Contact: Ben Kolada
With seemingly all consumer-facing tech now trending toward social, why shouldn’t property management software vendor RealPage get in on the game as well?
The company took a step in that direction on Monday, when it announced the $6m acquisition of SaaS startup RentMineOnline, a rental-marketing startup that enables property managers to set up campaigns that residents use to recommend their rental property to friends through email and social networks.
RealPage is handing over $6m, with an earnout of up to $3.5m based on an unspecified revenue milestones. Excluding the earnout, the deal values RentMineOnline at 4x trailing sales (it generated approximately $1.5m in revenue for the 12 months ended June 30). The San Francisco-based company was founded in 2007 and had taken funding from fbFund, Partners in Equity, Seed Camp, and Alex Hoye, the former CEO of GoIndustry, which closed its $31m sale to Liquidity Services earlier this month.
The deal is a complementary addition to RealPage’s LeaseStar service. In announcing the acquisition, RealPage stated the intent was to build up its LeaseStar multichannel managed marketing service, which enables property owners and managers to market and secure rental leads more effectively.
And for a bit of irony, although RentMineOnline was headquartered in San Francisco, we expect its platform will have a greater effect in almost any market but the City by the Bay. Rental costs in San Francisco have skyrocketed recently, leading to a ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ environment where apartment seekers are likely to take whatever option is available, whether the apartment was recommended or rejected.
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