by Christo Volschenk
ImmobilienScout24.de, Germany’s leading real estate platform, is getting ready to move into Austria. An Austrian company is being registered and a website has gone live (ImmobilienScout24.at).

Unfortunately, efforts to get more information from the Berlin-based head office of ImmobilienScout24 have been unsuccessful to date.

The website states an Austrian company is in the process of being registered. It will be called Immobilien Scout GmbH.

The site shows a (rather uncharacteristic) uncluttered home page, with a simple search function. Type in capital city Vienna and 1,312 properties are shown as “to rent” and “for sale”.

ImmobilienScout24 belongs to the Scout24 Group, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom. The Scout24 Group already operates auto portal (AutoScout24.at) and partner search portal (FriendScout24.at) in Austria.

Questions that went unanswered: will the site be operated out of Austria, or Berlin? When will the site be launched officially?

That it took the Scout24 Group so long to target Austria, is an interesting topic in itself. It has been present in Switzerland for a few years already with the portal ImmoScout24.ch, which is operated from Switzerland by Scout24 Schweiz AG.

Scout24 Schweiz Holding AG is owned by media swiss Group (49.9 percent) and Deutsche Telekom AG (50.1 percent) via its subsidiary Scout24 Holding. In turn, the Swiss media group Ringier holds 80 percent in media swiss Group.