REAL ESTATE TECHNOLOGY,REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT
Lessen | January 17, 2023
Lessen, the leading tech-enabled outsourced property services platform, recently announced the strategic acquisition of facilities maintenance technology leader SMS Assist.
By combining the complementary strengths of both organizations, Lessen will continue to address real estate's pain points, offering its clients a scalable, tech-enabled enterprise solution for residential and commercial services. As a result, the companies will serve around 250,000 residential and commercial properties nationwide, enabling approximately 2.5 million repair and maintenance orders annually, in addition to expanding their property services.
The transaction is completed with stock and cash, with Lessen raising roughly $500 million in combined new debt and equity. SMS Assist stockholders exchanged a portion of SMS stock for Lessen stock, resulting in a combined company valuation of over $2 billion. Debt and equity investors, including Värde Partners, Monroe Capital, and Koch Real Estate Investments, assisted with this transaction. Invitation Homes and American Homes 4 Rent are among the clients who invested in the deal with Lessen.
Following the conclusion of the transaction, Lessen's Jay McKee will continue to serve as Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of the newly-merged company. He states, "Lessen recognized early on the opportunity to provide an enterprise-level solution that solved the real estate industry's long-tenured property services pain points." He added, "This deal demonstrates the increasing demand within the underpenetrated, $330 billion addressable North American property services market for a unified, extensible delivery platform that provides transparency, efficiency and data-driven insights for the entire real estate ecosystem including investors, owners, managers and service providers.
(Source – Business Wire)
The new, unified technology platform will allow various service providers—from painters, contractors, and plumbers to electricians and more—to work as one on a national scale, which was previously impossible. The quality of this work will be supervised and inspected by Lessen's in-house project managers. This integrated solution will assist owners in overcoming skilled labor shortages while lessening administrative burden, enhancing project efficiency, and providing real-time project updates.
About Lessen
Lessen is the only end-to-end tech-enabled solution for outsourced real estate property services that delivers consistency, quality, and speed at scale, focusing on single-family and multifamily rental renovations, turns, and maintenance. Through automation and real-time analytics, the firm's technology suite is disrupting and modernizing a project management space that is still reliant on traditional organizational and communication models. The company's professional field project managers provide on-the-ground service, utilizing a network of verified service professionals in over 40 markets across the country, all powered by its proprietary technology platform.
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REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT, MORTGAGE AND LENDING
Roc360 | March 16, 2023
Roc Capital Holdings LLC (Roc360), a financial services platform for residential real estate investors, recently announced its completion of the previously announced acquisition of Finance of America Commercial (FACo) assets. Under the transaction terms, Roc360 acquired the operational assets of FACo, a Finance of America Companies Inc. division specializing in residential real estate investment loans.
Roc360 will give the brand a unique logo and execute it under a new subsidiary using its current name, Finance of America Commercial. It will join Roc360's growing collection of leading real estate’s brands, such as Haus Lending, Roc Capital, Elmsure Insurance, Wimba Title, and Tamarisk Appraisals. The FACo acquisition enhances Roc360's existing origination footprint in its retail and wholesale channels, and the acquired data will contribute to Roc360's data science initiatives. In 2022, the two companies collectively financed over $4.6 billion in loans for business purposes.
FACo traces its origins back over a decade to its forerunners, B2R Finance, Dwell Finance, and Jordan Capital Finance, innovators in the national private lending sector that provided fix-and-flip and landlord DSCR loans to real estate investors. It has funded over $6 billion to 9,000+ individual guarantors across 25,000+ closed loans via its broker channels and borrower-direct.
Arvind Raghunathan, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Roc360, said, "Roc360 is committed to delivering innovative products and services that help rejuvenate and deliver new and like-new energy efficient homes to America's undersupplied housing stock." He also said, "The acquisition further broadens our reach and ability to make a difference. We will continue to pursue growth opportunities, including acquisitions, that expand our ability to provide solutions to real estate investors."
