Despite the multitude of online real estate websites, buying a home today remains stubbornly anachronistic, with dual real estate agents, proliferating fees, and reams of old-fashioned paper documents.
Now two of the leading real estate websites are merging—Zillow, the Seattle-based site known for assigning a “Zestimate” to home values, is buying San Francisco’s Trulia for $3.5 billion in stock, the companies said today. Together they may finally get big enough to try to streamline the way homes are bought and sold.
