JLL’s proptech venture arm makes first acquisition

JLL’s venture arm, JLL Spark has announced its first acquisition in the form of Stessa, a software-as-a-service based real estate technology platform.

Stessa allows investors in income properties to easily and cost-effectively track, manage and communicate the performance of their portfolios.

JLL Spark has not released how much the acquisition is worth. Described on the company’s website as “the intersection of real estate and technology”, JLL Spark was created to allow JLL to deliver on its mission to transform the real estate industry through technology-based innovation.

“Optimising a real estate portfolio can involve tedious manual effort, which is why many investors see suboptimal returns,” said Mihir Shah, co-CEO at JLL Spark. “We chose Stessa as our first acquisition because its innovative product fills a gap in the market for small-to-medium investors.”

Stessa, which is ‘assets’ spelled backwards, provides property owners with real-time views into their holdings, resulting in increased transparency across their real estate assets. The company also aims to streamline the paperwork and reporting requirements that can be burdensome to the everyday investor.

Heath Silverman, CEO and co-founder of Stessa said: “As real estate investors ourselves, we created Stessa to solve the biggest pain points associated with our own investments – ongoing asset management and portfolio optimization. The JLL Spark acquisition will allow us to scale quickly and broaden our reach.”

Stessa has been in beta for the past year testing its product with a select group of early customers representing nearly half a billion dollars in income properties.