Look back through this blog and you won’t see a single mention of Trulia.com. Trulia gained a lot of attention when it first rolled out. It scared (and continues to scare) real estate agents. But I don’t know why… It’s just a web site. It doesn’t replace a real estate agent.
If you are not familiar with Trulia, it’s a big giant site that provides real estate listings. They scrape or pull listings from multiple places and display listings for all to view, search and ponder.
They started in California, and have slowly branched out to a few other major markets. Now they are active in Arizona.
I got a call a couple of days ago from Kelly Roark, Vice President, Industry Development for Trulia. She provided this email below to let me know what was happening at Trulia. Kelly was a very nice, professional lady. I don’t think she or anyone at Trulia is trying to replace agents. She even says that we (agents) can provide the most accurate info on a property. And now I share Kelly’s email with all the avid readers of this blog:
Dear Jay,
Nice speaking with you this afternoon! As promised, here’s an update for your blog:
Since we opened our online door in September 2005, we’ve been working hard to build a great search tool for home buyers, real estate agents, brokers and home sellers. Our goal is to simplify the search process over multiple property Web sites from the time consumers turn on their computers, and then quickly point them to the richest source of property information on the listing brokers’ Web sites–the people who’ve often sat at a home seller’s coffee table and can provide the most accurate information on a property. Check out the latest at www.Trulia.com, including new features that you and your readers might be interested in:
• New state launches in big real estate markets. Trulia is now live in Arizona, in addition to CA, NY, NJ, TX, FL, PA, NV, IL and OH. Plus, we’ll be adding several more markets in July and will be nationwide before year end.
• Cool new product updates and features: Check out our new user search views (screen shots available at your request) to meet just about any preference in home viewing, as well as our school and census data:
o Gallery view – the latest in real estate search technology: if you’re a visual person and can’t be bothered by words, click on this feature and search by thumbnail photo rather than address
o Search results map with property details – Skip the double-click process with this new view option: as you click on property search results, the accompanying city map is replaced with property details on the right so you can quickly scan information
o Full map view – Trulia mapping to the max: view full-screen map details with this exciting, visually enticing new mapping feature
o School overviews and census information – Consumers can get a quick snapshot on Trulia.com of publicly available information that’s important within a home buyer’s search process – things like student/teacher ratio in specific markets, student performance, crime statistics, median family income, travel time to work, and more. Here are a few examples:
1. http://www.trulia.com/city/AZ/Phoenix/
2. http://www.trulia.com/city/AZ/Scottsdale/
3. http://www.trulia.com/city/AZ/Tucson/
• Leading Real Estate brokers sign-up: We continue to generate strong support and feedback from leading real estate listing brokers across the US and are driving traffic to many thousands of real estate sites. Recently we announced over 15 major brokers (see press release at the bottom) that have their listings indexed by Trulia, with dozens more joining every day. And in Arizona, broker leaders such as Realty Executives Phoenix, Realty Executives Southern Arizona, Long Realty, Russ Lyon, Century 21 Metro Alliance and Prudential Arizona Properties are on board as well as your site!
Feel free to contact me if you have questions, and please spread the word to all your friends, colleagues and readers!
Thanks,
Kelly
…………………………………………………….
Kelly Roark
Vice President, Industry Development
TRULIA Real Estate Search
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Larry Cragun 06.28.06 at 4:59 pm
Jay, I just came across your blog. You are doing a nice job. About Trulia.
It seems to me that their business model needs too many agents. I don’t see them
gaining the traction they need. Larry Cragun
Cheryl 07.07.06 at 12:54 pm
Trulia indexes listings from RSS feeds. OK, cool, I may be the broker of a small “boutique” real estate office in Los Angeles, but I can write valid XML code. So I create a feed, and input the feed address on the Trulia form. A few days go by, my listings aren’t there. I email Trulia and get a reply that they are only indexing feeds of 50 listings or more. Well, so much for small offices having equality with the big guys. So, we’re using http://www.postlets.com to get our listings on Trulia.
Nisheeth Ranjan 07.13.06 at 8:59 am
Cheryl,
I’m sorry that we weren’t able to accept your feed submission at Trulia. Overwhelming demand to get onto the Trulia system meant that we prioritized larger feeds first. We have now fixed this problem with additional resources and are open to accept all valid feeds.
If you want, please feel free to send me a direct email with a link to your feed. I will see to it that it gets added.
Thanks!
Nisheeth Ranjan 07.13.06 at 9:02 am
My email address is “my first name at trulia.com”. Sorry for the indirect reference to the email address. I don’t want the spam spiders to get my email and start spamming me!
The AZ Real Estate Guy 07.13.06 at 1:50 pm
Nisheeth -
The spiders will find you, it’s just a matter of WHEN, not IF!
Thanks for visiting and commenting!!
JayATthompsonsrealty.com