Realestate.com.au Buys Trust Accounting Software

With the ink just drying on the deal, realestate.com.au has purchased Clarke Computers Pty Ltd for $650,000. Clarke Computers provides trust accounting and rent roll management software to the commercial real estate industry and has been doing so for 24 years. With over 420 customers their Sales Trust, Rent Trust and Sales Tracker software will be integrated with REA’s ever growing suite of products to roll out to their 7,954 agents across Australia.My first thought was ‘wow’ this is a very, very cheap deal and after a quick call to CEO Simon Baker he did explain the deal, which is basically just the assets. To me however it still does seem awfully cheap!

This comes hot on the heals of the HubOnline application which is being re-developed from the ground up for massive scaling!
This sale also means that realestate.com.au has more competitors, with the many trust accounting package companies in the market.

The software currently is ‘client side’ which means it runs and stores from the personal computer and realestate.com.au are investigating a mix of client side storage with an integrated web based application!

To me all of these deals makes sense for the REA company. REA’s thinking must be that because they have nearly all residential agents in Australia, they need to provide more serivces and software to them and therefore generate higher revenues.

Out of the many established trust accounting packages on the market, this one would have to be the cheapest, which you may think would mean not being the best, but that is not always the case and I am sure the boffins at REA know a good deal both price wise and the best fit for their compan going forward!