CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGP), the leading provider of commercial real estate information, analytics and online marketplaces, announced today its acquisition of Cozy Services, Ltd., a leading provider of online rental solutions, for $68 million. Cozy is considered an industry leader in the online rental property market, with more than 50,000 landlords using the Cozy platform.
Cozy provides a broad spectrum of services to both landlords and tenants, including property listings, rent estimates, rental applications, tenant screening, online rent payments, and expense tracking. There are currently over 120,000 tenants making online payments through the Cozy platform, totalling over $1.4 billion in payments over the past 12 months.
"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 Andrew C. Florance, CoStar Group Founder and Chief Executive Officer. "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."
Currently, CoStar is a leading solution provider in online lease management for commercial real estate through its Real Estate Manager products. Over 200,000 commercial leases for office, retail and industrial clients are managed through the Real Estate Manager platform, which represents approximately $30 billion in lease payments on an annual basis.
Extending this capability to multifamily properties, CoStar expects to fully integrate the Cozy technology into the Apartments.com platform in the first half of 2019. This integrated online rental solution is expected to create significant value and efficiency in the rental process for independent rental owners. These owners operate over 22 million rental units in properties that contain five units or less – representing a significant "long tail" opportunity for CoStar. Based on what property owners are currently willing to pay to fill their properties with a qualified renter, CoStar believes the total addressable market is well over $8 billion. In addition, once integrated with Apartments.com, renters will be able to use the platform to save time and money by leveraging a single rental application and credit check across multiple properties. This, in turn, creates a large population of quality renters for landlords to access for future vacancies.
Gino Zahnd, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Cozy said, "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."
About CoStar Group, Inc.
CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGP) is the leading provider of commercial real estate information, analytics and online marketplaces. Founded in 1987, CoStar conducts expansive, ongoing research to produce and maintain the largest and most comprehensive database of commercial real estate information. Our suite of online services enables clients to analyze, interpret and gain unmatched insight on commercial property values, market conditions and current availabilities. LoopNet is the most heavily trafficked commercial real estate marketplace online with approximately 5 million monthly unique visitors per month. Realla is the UK's most comprehensive commercial property digital marketplace. Apartments.com, ApartmentFinder.com, ForRent.com, ApartmentHomeLiving.com, Westside Rentals, AFTER55.com, CorporateHousing.com, ForRentUniversity.com and Apartamentos.com form the premier online apartment resource for renters seeking great apartment homes and provide property managers and owners a proven platform for marketing their properties. CoStar Group's websites attracted an average of approximately 45 million unique monthly visitors in aggregate in the third quarter of 2018. Headquartered in Washington, DC, CoStar maintains offices throughout the U.S. and in Europe and Canada with a staff of over 3,600 worldwide, including the industry's largest professional research organization. For more information, visit www.costargroup.com.
