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Real estate investors who are using the beta version of Stessa, a tech platform for supporting the management of income-producing property, learned today that the software has been acquired by JLL Spark, a division of publicly-traded commercial real estate company, JLL, or Jones Lang LaSalle (NYSE: JLL).
JLL Spark is a new, independent arm of the global company launched to “… transform the real estate industry through technology-based innovation.”
Saas-based Stessa, or “assets” spelled backward, has been in beta for 12 months, helping users manage close to $500 million worth of income property.
The product was developed to overlap a consumer-friendly user experience with the sophisticated financial models required to proactively manage tens of millions in commercial property. The price of the deal was not immediately disclosed.
“As real estate investors ourselves, we created Stessa to solve the biggest pain points associated with our own investments – ongoing asset management and portfolio optimization,” said Heath Silverman, CEO and co-founder of Stessa, in a press release this morning. “The JLL Spark acquisition will allow us to scale quickly and broaden our reach.”
The software augments common property management and performance tactics by applying the type of analysis common to more esoteric Wall Street investment vehicles, such as equities.
According to today’s press release, Stessa puts real-time analysis front and center, providing property owners increased transparency, streamlined documentation and simple ways to meet reporting mandates.
Despite today’s announcement of its acquisition by a global commercial property firm, Stessa can also benefit smaller landlords and management companies. It’s also developed for mobile optimization and deploys “bank-level” security to ensure data integrity.
This is JLL Spark’s first investment. Based in San Francisco, the division is being run by co-CEOs, tech entrepreneurs Mihir Shah and Yishai Lerner.
Shah and Lerner were most recently running Groupon’s mobile business, which earned $1 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV), the highest percentage of revenue from mobile of any e-commerce company.
Stessa, and other eventual targets of JLL Spark, are intended to provide JLL with competitive advantages in business areas not often trod by commercial real estate companies. It also demonstrates yet another example of the real estate industry’s deepening reach into technologies being developed for consumers, such as VR, instant messaging and video streaming.
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