AVIV Germany has acquired the 360° platform for home building in Germany and Austria, Neuraum Ventures.
Neuraum Ventures, a Berlin-based PropTech founded in 2015, claims to optimize and accelerate the construction process for housing developers and aspiring homeowners.
It is the leading house-building platform in Germany and Austria and operates four high-reach portals: Fertighaus.de, massivhaus.de, bungalow.de and einfamilienhaus.de.
The acquisition will allow AVIV Germany and Neuraum to further digitize construction and development. Neuraum already has 400 construction partners throughout Germany, aiming to make house building "stress-free, environmentally friendly, affordable and accessible to everyone."
Neuraum uses advanced matching technology to connect developers and building companies, while its digital tools smooth out marketing and contact management to house planning and offer development.
Felix Kusch, Managing Director at AVIV Germany, said:
"Neuraum has done an excellent job since it was founded in 2015 and has been extremely successful in building the central platform in the house building sector.
"We look forward to joining forces with the visionary founders and strong team at Neuraum Ventures to continue growing together."
Dr. Sebastian Keitel, founder and managing director of Neuraum, said:
"As part of the AVIV Group and together with the immowelt team, we can take the success of Neuraum Ventures to a new level.
"We are combining our specialized platform for house building, with the wide reach of immowelt.de and the international growth prospects through AVIV, as one of the world's largest digital technology companies in the real estate sector.
"My managing colleagues and I are very pleased to be working together with the Neuraum team to help shape this successful future."
AVIV Germany is the rebranded name for the local parent company of the German real estate portal Immowelt, previously 'immowelt GmbH', which was actioned last week. Neuraum itself has been part of the AVIV Group since late 2023, so the takeover won't have been a difficult pursuit.
In other words, AVIV Germany is the operator of Immowelt, Germany's number two portal, and the (presumably exclusive) partnership with Neuraum means Immowelt is likely to take a healthy market share of the struggling new homes market in Germany.
A quick Google points to several articles written in the past 12 months about how Germany's housebuilding industry is in (or at the very least set for) a steep decline. According to a source cited in an article on Euronews.com, "orders for new homes were down for the twentieth consecutive month in October 2023" due to factors including a sparsity of raw building materials from preoccupied Russia, high inflation, and a lack of skilled workers.