FUNKE, one of Germany’s largest physical and online media publishers, is expanding its digital listings division further by acquiring a majority stake in Musterhaus.net, advised by CarlSquare – the German partner of SORTIS Invest. The platform has 3.8 million annual visitors, and hosts 2,000 available house listings from more than 350 house building companies. Musterhaus.net operates Germany’s largest independent house building portal, with the value of the successful business model being the lead generation of end customers to house building providers. In addition, the team at the Lüneburg headquarters offers users further comparative offers in sectors such as mortgage lending, kitchen makeovers and garages on the portal.
FUNKE’s high-growth and high-return listings segment already includes platforms such as monteurzimmer.de and pension.de, which offer accommodation. FUNKE’s management expects that the recent acquisition can be an additional top performer in the future.
The two managing partners of Musterhaus.net Albert Schwarzmeier and Patryk Moretto will remain on board after acquisition by FUNKE.
The CEO of FUNKE, Christoph Rüth commented on the deal: “With the acquisition, we are further accelerating our digital growth course and now offer B2B customers in the housing industry an additional, very attractive opportunity to efficiently acquire new customers. We are not only consistently expanding our journalistic offerings in our digital expansion strategy – as recently with the acquisition of gofeminin.de – but also strengthening our other growth drivers“.
“The team and shareholders of Musterhaus.net have built an enormously high-growth and profitable company over the past few years, which fits perfectly with our buy & build investment strategy. I am delighted that with Albert Schwarzmeier and Patryk Moretto we continue to have the ideal team leading Musterhaus.net for our joint growth plans.” – said FUNKE’s Chief Digital Officer Stephan Thurm.
Musterhaus.net’s managing partner and CSO Patryk Moretto added: “We are looking forward to working with FUNKE. It is a complementary match that, thanks to the reach of one of Germany’s leading media houses, will help us as a house-building portal reach completely new user groups – and to continue to grow. In the future, anyone thinking about choosing the right building partner for their house will not be able to avoid Musterhaus.net,”
The managing partner and CEO of Musterhaus.net, Albert Schwarzmeier added: “With the energetic and dedicated support of Mark Miller and his team at Carlsquare, we achieved an excellent result and found the ideal partner for Мusterhaus.net.”
Musterhaus.net also expects versatile advantages for its customers, the manufacturers of prefabricated houses and solid houses as well as all companies that offer services and products related to house construction. “In future, our partners will benefit simultaneously offline and online from our reach with FUNKE. This ensures higher regional visibility, the right prospective house builders and thus more sales for our partners.”
ABOUT MUSTERHAUS.NET
Musterhaus.net was founded in 2005 by Sebastian Dziwisch from Lüneburg, who saw the great potential around the digitalization of the house building industry. With managing partner Patryk Moretto, the team laid the foundation for the further development of the house building platform in 2008 and, together with designer Ralf Strasner, took the next steps towards growth. Since then they develop the leading portal without further external capital raises. A current milestone for the 31-member team was the referral of over 11,500 prospective house buyers within a single month, in December 2021.
ABOUT FUNKE GROUP
Funke Mediengruppe is Germany’s third largest newspaper and magazine publisher with a total of over 500 publications in eight countries. WAZ-Mediengruppe is privately held by the Funke family and is headquartered in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia.
The group’s largest paper is Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. Other properties in Germany include the TV magazine Gong and the woman’s magazine Die Aktuelle. Besides Germany, Funke Mediengruppe has publications in Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Albania, and Russia. The company formed Media Print Macedonia and owns several newspapers and magazines in Macedonia.
ABOUT CARLSQUARE
Carlsquare is a partner-run investment banking firm with offices in Germany, United Kingdom, Sweden and Denmark that supports companies and their shareholders in the implementation of strategic goals. These are owner-managed and market leading enterprises, fast-growing start-ups with innovative technologies and business models, but also venture capital/private equity investors and corporations that want to create growth and increase value together with entrepreneurs. Carlsquare is member of Globalscope Partners.
ABOUT SORTIS Invest
SORTIS Invest is an investment banking boutique, based in Sofia, Bulgaria, part of SORTIS Group. It is a member of Globalscope Partners, a global family of 55 independent M&A firms in 46 countries with a team of 650 professionals and more than 10,000 completed mergers and acquisitions and private equity deals worldwide. SORTIS Invest advises companies on mergers & acquisitions and fundraisings, as well as valuations and financial modelling of business cases. SORTIS Invest has a broad partner network and extensive experience in the fields of corporate finance, mergers & acquisitions.
SORTIS Invest has advised clients in various sectors including Telecommunications, Media and Technology (TMT), financial services, food and beverages, life sciences, chemicals, education, defense, manufacturing, energy, mining, transport and logistics, hospitality and real estate.
