UPDATE: In the end Deutsche Telekom ended up buying the whole of ImmoScout. It was a pre-existing shareholder, and my guess is that they exercised a right of first refusal to PBL’s offer. At least this outcome seems much more logical, although it’s a bit boring: is a state-owned telephone monopoly really the best owner for a booming, successful real estate portal?

Link: FT.de (in German)
Also commented on today by Jesus Encinar on his blog (in Spanish)

In the past couple years in Europe, most of the large ‘web 1.0′ survivors in online real estate have been realizing exits through acquisition or IPO.

One of the major acquirers has been Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, through its controlling stake in Australia’s online leader realestate.com.au. They have entered Europe by buying the UK’s Propertyfinder, Italy’s Casa.it, and Luxembourg’s AtHome.lu.

So it was pretty weird to see one of the last remaining big national players, Germany’s Immobilien Scout (aka ImmoScout), rumored to have been ‘in play’ for a while, finally sold to PBL……….who??? Exactly.

PBL, it turns out, is one of Australia’s largest media companies. It’s publicly traded, and has interests in magazines, TV, gaming, and increasingly, online media. A sort of mini-News Corp. But without any meaningful online real estate holdings.

Except now, this Aussie firm controls the leading real estate website in Germany. Although it could be a purely financial investment, it rather looks like some kind of chess move as it now controls a very important asset that effectively blocks News Corp’s roll-up of Europe’s online real estate sector.

My guess is that PBL bought ImmoScout to use as a future bargaining chip to trade against some other asset they would want from News Corp.