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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MARKET OUTLOOK,REAL ESTATE TECHNOLOGY
ZestyAI | January 13, 2023
ZestyAI, a pioneer in AI-powered solutions for climate and property risk assessments, announced a partnership on January 12, 2023, with a renowned software, data, and analytics company Black Knight, Inc.
The market leader will offer its mortgage, real estate, and capital markets clients access to ZestyAI's property risk analytics platform, Z-PROPERTYTM, in order to deliver fast property-condition reports and risk insights.
ZestyAI's Z-PROPERTY technology extracts insights from aerial and satellite photos for over 150 million residential and commercial properties using computer vision and machine learning. ZestyAI maintains a digital twin of every property in North America that is continuously updated as changes in property condition, upkeep, and renovations affect each property's fluctuating worth and risk.
Black Knight clients benefit significantly from Z-PROPERTY data when assessing property conditions. ZestyAI's technology examines features from each particular property, such as roof condition, to provide property-specific insights that will provide Black Knight's clients with an easy and cost-effective solution to improve their evaluation of property worth and risk throughout the mortgage life cycle.
Julian Grey, Executive Vice President, Mortgage & Capital Markets Product Management at Black Knight Data & Analytics, said, "We're always looking to deliver even more powerful data and insights for our customers, and ZestyAI's property analytics platform immediately stood out." She added, "Investors and creditors will now have instant access to detailed property condition data much earlier in the origination cycle. Offering ZestyAI's roof condition assessment and other insights is a huge win for our customers."
(Source - PR Newswire)
In line with this, Attila Toth, Founder and CEO of ZestyAI, said, "Black Knight is the leading provider of rich data and analytics for the mortgage and real estate industries where real-time data and decisions are the new normal." "We're proud to provide Black Knight's clients with our unique property insights to further improve speed and accuracy during every step of the home acquisition and financing process," he concluded.
(Source - PR Newswire)
About ZestyAI
ZestyAI provides insurers and real estate firms with comprehensive intelligence on every property in North America. The company employs artificial intelligence, including computer vision, to deliver a continually updated database of 200 billion property insights, which account for every aspect that can affect a property's value and associated hazards, including the possible impact of natural disasters.
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REAL ESTATE TECHNOLOGY, REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT
The Premier Property Group | March 14, 2023
One of the largest residential and independent real estate brokerage in Northwest Florida and an affiliate of Luxury Portfolio International®, The Premier Property Group, recently announced it has acquired a significant stake in Bay County, Florida based, Beachy Beach Real Estate, one of the region's most well-known, independently owned real estate brokerages. The terms of the transaction's finances were not disclosed.
The acquisition of the significant stake signifies the Walton County-based company's expansion into Bay County, anchored by Panama City Beach and Tyndall Air Force Base and advancing its long-term growth trajectory in Florida and the Southeastern United States. The Premier Property Group was established in 2008 by Keith Flippo and Bob Parks. With a team of over a hundred agents and staff, it has also led luxury sales across the region. As a result, it is consistently ranked among the top Brokerages in the Florida Panhandle.
Beachy Beach Real Estate was established in 2010 by Broker/Owner Karen Smith and is based in Panama City Beach. It will continue to operate under its current name and branding after The Premier Property Group acquired a significant stake, now benefiting from the combined strength will boost the company's rank to the number one in the Bay County's independent brokerages. With 20+ years of industry experience, Smith is admired for her leadership, expertise, and extensive community involvement. She will continue to head Beachy Beach Real Estate and, along with her current executive team, will manage day-to-day operations.
About The Premier Property Group
The Premier Property Group is one of the largest independent real estate firms in Northwest Florida. The company has been a consistent leader of sales in the region since its first year of operations, and it has been ranked in the top 10% of luxury sales by the Emerald Coast Association of Realtors. It offers experienced and knowledgeable agents in Okaloosa, Walton, and Bay counties who specialize in residential, commercial, and new development real estate. In addition, it serves the 30A, Sandestin, Destin, and Panama City Beach regions of Florida from three convenient locations in Seacrest Beach /Rosemary Beach, WaterColor, and Grand Boulevard at Sandestin.
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