Today came the biggest deal yet: Zillow said it agreed to buy rival Trulia for about $3.5 billion. The pair will create the proverbial 800-pound gorilla for online real estate. Part of the reason for the merger-mania is that when it comes to online real estate, bigger is pretty much always better.
The real estate market is recovering slowly, but the online real estate space is booming.
Growth is likely to continue as more people get online and the internet generation comes of home-buying age. "People do love to look at what their house is worth," says Richard Green, director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate. "And, let’s face it, they want to look at what their neighbor’s house is worth."
Still, Green doesn’t think we’ll see many more mergers of this kind. He says most of the deals that could be done have been done.