Dive Brief:
- No. 1 is buying up No. 2 in the online real estate market with Zillow agreeing to pay $3.5 billion in stock for Trulia.
- Among the 15 most-visited websites for real estate information, the two companies had about 89% of the traffic, which came out to 85 million unique visitors last month.
- Zillow will keep operating the two brands separately, but expects to save about $100 million a year by reducing advertising and sales expenses and not having to hire new people because it gets Trulia's staff.
Dive Insight:
What Zillow is paying for Trulia amounts to more than 100% above what Trulia stock was worth in the middle of last week, before rumors of the merger began circulating. Trulia has been losing money so far.