Armed with new investment capital, a software provider that claims to serve nearly 10,000 real estate offices and 250,000 real estate agents in North America is reportedly equipped to continue acquiring tech firms.
Last month, Lone Wolf Real Estate Technologies announced that it received a strategic growth investment from Vista Equity Partners, which invests exclusively in software, data and technology-enabled businesses.
Lone Wolf’s core back- and front-office brokerage solutions represented a “significant marketing opportunity” to Vista because “many brokers still use manual processes and spreadsheet-based solutions to manage business operations,” said Alan Cline, principal at Vista Equity Partners, in a statement last month.
The investment came shortly before real estate website provider Placester announced a $15 million funding round, another one of the latest indications that tech investors are bullish on real estate.
Lone Wolf CEO Lorne Wallace recently told Marilyn Wilson and Victor Lund, partners at the real estate consultancy WAV Group, that the investment from Vista Equity Partners brought two important “capabilities” to Lone Wolf: expertise in the enterprise software domain, and the ability to “approach acquisitions of firms with between $5 million and $20 million in revenue.”
Wallace’s comment signals that Lone Wolf plans to continue its streak of purchasing software providers.
The company has snapped up at least two companies in the last year to broaden its offerings. It purchased the marketing platform eWebEngine Internet Marketing Solutions in 2014. And in January, it swallowed Millennium Real Estate Solutions, the provider of a data management system for real estate boards and associations.
In a statement, Wallace cast that last acquisition as enabling the company to “offer products that span the spectrum of our industry.”
Those products include: brokerWOLF, a back-office accounting software; WOLFConnect, a set of digital products for firms including websites and a lead management and distribution system; and globalWOLF, a set of website enhancements including lead tracking and custom features.
Lone Wolf says more than half of the top 500 brokerage firms in the U.S. use brokerWOLF, and 94 of the top 100 firms use it in Canada.
