Seloger Acquires Agorabiz to Enter Commercial Market

Groupe Seloger has just announced that is has acquired AgoraBiz – a commecial real estate and businesses for sale site. The AgoraBiz site focuses at the small to medium end of the market and carries 31,000 small and midsized offices, store fronts and businesses for sale. AgroaBiz also runs an Expert’s Club which brings together all professionals involved in the business buying and selling process. These experts include real estate agents, business brokers, lawyers, notaries, business advisors and accountants. Seloger will pay cash for the acquisiton and it was reported that revenues are insignificant and primarily consist on membership fees for the Expert’s Club.

Seloger reported that it plans to promote the AgoraBiz site as its commercial and business for sale section. They will merge the existing 35,000 advertisements on the seloger.com site with those on AgoraBiz site to provide the widest range of commercial and business for sale listings in the French market. They will apply their online market skills and existing traffic to increase awareness and drive up usage of the site.

This is a sensible strategy for the Seloger Group and one the has been followed by the REA Group in Australia. In 2002, realestate.com.au was carrying commercial and business for sale listings on the one site. It then decided to break out commercial and businesses for sale listings into a separate site – realcommercial.com.au and to promote it separately. They also decided to charge a separate fee for listing on the site. Today the site is the leader in the Australian market and generates significant revenues with a strong EBITDA margin.

This latest acquisition comes hot on the heals of the acquisition of the Belles Demeures Group earlier this year. (See related article)

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