Washington D.C.-based CoStar, a leading real estate information and analytics service, has announced that it is acquiring Portland-based online rental solutions company Cozy Services for $68 million. Cozy helps over 50,000 landlords screen tenants, receive applications, collect rent, and market their listings.
There are more than 120,000 tenants who make online payments through Cozy. And payments made through Cozy totaled over $1.4 billion in payments in the past year.
CoStar is a public company with a market capitalization of about $13.3 billion. Currently, CoStar is a leading solution provider in online lease management for commercial real estate through its Real Estate Manager products. More than 200,000 commercial leases for office, retail, and industrial clients are managed through the Real Estate Manager platform. And it represents about $30 billion in lease payments on an annual basis. CoStar acquired Apartments.com for $585 million in 2014.
“We believe that if we continue to focus on delivering a fantastic renter experience on Apartments.com, we will continue to be the most heavily trafficked website offering the most valued advertising solutions,” said CoStar group founder and CEO Andrew C. Florance in a statement. “Cozy’s technology makes the renting and payments process simple, secure, and intuitive. When combined with Apartments.com, the 40 million prospective renters that visit our network each month will be able to effortlessly locate, apply, lease and pay for their new rental home completely online.”
CoStar is planning to fully integrate Cozy’s technology into the Apartments.com platform in the first half of 2019. And this integrated online rental solution will bring greater efficiency in the rental process for independent rental owners. These owners currently operate over 22 million rental units in properties that contain five units or less. And CoStar believes that the total addressable market is well over $8 billion.
“We are excited to be able to bring our landlord and renter services to a larger audience by joining the CoStar team and the Apartments.com network. The combination of CoStar’s leadership in multifamily marketing with our integrated solutions for renters and landlords makes for a very exciting future for all of us,” added Cozy CEO and founder Gino Zahnd.
Prior to the acquisition, Cozy raised about $18.4 million in funding from investors such as General Catalyst, Social Capital, Upslope Ventures, GV, Daniel Curran, Jason Calacanis, and Tim Ferriss.
