- Acquisition comes months after acquisition of Maintenance Manager
- The deal makes Bricks + Agent a market leader
- Inspection Manager completes over 13 million inspections
Sydney-based property management company, Bricks + Agent, has acquired Inspection Manager in a deal worth $8 million. The deal will see Bricks + Agent servicing around half of the rental properties in Australia, with the acquisition coming three months after the business acquired its competitor, Maintenance Manager.
Bricks + Agent, co-founder of Rafael Niesten said the company has had their eye on inspections for some time, now, noting that maintenance and inspections go hand-in-hand.
“When property managers are out doing inspections, they often find a large number of maintenance items and without any integration, it can be really difficult.”
“I first discovered Inspection Manager when looking for partners that aligned in a different vertical to maintenance.
“Inspections and maintenance work hand-in-hand; we have been working as a partner with Inspection Manager for well over 12 months and were impressed with their product and team.”
A growing proptech
The purchase of Inspection Manager brings those two capabilities under one roof. Inspection Manager, founded 13 years ago, has completed over 13 million inspections.
Bricks + Agent’s portfolio now includes over 2,500 agencies, 1.2 million properties and 18,000 property managers. Additionally, the platform has 5.1 million registered property owners and tenants, as well as 60,000 tradespeople. It has also secured clients such as Meriton, JLL and Little Real Estate.
Strategic in nature, the merger will create an all-encompassing service, enabling Bricks + Agent to offer invoicing, maintenance and inspections, which are the top three services required for property managers in their day-to-day work.
This deal sees Bricks + Agent acquire the second of Australia’s prop-tech founding fathers (following Maintenance Manager) and comes after hipages Group’s strategic investment in B+A in November 2021 to fuel the business growth.
The right fit
Co-founder of Inspection Manager, Carrie Vernon, said that the acquisition made sense given the consolidation that has been happening in the proptech industry in recent months.
“We see this as a fast way to deliver our strategy by growing in the real estate and social housing space while continuing to enhance and grow the users’ experience across these critical property management elements,” Vernon said.
“When we started 13 years ago our goal was and continues to be to create great tools for Property Managers that help drive efficiency in their day.
“Finding another team in Bricks + Agent that aligns with that goal is brilliant as we can push harder and faster on helping PM’s win back more of their time.
“There is a lot of consolidation underway currently in Proptech and it made logical sense to combine forces and allow our vision to be taken to the next level.
“The Bricks and Agent team will align these key pieces of technology to create a seamless, integrated user experience and our existing team is happy to be working as part of a bigger group to achieve more of our goals.”
