Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff says the company’s had “a lot of conversations with the Federal Trade Commission” over its planned acquisition of rival Trulia, and he’s “confident that the deal will close late this year or early next, and that it will meet the necessary regulatory approvals” (the FTC requested additional information about the deal last month).
In a New York Times interview the company also submitted as an SEC regulatory filing, Rascoff said, “Our perspective is that real estate agents spend about $10 billion a year on advertising, and they spend about 2 percent of that on Zillow and about 2 percent on Trulia. So they have ample choice when evaluating where to spend their ad budgets.”
Rascoff said when the deal closes, it’s expected that Trulia CEO Pete Flint will stay on and run Trulia, “which will be a separate brand within the Zillow family of real estate brands. We will definitely keep the name Trulia and the website, and the suite of mobile apps under the Trulia brand.”
In another SEC filing this week, Zillow published several slides from a presentation the company hosted for real estate professionals, including one revealing that “66 percent of Zillow users don’t go to Trulia, and 50 percent of Trulia users don’t go to Zillow.” Source: New York Times via sec.gov.
