The two main players in professional real-estate valuation in Luxembourg, Houser and BetaTracker S.A., today announced their merger. Along with a capital investment into Houser, BetaTracker S.A. brings a ground-breaking public/private research project with LISER (Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research), whose researchers are developing an exclusive method to accurately value residential property in Luxembourg.
(Featured Image: Daniel Haag, co-founder of BetaTracker and Matti Heikkila, CEO of Houser)
BetaTracker S.A. was conceived to provide professional real-estate services to banks and financial institutions, while Houser has already created several big-data real-estate services, Houser.lu for property buyers and renters, and HouserLOOP.com for real-estate agents.
Combining the scientific rigour of LISER’s research with Houser’s real-time market data and operational expertise ensures we can address the needs of banks to manage their portfolio risk and fulfill their regulatory requirements.
“This is a perfect match,” said Matti Heikkila, CEO of Houser, “The combination of BetaTracker’s banking expertise with Houser’s proven operations team ensures we can deliver the best real-estate services to our customers. For banks, we’re able to solve many of the problems they face, from loan acquisition and credit approval to risk management.”
Daniel Haag from BetaTracker was equally enthusiastic “Our unique partnership with LISER allows us to develop the most accurate valuation model in Luxembourg based on the real price of properties. Combining the scientific rigour of LISER’s research with Houser’s real-time market data and operational expertise ensures we can address the needs of banks to manage their portfolio risk and fulfill their regulatory requirements.”
LISER is already participating in the Observatoire de l’Habitat, department of the Ministry of Housing which is the leading source of official real-estate statistics in Luxembourg, releasing regular market information to the public through the website http://observatoire.liser.lu. As the first public/private partnership within LISER, the project has already shown how researchers at the institute are able to apply their expertise and address real business needs. Julien Licheron, the project coordinator in LISER was excited at the prospect of working with Houser “It is a very innovative project for us, creating a very close link between applied research and the business world. The operational expertise and experience of Houser is extremely complementary to our research skills in the construction of the valuation model”.
Houser, based in the startup incubator Lux Future Lab, is already testing its services with banks and plans are underway to build on its success in Luxembourg and expand services internationally with Germany, France and Belgium in its sights.
