Daily Mail Group Sells Property Research Arm

DMGI, a division of UK-based Daily Mail and General Trust, has sold its real estate forecasting and analysis firm Property and Portfolio Research (PPR) to US real estate industry information group CoStar. DMGI will exchange PPR for $22m of CoStar stock.

PPR, which is headquartered in Boston and has offices in London and Hong Kong, has annual revenues of approximately $18.0m. Its suite of analytic tools helps clients undertake real estate investment plans with the support of PPR's team of economists and market analysts.

CoStar Group provides information and marketing services to commercial real estate professionals in the US as well as the UK. President and CEO Andrew Florance says that the acquisition will help expand his firm's services, through the combination of PPR's 40 economists and analysts, and CoStar's team of more than 900 market researchers.

'Bringing together PPR's outstanding team of economists and analysts with the industry's largest research organization and the most extensive database of commercial real estate information we believe will add value to product offerings and create additional growth opportunities for our combined services,' he added.

CoStar plans to preserve PPR's identity and operate it as an independent subsidiary. The PPR team will remain at its headquarters in Boston, MA, and offices in London and Hong Kong.

'This is a terrific opportunity for both companies and our clients,' said Bret Wilkerson, CEO of PPR. 'We believe this combination will dramatically accelerate our growth and allow us to focus on our core mission to bring a highly quantitative, research-based approach to real estate analysis and forecasting, and to help clients better understand risk and return in commercial real estate investing.'

Web sites: www.ppr.info and www.costar.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.