Inhabit, the property management software company backed by Goldman Sachs, is going up for sale early next year, according to five private equity and banking executives.
Jefferies is advising on the deal, they said. The Inhabit sale process is expected to begin in the first quarter, while two sources said the auction would launch in January. Inhabit is anticipated to sell for more than $2 billion, they said.
Property managers typically use software like Inhabit to automate issues like resident screening, payments, and insurance. Inhabit, which was founded in 2016, counts more than 7,000 property management companies as customers. (There were 290,631 property managers in the U.S. Last year, according to IBISWorld.) The company is led by Lisa Stinnett, a managing partner at Greater Sum Ventures, who is also the former chief operating officer of Ministry Brands. Inhabit employs over 1,100 people. The company is backed by Goldman, Greater Sum Ventures, Insight Partners, and PSG.
Inhabit was last up for sale roughly four years ago, according to PE Hub. At the time, the company was known as Inhabit IQ but rebranded to just Inhabit in January. Goldman Sachs ended up investing in the company in December 2020. It’s unclear how much Goldman put in, but GS owns a minority of Inhabit, a banker, one of the five, said. (Goldman and PSG declined comment. Inhabit, Jefferies, Greater Sum, and Insight did not return messages for comment.)
Goldman used its merchant banking division to invest in Inhabit. In 2020, GS merged its merchant banking operations with asset management, appointing Eric Lane and Julian Salisbury to lead the combined business. Lane left Goldman in 2021 and is now president and COO of Tiger Global Management. Salisbury, who became CIO of Goldman’s asset and wealth management unit in late 2022, is also on his way out. He is joining Sixth Street as a partner and co-CIO early next year. Marc Nachmann is currently global head of Goldman’s asset and wealth management division.
Goldman has unloaded other investments this year. In October, GS agreed to sell GreenSky, a specialty lender, to an investor group led by Sixth Street. It also sold its personal financial management unit to Creative Planning, a registered investment advisor, in August. (Greensky and personal financial management were corporate acquisitions for Goldman, while Inhabit is a private equity investment housed in GS’s asset management unit.)
The sale of Inhabit comes as M&A is expected to explode next year. About 1,200 private companies are anticipated to run out of money, Coins2Day reported in October. Private equity dealmaking continues to crawl. So far this year, 4,337 U.S. Announced PE merger transactions totaled $220.5 billion, a 34% drop in value from 2022, according to data from LSEG Deals Intelligence. The 4,337 deals are also the lowest number of transactions posted by private equity since 2020. GTCR’s $14.4 billion buy of a majority stake in Worldpay is the year’s biggest U.S. Announced PE deal.