Private Equity Buys Tenant Turner and ShowMojo

Tenant Turner and ShowMojo have been quietly bought by a private equity firm.

Knoxville-based Greater Sum Ventures (GSV), through it's subsidiary PropertyTek, purchased both leasing automation companies earlier this year.

The purchase prices have not been disclosed. Peter Lohmann's excellent property management newsletter first broke the news.

Scattered-site property managers know Tenant Turner and ShowMojo as the two oldest leasing automation companies. Both offer very similar marketing and scheduling tools, with Tenant Turner focused on SMB customers and ShowMojo leaning towards larger PMs.

Tenant Turner was founded in 2013 and ShowMojo in 2011. Insiders report that the founders are no longer active in their companies.

Both companies focus on software for self-showings

Who is the new owner?

Greater Sum Ventures (GSV) is lower-middle-market private equity firm focused on tech-enabled companies. Typically these companies generate ~$2-5M in annual profit and have valuations of less than $100M.

Their subsidiary PropertyTek was the direct buyer of both Tenant Turner and ShowMojo.

It looks like the founders of GSV first built Christian ministry software before moving into private equity.

GSV runs different vertical-software strategies, including real estate, law enforcement, Christian ministry, and healthcare.

Within real estate, they have two subsidiary companies that buy smaller proptech players and roll them up through cross-sell and integration

Inhabit is their multifamily and vacation rental arm. They own ResMan (PMS), PropertyBoss (PMS), AnyoneHome (leasing CRM) and Streamline (Vacation PMS)
PropertyTek is focused on small and medium property managers. They own Tenant Cloud (PMS), CollegePads (rental listing site), Rentler (rental listing site), ShowMojo (leasing automation) and Tenant Turner (leasing automation)

Both companies will be owned an operated by the PropertyTek subsidiary

Future of ShowMojo and Tenant Turner

Typically, the strategy of software private equity is to buy a core platform and then make "bolt-on" acquisitions of smaller companies that can be integrated onto the platform.

Private Equity focuses heavily on increasing EBITDA (a measure of profitability), usually through aggressive pricing, cross-sell, up-sell and cutting expenses.

As soon as they've juiced the profits, the final step is to sell or recap with mega-cap private equity companies (KKR, Goldman Sachs AM, Insight Partners)

We don't know exactly what PropertyTek will do, but here's a few likely scenarios:

Operate them independently and focus on cutting costs (engineering, support, admin) and aggressively raising prices at renewal
Combine them into a single leasing automation brand that controls ~70% of the market. Then cut the duplicate employees and generate higher profit margins through economies of scale
Integrate them into Tenant Cloud (their core PMS) and cross-sell/up-sell the products to each customer base

PropertyTek is integrating Tenant Turner into TenantCloud and cross-selling (posted to Tenant Cloud in August 2024)

What Happens Next

If you're a customer of ShowMojo or Tenant Turner, what's going to happen?

For the time being, probably not much. It usually takes PE firms a few months before they start the playbook of consolidating operations, cutting expenses and cross-selling/up-selling.

Going forward, these will be the key things to keep an eye on:

How will their new pricing power affect pricing during contract renewals?
What new features are they building?
How will customer support be affected?

New Alternatives

While these are the two oldest companies in scattered-site leasing, there's new blood in the market. These companies are focused on building a cutting-edge more powerful leasing product.

RentEngine - all-in-one leasing platform with integrated communications, Leasing Intelligence data and remote-guided showings

ShowDigs - focused on automation with on-demand showing agents

LetHub - focused on scheduling automation and have an AI chatbot

Private Equity Buys Tenant Turner and ShowMojo

Who is the new owner?

Future of ShowMojo and Tenant Turner

What Happens Next

New Alternatives

About the author

Private Equity Buys Tenant Turner and ShowMojo

Rentlinx Alternative for Property Leasing Managers (now that it's shutting down)