Goodlord, the UK’s fastest growing lettings technology and services platform, has acquired the fintech app acasa. This acquisition forms part of Goodlord’s push to broaden the range of market-leading services it offers to letting agents and their landlords and tenants.
acasa is a fintech platform which allows tenants to manage household bills and split costs between housemates easily. The acquisition, which is for an undisclosed sum, will see Goodlord incorporate the tech into their existing offering. It will be used to add value to tenants using the Goodlord platform and to create new opportunities for agents to engage with tenants and to earn commission from a wider range of tenancy products and move-in services, such as simplified utility switching.
Founded in 2013 by Nick Katz and Vasanth Subramanian, acasa amassed a user base of over 200,000 tenants who used the tech to pay for and split bills. To date, nearly $1bn of household expenditure has been tracked through the app.
This is the second acquisition led by the Goodlord group in the past 18 months. In July 2020, Goodlord acquired referencing software vendor Vouch in a move which created a new market leader in lettings software. Combined, the businesses are responsible for thousands of clients, processing tens of thousands of tenancies and references through their platforms each month.
The latest move from Goodlord takes the company a step closer towards its goal of offering a market-leading, end-to-end solution for letting agents and landlords, as well as improving the experience of tenants moving through the Goodlord or Vouch platforms. The business plans to deliver this through a combination of internal product development and further acquisitions over the coming months.
Tom Mundy, COO of Goodlord, comments:
“We’re delighted to be acquiring acasa and bringing it into the Goodlord ecosystem. Our platform offers a modern customer experience to tenants on behalf of agents, and this is a fantastic opportunity to continue adding value to these tenants, making the rental process smoother and more enjoyable. For letting agents, it will make offering additional services - such as utility switching and broadband set-up - even easier, whilst enabling them to benefit from even higher conversion rates and commissions. This news represents another step forward in our plan to build the sector’s strongest end-to-end offering; one which saves agents money, time and hassle whilst modernising the rental experience for all.”
Nick Katz, FRICS, co-founder and CEO of acasa, comments:
“We set out on this journey with the purpose of building foundational technology that runs the home, so the world can live better, together. In Goodlord we’ve found the perfect match for the next stage of acasa’s journey. We’re excited that our technology will now be a part of the market leader in the residential rental property market in the UK, this will enable our purpose and our product to reach more tenants than ever before. Together with Goodlord we will be able to carry on our mission to make the experience of moving in, managing and moving on as delightful as it should be.”
Hermes Capital Advisors, Securities Offered through Arcadia Securities, LLC, acted as financial advisor to acasa in connection with this transaction.
