News Corp Class A (NASDAQ:NWSA) subsidiary Move Inc. acquired a real estate technology firm OpCity recently. The company announced details about the deal valued at approximately $210 million in the last week of August. Move Inc. is the real-estate focused subsidiary of News Corp. and owns properties including relocation.com, Doorsteps, and realtor.com.
Move Inc. completes real estate technology firm acquisition formalities
The technology platform of OpCity ensures that both the home sellers and buyers connect with the professionals from the field of real-estate. Since its launch in 2015, the real estate technology firm raised $27 million. Based in Austin, Texas, the company will not change its brand for marketing. Ben Rubenstein, its CEO will from now on report to Ryan O’Hara CEO Move Inc.
News Corp is trying to push its existence in the field of real estate with the view to supplement its primary newspaper businesses. With the acquisition of the real estate firm, the company has now inched closer to its goals. Apart from realtor.com businesses, Move Inc. also holds a majority stake in REA Group Limited, a real estate technology company from Australia.
With this acquisition the lead generation product portfolio of realtor.com will expand as now it will also include the concierge-based model of OpCity. The real estate firm has a broker-centric model which helped it to grow its client base in the U.S. to more than 5,000 brokerages and 40,000 plus agents since its launch.
OpCity and Realtor.com will bring sellers, buyers and agents together
According to the News Corp Chief Executive, Robert Thomson, “Real estate is an increasingly significant part of the News Corp portfolio, and the acquisition of Opcity deepens our engagement with agents and homebuyers alike.” Thomson further added that OpCity and Realtor.com have a common consumer-first philosophy focused on keeping the professionals in the real estate sector at the core of all the transactions.
Thompson believes that the combination of the real estate technology firm and Realtor.com will bring buyers, agents, and sellers together thereby improving the overall consumer experience. It will also provide the company’s industry partners more opportunities to grow their businesses and connect with more clients.
