Berlin, January 31, 2023 - Engel & Völkers Commercial in Berlin has successfully acquired the proptech company REO/offmade. As a leading real estate broker and one of the most globally recognized brands in real estate brokerage, the integration of the REO and offmade products into the existing business units will create significant added value for its own advisors and customers and actively shape the digital transformation of the real estate industry.
With this acquisition, Engel & Völkers Commercial in Berlin takes the next major step towards digitalization and puts itself in a position to offer its own advisors and their customers an even higher level of service and added value. "This is another important step towards future viability and underlines Engel & Völkers Commercial's innovative strength and commitment in this area," said Rackham F. Schröder and Nicolas Jeissing, Managing Directors of Engel & Völkers Commercial Berlin. "We share the demands of our customers - the highest quality and best possible advice - and combine the traditional with the digital to achieve this. We remain convinced of the approach of close personal contact and individual advice tailored to the customer - but we will significantly support and further expand this in the future through state-of-the-art technologies and in-house developments."
The platform offmade, a digital marketplace for high-end investment properties, and the mobile brokerage software REO have successfully driven the digitalization of the real estate industry in recent years and collaborated with leading market players. With this acquisition, Engel & Völkers Commercial will not only make the valuation and brokerage of real estate even easier and more customer-friendly, but will also offer advisors and customers a variety of new opportunities and benefits. By using data pools, modern technologies, algorithms and machine learning, coupled with many years of local expertise, the transaction process of real estate can be digitally accompanied from acquisition to closing. It creates a unified ecosystem for its own advisors and clients with a single digital experience for the entire lifecycle of real estate on a single platform that unites the analog and digital realms.
In addition to the two founders, Lennart and Lucas Christel, who have made the "Forbes 30 Under 30" list among others, the entire team and the many years of proptech and digital expertise that come with it will also transfer to Engel & Völkers Commercial. "We share the same vision and therefore see great potential in working with a global brand as strong as Engel & Völkers," said the Christel brothers.
Named one of the most important proptechs in Germany in 2022, the startup has received a lot of attention in the industry and in the media and was able to attract well-known venture capital funds, real estate companies and business angels as investors in previous financing rounds before the sale to Engel & Völkers Commercial. These included Global Founders Capital (GFC), one of the globally most successful and largest venture capital funds, APX from Axel Springer and Porsche, and Timo Meyer, Chief People Officer (CPO) of the online bank N26.