Italian property portal Wikicasa has today announced that it has acquired rival portal Casaclick.it as part of a partnership deal with the portal's owner, the asset management and real estate services firm Prelios.
Casaclick has long been in the chasing pack of Italian real estate portals and was born from the 2001 merger of Casapark and Domusclick and until last year was managed by Imobiliare.it. The portal now joins Wikicasa's network of websites which includes Commerciali.it which it acquired last year.
The Wikicasa team has also been building out a specialist portal for distressed properties in collaboration with Prelios which company sources confirmed will be ready to launch soon.
Speaking about the partnership deal, Wikicasa CEO Pietro Pelizzarri said:
“We are proud and honored to take over Casaclick. This will enable us to enhance visibility for our premium clients, and we shall be working to expand the advertiser base; our focus is a system project where real estate agents are the heart of the digital revolution in this sector.”
As part of the deal, Prelios gains access to asking price data from Wikicasa's portal which it will use to train its automated valuation model (AVM). Commenting on the possibilities of working with Wikicasa, Prelios Chief Technology & Processes Officer Mauro Cavagna said:
“Wikicasa is a young and fast-growing player with whom we have developed a broad partnership project geared to technological innovation, essential in today's market, to help us speed up development of solutions to support ourcore businesses.”
This article was updated with clarification from the Wikicasa team around the nature of the partnership and quotes 28/09/21.