(Source – Cision PR Newswire)
About Roc360
Roc360 is a vertically integrated platform for residential real estate investors and one of the leading creators of business-purpose loans nationally. The company was established in 2014, employs more than 300 people and funded more than $14 billion in loans through its lending subsidiaries. It is based in New York City with offices across three continents. In addition, Roc360 joined the Deloitte Technology Fast 500, a ranking of the 500 North American companies with the fastest-growing media, technology, telecommunications, fintech, life sciences, and energy tech industries in 2022.
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MARKET OUTLOOK, REAL ESTATE TECHNOLOGY
PRnewswire | March 23, 2023
Evocalize, the industry-leading technology that powers many of the largest, most effective cross-channel digital marketing solutions, is excited to announce its partnership with Side, the industry's only real estate brokerage platform that empowers top-producing agents, teams and indies to create and grow their own business. Together, Evocalize and Side are drastically improving the way real estate agents approach local digital marketing on Google, Facebook, and Instagram by allowing the most sophisticated lead generation programs to be launched with push-button ease.
The partnership allows Side to offer its network of market-leading boutiques a powerful new tool for reaching and engaging their target audiences. Side's Digital Campaign Builder, powered by Evocalize technology, will leverage full MLS integration to provide highly-targeted, data-driven campaigns that reach consumers at the most opportune times and in the most relevant locations. Users can easily designate the program they want to launch, in which geographic area, and how much they want to spend. Once a campaign is approved, the technology will automatically optimize spend across Google, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, displaying their ads on the channels most likely to drive engagement and quality leads.
Evocalize's technology supports businesses across industries, including residential and commercial real estate, mortgage, insurance, senior living, financial services, restaurants, franchises, travel and more. Its Collaborative Marketing Platform with EVOLVE artificial intelligence layer is designed to help national brands and technology platforms, like Side, take the complexity out of local digital advertising for themselves and their distributed users. The platform uses real-time data for automation and machine learning algorithms to optimize performance across multiple ad platforms, ensuring that ads are seen by the right people, in the right place, at the right time.
"We are excited to be partnering with Side, a company with a strong track record of empowering the most successful agents and teams in the industry. The common goal of both of our companies is to empower local agents and operators with the tools they need to grow their business," said Evocalize CEO, Matthew Marx. "Together, we are making it easier than ever for agents in the Side community to achieve their local marketing goals using the most sophisticated, data-driven techniques in just a few clicks."
The partnership between Evocalize and Side is a game-changer for agents and teams looking to invest in local digital advertising and stand out in their local markets. With Side's expertise and Evocalize's innovative technology, boutique companies in Side's network can now reach their growth targets more effectively and efficiently than ever before.
About Evocalize
Evocalize's Collaborative Marketing Platform is used by multi-location brands, technology platforms (like CRMs), and online marketplaces to equip their locations, agents, and users at scale with sophisticated, push-button easy digital marketing that drives real business results and revenue. Evocalize is a partner in Facebook's Real Estate Top Provider Initiative and is a recipient of HousingWire's Tech100 awards in both Real Estate and Mortgage. Evocalize's technology supports businesses across industries, including real estate, mortgage, insurance, financial services, restaurants, franchises, travel, and more. Over 1,500,000+ sophisticated digital marketing programs have been run using Evocalize technology, generating millions of leads, and leading to thousands of transactions to date. Evocalize is backed by Madrona Venture Group, Move, Inc., Second Century Ventures and Habanero Ventures. For more information, visit evocalize.com.
About Side
Side is the only brokerage platform that exclusively partners with top-performing agents, teams and independent brokerages to create and grow their own boutique brands without the cost, time or risk of operating a brokerage. Side's proprietary technology platform and premier support solutions empower its agent partners to be more productive, grow their businesses and focus on serving their clients. Side is headquartered in San Francisco. For more information, visit side.com.
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