The CoStar/LoopNet merger
So, the big news exciting everyone in the commercial real estate world yesterday was the announcement of CoStar acquiring its rival and sometime litigation adversary LoopNet in a combined stock and cash deal expected to close by the end of 2011. As always, Retail Traffic has excellent coverage of the deal. The two companies are, as far as I know, the biggest national players in the commercial real estate information market. Since I am a lawyer I do not use either service much, other than for news; but on the property information side I do have a preference for one company over the other. When I saw this announcement, the one question I had was whether the combined company, given the market share it would have, would run afoul of anti-trust laws. I am not the only one who thought that, as I saw a tweet or two to that effect and received a message from a friend (who can identify him/herself is s/he wants in the comment section) asking the same thing. My initial reaction was that