This businessman buys the remains for a fraction

Property

Several people have made offers to buy the collapsed technology company Unite Living. One Tronder buyer has drawn the longest straw – positioning himself to make a decision in the rental market.

The deadline for submitting bids for waste in the estate is yet to come Standardization of living Shifter announced the tender last week, and it expired on Monday at 12 noon. On Wednesday evening, Shifter could report that the offer had been accepted, but the trustees would not comment on who the buyer was or the sale price.

Now Shifter can report that it is Trønderproptech Apex IT, led by founder Torkel Munkehagen, He won a bidding war with several interested parties. They seize the technology and intellectual property rights for about 2 million kroner, Schefter has learned. In comparison, Unite Living was valued at NOK 140 million after a capital raise in 2021.

Jupiter Apex is not exactly well-known in the Norwegian technology space. This summer it merged with startup Myrent, which operated in the same scene as Unite Living.

Initially, Apex provided an operating platform for builders and contractors within the new construction sector. Through Myrent and Unite Living, the company is now poised to capture larger shares of the rental market.

– For Unite Living customers, this means the system continues as it was before, whether you are a landlord or a tenant. At Apex we want to take care of the employees and resources in the company, says Munkehagen in a written statement.

He has not been interviewed yet.

Famous investors

Investors who have invested millions in Unite Living include Barreto Bollig, Urbanium Gruppen, DNB and ski legend Björn Daly. In late 2021, NOK 20 million was injected into the company.

Before announcing the tender, Barreto and DNB presented a bailout that would give the company the NOK 14 million needed to guarantee operations until next summer. However, this proposal was rejected by the company’s management. Both parties kept the details of the plan to themselves, and no one will comment on the reason for its failure.

Customers feel satisfied

Many customers contacted by Shifter said they were very satisfied with Unite Living, and would continue to use the service as long as the new owners continued using it. Major players like Selvaag, Krogsveen and M3 were on the customer side. However, the company has never been able to gain a proper foothold outside the country’s borders, for example in the large rental markets of Germany or Sweden.

CEO Joachim Tangen in Utliehjelpen.no He was among the customers who started sweating when Unite Living’s message about a potential tender arrived last week. The impression was that the tool he had come to rely on to manage rental relationships could disappear within two days.

– Some thoughts passed through my head. We didn’t have many options to work with, and I started thinking about all the extra work we’d get if we had to do it manually. This creates a number of challenges in terms of time usage, Tangen tells Shifter.

He was and still is a big fan of the Unite Living solution. He uses the platform, among other things, to prepare rental invoices and keep records of entry and exit.

– We actively used it, and for us it was a working tool that made everyday life easier.

It felt safe

– Have you ever thought that it might be unsafe to rely on a tool made by a startup?

– I did not do that. They seemed to have good back coverage and it didn’t seem like a risk to me. We keep client funds separate from this, nothing is in our account, so the only risk for us is the workload if the instrument disappears again. There is no equivalent good solution, so it was easy for us to choose Unite Living. Competitors did not offer the same range of services and were using much heavier systems than us.

-So they solved a problem for you?

– Yes, they did.

– Have you ever been able to make a plan for what you would do if the platform disappeared?

– We may have had to switch to another system, which didn’t work well and we had to do different things manually, says Tangen and points to the payment department.

It confirms what the estate previously reported, regarding the continued operation of the servers in anticipation of the estate’s purchase.

– We use the system as usual, until we are told otherwise. We have no other choice either.