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CoStar acquires largest online CRE marketplace in UK
The investment in Realla, a two-year-old startup, will expand CoStar's reach in Europe
CoStar Group is expanding its European footprint with its acquisition of a UK-based commercial real estate online marketplace.
The publicly-traded commercial real estate data giant announced Friday that it had acquired startup Realla for an undisclosed sum.
“When combined with the CoStar information solution it is expected to offer the best of tools for marketing properties, valuations and facilitating transactions,” Andrew Florance, CoStar’s CEO, said in a statement.
Realla is a two-year-old startup currently holds 90,000 listings. Florance told the Financial Times that CoStar will double or triple its investment in Realla to expand the firm into continental Europe. It would also reportedly share CoStar’s business-to-business listings service.
CoStar’s stock price, which dropped recently to $373 from a high of $446 in September, spiked following the acquisition announcement to $386. On Friday, the company was valued at $14.01 billion.
The Realla acquisition marks further geographic expansion by CoStar. In a September article, The Real Deal detailed how data giant’s expansion in recent years. The company entered the residential space with the acquisitions of Apartments.com and ForRent.com. In February, the company’s $385 million acquisition of ForRent, which it would use to expand Apartments.com, was approved by the Federal Trade Commission. [FT] —David Jeans