TORONTO – Online real estate brokerage Zoocasa is shutting down as of June 22, parent company Rogers Communications, Inc. confirmed with Global News Tuesday.
“Rogers has made the decision to no longer to continue our investment in Zoocasa as the business is no longer a fit with our overall company plan, and core areas of focus. We will close down our website and mobile app effective June 22nd, 2015,” the company said in a statement.
An email sent to customers earlier in the day stated that although Zoocasa has “had great success” in the past two years, they have “made the difficult decision to close down” their business.
Zoocasa was purchased by Rogers in 2008 and launched as a licensed real estate brokerage in 2013. Acting as a referral service to a group of handpicked realtors across the country, their mandate was to match buyers and sellers with the “right real estate agent.”
The company ran into trouble in March of this year when the Toronto Real Estate Board started enforcing rules surrounding the sharing of sold data publicly. If Zoocasa (or any other brokerage that offered similar information) violated the rules, they could have lost access to the MLS — a giant database of listings realtors have access to. In order to not break the rules, Zoocasa had to stop posting this information online and in a popular daily email newsletter, which had thousands of subscribers according to The Globe and Mail.
Zoocasa’s business model was also looked down upon by many realtors and the news of them closing was met mainly with cheers on social media.
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