As different models — home trade-in companies, “iBuyers,” partnerships between new upstarts and old stalwarts — clamor for attention, lots of attention is focused on trying to determine what’s here to stay and what’s just an awkward rough draft — the Pets.com of the housing market.

Information technology has remade processes as disparate as ordering dinner delivery, hailing a cab and trading stocks. Now it’s coming for an industry so 20th century that much of the paperwork is still done on paper, where customers are often steered among professionals scratching each other’s backs, and where there’s enormous incentive for the incumbents to keep it hard for customers to manage on their own.

The stakes are big: $74 billion of real-estate-agent commissions were paid out in 2018, and investors have poured billions into all kinds of disrupters. Read More

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