CoStar acquires rival startup Realla

Realla has been bought by US giant CoStar, only two years after its initial launch.

Established 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. The platform was founded by Andy Miles and Ian Parry and has over 100 corporate customers across the commercial real estate sector.

Realla also offers a software product, called Realbase, which provides an all-in-one commercial property marketing and data management platform for agents and landlords.

CoStar intends to use the platform to expand its property website portfolio into the UK market. CoStar Group is considered the leading global provider of commercial real estate information, analytics and online marketplaces, with over 40m unique monthly visitors across its portfolio including LoopNet.com, Apartments.com, ApartmentFinder.com, ForRent.com, ApartmentHomeLiving.com, Westside Rentals, AFTER55.com, CorporateHousing.com, ForRentUniversity.com and Apartamentos.com.

In a statement on the company’s website, CoStar said of the acquisition: “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.”

Neither party disclosed the value of the deal.

Andrew C. Florance, CoStar group founder and CEO, said: “Across the world, marketing commercial properties is moving to digital marketplaces. 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.”

CoStar is ranked by Fortune as one of the 100 fastest growing companies in the world, and by Forbes as one of the 20 most innovative companies in the world. Over the past 5 years CoStar Group has invested billions of dollars into building the world’s leading online property marketplaces.