Previously, quickly strong in the shadows of the fight for consumer attention in the real estate industry, Market Leader stood alone. Avoiding the “ZTR” grouping, and posing little threat to the “media” companies (which Move, Zillow and Trulia really are) as they developed software for the professionals.
Quietly amassing a powerful collection of game pieces including Realestate.com and ActiveRain, Market Leader flew below the radar more often than not. Which is probably why I was such a fan, and customer, since 2004 or so. Once Alex Lange joined the company as CTO I knew it was going to get interesting, but I had no idea how interesting.
With today’s announcement of Trulia acquiring Market Leader, I nearly fell off my chair at first reaction. Upon further consideration, I am grabbing my popcorn and going to watch this one play out – what an amazing synergistic opportunity to combine incredible CRM/Software as well as services that Market Leader provides with the consumer friendly (and well designed) Trulia systems of services.
Now with an even stronger jaw, this dog fight is going to get extremely interesting. Do I dare dub this “The Zillow Killer”, but I think the Zestimate limited them more than they even know… ahh marketing and PR are lost sometimes, but I won’t get into the strategic rebranding possible of the Zestimate, no one asked me. 