HomeScout is alive

Homescout was the earliest version of the Trulia idea, dating back to 1996 when a software engineer from Seattle figured out how to scrape listings from broker Web sites. Check out their original Web site. The engineers also formed a company in the online auto parts business called the Cobalt Group and decided to get out of the real estate business. HomeScout was acquired by HomeShark and eventually became part of iOwn, which was started by Ned Hoyt who had a jump on Lending Tree's Doug Lebda.
But iOwn struggled, vanished and sold the HomeScout listing service to HomeGain. The iOwn mortgage service was bought by CitiMortgage. HomeScout sat inside the womb of HomeGain for the last 6 years. In the morning, HomeScout will be relaunched, giving this Web service at least nine lives.

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