Mubasher: The Middle East real estate classifieds website Property Finder announced its recent takeover plans after it has signed an agreement to acquire its competitor JRD Group, a UAE-based real estate technology provider, owner of property portal Justproperty.com and Propspace, a prominent broker CRM solution used by real estate professionals.
The acquisition is forecast to provide real estate professionals with new exciting opportunities, in addition to enabling them to reach a larger scale of audience and a broader offering of CRM, property management solutions, and listing portals.
“Property Finder and JRD Group share the same consumer-centric philosophy and vision of further professionalising the real estate market. The integration of our products and additional investment in JustProperty.com will provide consumers with better insights to support them in taking property buying or renting decisions,” founder and CEO of Property Finder Michael Lahyani said, according to a recent press release.
This acquisition follows an investment by the US private equity firm General Atlantic in Property Finder in November 2018, and coincides with the JRD’s strategy to expand the brand across the UAE and invest in building the best products and data information available.
The US firm’s latest round of investment totalled $120 million in 2018.
The founder of JRD Group, Alex Nicholas and Siddharth Singh, shall stay on board and become shareholders of Property Finder.
Nicholas, Co-Founder and CEO of JRD commented, "This is a great outcome for us after 10 years of hard work.”
He added, “We are super excited about this opportunity to enable JRD Group to develop its enterprise software products and property portals further and reach a much larger audience through the Property Finder Group network.”
As part of Property Finder’s acquisition of JRD Group, iMENA Group will fully exit its investment in JRD Group.
Founder and managing director of iMENA Group Khaldoon Tabaza, said: “We are happy with the outcome of our investment in JRD Group, which further validates our thesis on the potential and ability of our region to create scalable online marketplace businesses to lead the digitalisation of the key sectors of the regional economy.”
Furthermore, this takeover agreement comes one week after Property Finder announced raising its stake in Zingat, the second largest property portal in Turkey, to close to 40%.
“A UAE-born startup, Property Finder has branched out of the country’s shores and operates in a total of seven markets, including Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt, and Morocco, and has a significant stake in the second largest property portal in Turkey,” the press release said.
