ToLet acquires Jumia House Nigeria to create PropertyPro.Ng

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ToLet.com.ng, the real estate company which recently got $1.2 million funding, just bought part of a $1 billion company-Jumia house(Lamudi). Hence, ToLet.com.ng and Jumia House Nigeria will merge platforms under the brand name of PropertyPro.

In the words of the CEO and Co-Founder Fikayo Ogundipe; The acquisition was an outcome of ToLet’s strength in the real estate market and with the support from the lead investor, Malaysia based Frontier Digital Ventures.
“This came about from FDV market research which has a strong real-estate classified portfolio across Africa―looking at which markets they were strong and where Rocket [Jumia’s lead investor] was weaker,”. “In Nigeria Jumia House was number three or number four in online listings. It didn’t make sense for Rocket to burn more capital in that position, so [FDV] approached tolet.com.ng on the acquisition of Jumia House.
In relation to finance, Co-Founder Sulaiman Balogun said: “The $1.2 million funds that were announced last year is the only information we have disclosed”. However,Tolet.com.ng has the financial capacity to grow and expand.With the acquisition of Jumia house, ToLet is acquiring the entire Jumia House platform (staff, assets, and their listings and agent network).

Hence, the new brand PropertyPro entity will combine ToLet’s 60,000 listings to Jumia House’s 22,000 to formulate the largest online real estate listings platform in Nigeria. ToLet explained it makes money from agent subscription fees. ToLet’s platform had 10,000 agents, of which 20 percent were charged.“We have a long-term plan to charge a higher percentage of our the premium plan,” said ToLet CEO Ogundipe.

ToLet’s new PropertyPro platform will not charge fees for property listings, something some of its competitors do. ToLet’s current online listings are about 70 percent rentals and 30 percent sales. Co-CEOs Balogun and Ogundipe said to expect updates on the integrated PorpertyPro platform. They have engineers developing user-friendly search features for the site and plan to launch an Android app soon. According to Balogun “A major objective of the acquisition and brand new PropertyPro platform is to expand ToLet’s agents and listings reach across Nigeria and increase the number of sales listings”. To continue with, an emerging credit rating market in Nigeria has fueled practices whereby landlords can demand advance deposit of up to two years rent from tenants.
ToLet hopes its recent acquisition and upgraded PropertyPro platform can ease the burden.

To conclude with, Co-Founder Sulaman Balogun said: “We believe creating more visibility of real estate listings and ease of connecting buyers and sellers online can solve some of these liquidity problems and bridge this gap between supply and demand”.