the certification to 600 pre-selected agents to take part in an initial test of the "sello de calidad", which recognizes the best companies in the sector and the good work carried out by the real estate agencies that have obtained it.

The seal exists to reassure buyers and sellers whether a particular agent is trusted by the portal—and is only given to agencies that pass a thorough selection process driven by Fotocasa.

The qualification process requires employees and real estate advisors to complete specialized courses on the workings of the real estate market, ensuring they are up to date with the latest trends and regulations, thus offering high-quality service and expert advice to clients—while a code of ethics must also be signed.

The seal is renewed annually, thereby requiring recipients

Pere Quintana, Marketing Director at Fotocasa, said:

"At Fotocasa, one of our great challenges has always been to help the real estate sector become professional.

"After the consolidation of initiatives such as the Fotocasa Pro Academy, where more than 20,000 real estate agents are trained annually, we promoted the creation of this Fotocasa Quality Seal , which recognizes those who do excellent work. Thus, in addition, we help our users identify trusted real estate agencies." [translated from Spanish]

It has been a year of innovation for Adevinta-owned Fotocasa. In March, the company introduced a landlord insurance product via a partnership with Grupo Mutua as well as adding a customer-focused "save your favourites" option to its app and website.

Fotocasa is Spain's number two portal, behind dominant market leader Idealista: