Real Estate Digital (or RED), announced a management buy-out of select assets of LPS Real Estate Group and the formation of the new company.
RED, the new privately-held corporation, will focus on the support of 12 core technology products offered to the real estate industry today: rDesk® Websites, rDesk® CRM, rDesk® CMA, rDesk® IDX, Real Estate & Living Media®, reDataVault, TransactionPoint®, DocCentral, FormCentral, Data Aggregation System, Neighborhood and School Reports and MLS Portal.
Executive leadership of the company includes current LPS Real Estate Group President Jay Gaskill, CTO John Hensley, CSO Prem Luthra, and CFO Mike Kovar.
The company expects to extend its line of services to real estate professionals, brokers, and Associations.
“As a result of this management buyout, the company believes that it will be able to provide a more innovative, personalized, and higher-quality service to its customers,” said Prem Luthra. “We expect to be more nimble and have greater latitude to expand our product offerings to this core audience.”
According to Luthra, new products will initially focus on expanding the broker platform to be a platform that allows for easy integration with third party companies, mobile real estate automation, and developing additional revenue streams for clients.
A “splash page” of the new website will be launched at http://realestatedigital.com. For those of you familiar with LPS Real Estate Group today, it may help you to understand the company division by appreciating that the majority of Olathe, KS people are staying with LPS and the Irvine, CA team will be joining Real Estate Digital, RED. This is not a perfect division, but a nice mental summary.
RED will continue to be a leader in Data Aggregation services under their Data Aggregation and RE DataVault platforms, and will be a subcontractor to LPS for Data Aggregation Services provided to RPR (REALTORS® Property Resource). LPS will remain responsible for licensing RPR data to third parties like financial institutions, GSE, insurance, Government, and others.
In speaking to the management team, it would seem that RED will be off to a great start. They are launching the company with mature, stable, well-adopted products; one of the strongest and most experienced management teams in real estate technology; and long-standing and well-developed customer relationships. The company reports that will be immediately profitable. This transaction was a classic management buyout and no underwriting details were made public.
What happens to LPS?
LPS is a huge and diversified corporation, offering services to many corners of the real estate industry. It will continue to operate all of the services with the exception of those products transitioned over to Real Estate Digital.
LPS will retain the Paragon, RE Insight, RE Insight Tax, Membership Management, Get Media Now, and other MLS focused product solutions.
Current LPS SVP of MLS Systems Rich Lull will remain in his capacity with LPS. Lull will be reporting up to the Applied Analytics group at LPS under the leadership of Daniel Berman. There will not be any changes to the current services offered to MLS.
Disclosure: LPS and RED are WAV Group Clients.
Here is the official press release:
Real Estate Digital Launches Via Management Buyout of Select LPS Real Estate Group Business Lines
Spirit of Innovation Drives Industry’s Premier Provider of Integrated Real Estate Technology and Data Solutions
09.14.2011 – Irvine – Today, Real Estate Digital (RED) announced the completion of a management buyout of select business lines and operations from LPS’ Real Estate Group. Senior executives Jay Gaskill, Prem Luthra, Mike Kovar and John Hensley will continue in their roles leading the newly formed company. Moving forward, RED brings the industry the best of both worlds: unmatched expertise and resources combined with a new entrepreneurial hunger for continual innovation.
RED – nimble, adaptable, and ready to take the risks that true innovation thrives on, while remaining the largest player in real estate technology – is poised to transform the industry. With the exception of MLS systems, which will stay with LPS, all of the solutions for which the team is known will continue to be offered by RED: rDesk® Websites, Real Estate and Living Media®, reDataVaultTM, TransactionPoint®, DocCentralTM, FormCentralTM, MLS Portal, Neighborhood and School Reports, rDesk® CRM, rDesk® CMA and rDesk® IDX.
“Throughout more than five years of acquisitions, spin offs and name changes our management team has always stood 100 percent behind the value of our products,” explained Gaskill, RED’s CEO. “But our goal now is a laser focus on the real estate industry. Under that same, proven leadership, RED is here to make this industry – our industry – better for all of us through innovation.”
“The future holds great things for the real estate industry – whether today’s market reflects it or not,” Gaskill continued. “This is a period of fundamental transformation, of convergence and synergies that are helping real estate professionals better serve consumers. RED is committed to being at the center of that transformation. We see the best-in-class solutions we’ve been providing for years as just the starting point.”
About Real Estate Digital
Real Estate Digital is the leading provider of truly integrated technology, media and data solutions to real estate franchisors, brokerages, agents and MLS organizations and associations. Its offerings include rDesk® Websites, Real Estate & Living Media®, reDataVaultTM, TransactionPoint®, DocCentralTM, FormCentralTM, MLS Portal, Neighborhood and School Reports, rDesk® CRM, rDesk® CMA and rDesk® IDX. The company has relationships with over 400 MLS organizations, 350 broker companies, nearly 60 settlement services companies and more than 250,000 real estate professionals. Visit us on the web at www.realestatedigital.com, and follow us on Twitter: @re_digital
