Comments on: Who is Trulia Serving?

By: Real Time Paradigm Shifting in The Real Estate and Mortgage Industries at The XBroker

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:28:34 +0000

[...] and Dustin: Either way and any way, this would be another big win for Trulia, but as Joel notes, Michael agrees, (and I’ve said before), it is note self-evident that at the end of the day, the consumer wins with broker-fed listing sites. [...]

By: Rumors spread that Trulia is getting Prudential’s Listings « 4realz.net

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 03:59:52 +0000

[...] Either way and any way, this would be another big win for Trulia, but as Joel notes, Michael agrees, (and I’ve said before), it is note self-evident that at the end of the day, the consumer wins with broker-fed listing sites. [...]

By: Kris is not feeling the love from Trulia or Zillow… « 4realz.net

Kris is not feeling the love from Trulia or Zillow… « 4realz.net — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 00:42:01 +0000

[...] It’s sad, but true, that my concern with Trulia since, well… since the early days, has been that they opted to serve the brokerage community first and foremost: “In talking with Trulia, it became clear that these guys have every intention of serving the brokerage community very well… [...]

By: Who gave Roost complete MLS listings? « 4realz.net

Who gave Roost complete MLS listings? « 4realz.net — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 09:53:12 +0000

[...] As a side note, I’ve always thought that this approach to getting listings for a real estate tech start-up makes the most sense… and I remember suggesting to Sami that Trulia should take this approach as oppose to going broker-by-broker at our coffee session in Seattle a few years ago. (I don’t care much for the CPC monetization strategy, but in terms of getting listings, it seems like a no-brainer to give a little bit to a local brokers in each market to get their listings.). However, I can’t blame Sami for not wanting to go down this route since the various MLS’ would have put so many restrictions around what Trulia could do that they’d never been able to release some of the things that they’ve done (like mixing MLS listings with foreclosure listings and opening up an API into their listing information). [...]

By: Zillow’s Smart Search is… « 4realz.net

Zillow’s Smart Search is… « 4realz.net — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 07:48:04 +0000

[...] Interestingly, this is the same issue I’ve had with Trulia since I can remember and, if I may say so myself, pretty well articulated in this article from March ‘06 called Who is Trulia Serving? “in somewhere like Washington (and Oregon, California, and I think most of the country), this strategy means that [Trulia] will never have the most complete database of homes (at least not under the current MLS system). Maybe I’m missing something, but I simply cannot see how this is going to win buyers over… Even an ugly search interface is better than a snazzy Trulia search if it includes a larger selection of homes that are on the market.” [...]

By: Art

Art — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 11:20:16 +0000

Take a look at a UK (for now) property search engine – extate.com. The UI is even cleaner than trulia, I believe. It will cover US soon, so its interesting to learn what the best source of data in US is – MLS or agents? Are there no companies that sell nationwide MLS listings to third parties, like advertising agencies? Is trulia forced to adopt the brokers approach?

By: Dustin

Dustin — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 21:53:31 +0000

Thanks Rick for the info... I just added House Robot to my wiki on innovative real estate search sites. If you think I missed something, please don't hesitate to add more to the page!

By: Rick Ho

Rick Ho — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 16:34:51 +0000

Tight Google map integration is definitely the trend of the next gen real estate search engine.

Take a look at http://www.housingrobots.com In additional to what Trulia is providing, they have a couple of unique features that I can’t find in similar sites.

1) “SCHOOL-FIRST” search where buyer can have an overview of top school districts and start from there.

2) “PRICE-HISTORY” tracking, so you see all the price changes of the houses.

3) “SURROUNDING” info. They provide surrounding schools, restaurants, church and bank info for their listed house. Very handy.

4) Their Google Map integration is very well done. All the nearby cities will be updated when you move around. Unlike Trulia which give an approximation at high zoom level, their housing information is accurate at all zoom level.

5) I also like their Google Earth integration

Take a look to see if you like it.

Rgds, Rick

By: Max

Max — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 06:01:56 +0000

You’re might be right. Trulia and Google Base are quite new products and I just happened to learn about them recently. I never followed Point2Homes very closely, but I like their approach and the way they utilize the new available tools for marketing. Trulia is very limited right now and the option to submit feeds doesn’t change that. I think this new partnership is a bigger deal that can seam like – I think it can add to the existing noise “to talk about” in the communities, just like Seth Godin was saying in his discussion with Google employees you linked to.

By: Dustin

Dustin — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 05:03:11 +0000

Max, I'm of the opinion that the Point2Homes "announcement" was a bunch of hype. It is already quite easy to submit MLS feeds directly to Trulia (and has always been included from a the link directly from their front page!). And getting a feed on to Google Base is even easier. If there was a webmaster out there who did not know how to have their clients MLS data submitted to both Trulia AND Google Base, then they don't deserve their jobs! This was purely a marketing ploy by Point2Homes and I don't see any news there.