Just as the pun is obvious, the implementation by Pete Flint and his crew at RealWide of a new real estate search engine is obviously awesome… Their new real estate search engine available and can be found at: Trulia.com
If you’ve been reading my posts for a while, then you know I’ve been following the development of new mapping technologies pretty darn closely and this is far-and-away the best implementation yet. Pete and his crew didn’t take anything for granted and put together a whole new real estate search engine! I mentioned that this site was coming out a few weeks ago, and the implementation lives up to everything Pete told me it would be.
So here’s some features I like love:
- The search interface is as simple as entering a city name or a zip code! The UI is beautiful.
- The filtering by other features like Price, Bedrooms, Bathrooms and Price is fast and very intuitive!
- When click on more detail for a listing, you get the VERY useful information like the price per square foot, the days on the market, as well as details for other recently sold homes and similar homes in the area!
- The color coded recently sold homes is awesome!
- I really like the the location of your search is stored in the url. This allows me to easily save and or send an area of interest. For example, here are the homes for sale in the part of Los Angeles where I grew up: http://www.trulia.com/CA/Eagle_Rock/90041/. (Also notice that it has neighborhood facts on this page.)
- It has RSS feeds so that I can subscribe to my zip code and be updated each time a listing comes on the market.
- And the best part is that I’m sure there’s more I’m going to like, but I’ve only had a few minutes to play!
I really liked the site when I first saw it, but the more I play the more my opinion of the site improves. The best part is that I’m pretty darn sure that if I keep playing with the site, I’m going to find more gems! This site is a true work of art! Thank you Pete!
The only problem I see with it is that it is not available for Seattle (yet!). THIS IS A HUGE DRAWBACK. I want Trulia! And Pete, I’ll wait for a little while, but I’m not a very patient person! 🙂
UPDATE: I just got an email from Pete and he says “You’ll be pleased to hear our primary focus is building out coverage to other states. No promises when Seattle is live, but we’re working hard on it.” I’ll try to be patient!
The only problem you see is that it’s not available for Seattle yet? How about this gem from the FAQ:
“No. We are not a real estate broker, but a real estate technology company. We simply connect consumers to sources of publicly available information across the Web. We do not hold a brokerage license and do not get involved in the transaction in any way.”
No, stop lying. They screen scrape listings from agent sites, and then they list homes for sale for profit. Doing that without a real estate license is illegal.
Well, I don’t get it. Your wife is an agent, but you want non-brokers to be able to list homes for sale?
Did you two have a fight? 🙂
Once you don’t even need a real estate license to list homes for sale, here’s a thought, why don’t we just outsource the screen-scraping to India? Then we can all just whistle until our HELOCs are maxed out and Western Civilization collapses altogether.
The only problem you see is that it’s not available for Seattle yet? How about this gem from the FAQ:
“No. We are not a real estate broker, but a real estate technology company. We simply connect consumers to sources of publicly available information across the Web. We do not hold a brokerage license and do not get involved in the transaction in any way.”
No, stop lying. They screen scrape listings from agent sites, and then they list homes for sale for profit. Doing that without a real estate license is illegal.
Well, I don’t get it. Your wife is an agent, but you want non-brokers to be able to list homes for sale?
Did you two have a fight? 🙂
Once you don’t even need a real estate license to list homes for sale, here’s a thought, why don’t we just outsource the screen-scraping to India? Then we can all just whistle until our HELOCs are maxed out and Western Civilization collapses altogether.
John,
You make a very interesting point… and one I know many real estate agents will be making into the future, but I think agents are fighting the wrong battle. Real estate is a huge investment and people are always going to be looking for someone to guide them (or at least confirm that they’re not making a huge mistake). The money to be made in the future is NOT by hording data but by personalizing the data into information that our clients can use to make intelligent decisions. That is something that no outsourcing agency in India will ever be able to provide for Seattle residents!
Will some agents lose as the industry transforms? You can bet on it!
Will some agents win big time? You can bet on it!
Either way, the transformation is going to happen, so I think it is time for agents to get out of their protective shells (MLS listing monopoly) and get ready to compete on service! By the way, I’ve talked extensively with Anna about this and she is in agreement with me!
I’ve got a lot more to say on this topic, and when I get more than 5 free minutes I’ll write a post with more…
John,
You make a very interesting point… and one I know many real estate agents will be making into the future, but I think agents are fighting the wrong battle. Real estate is a huge investment and people are always going to be looking for someone to guide them (or at least confirm that they’re not making a huge mistake). The money to be made in the future is NOT by hording data but by personalizing the data into information that our clients can use to make intelligent decisions. That is something that no outsourcing agency in India will ever be able to provide for Seattle residents!
Will some agents lose as the industry transforms? You can bet on it!
Will some agents win big time? You can bet on it!
Either way, the transformation is going to happen, so I think it is time for agents to get out of their protective shells (MLS listing monopoly) and get ready to compete on service! By the way, I’ve talked extensively with Anna about this and she is in agreement with me!
I’ve got a lot more to say on this topic, and when I get more than 5 free minutes I’ll write a post with more…
Hoarding the data? That’s a good one. Have you seen my Sacramento Search Page — to name just one place where I’m not hoarding it? I make my living publishing the data, and I’m licensed to make my living publishing it.
But as for your pal, Pete, how long after this site catches on do you think it will be before he and his company decide they can have a nice tasty new revenue stream, the Trulia For Sale By Owner listing? Why bother just selling ad space to agents when they can make one or two hundred bucks per house listing your home for sale on the national MLS that they’ve created and all the agents have tripped over themselves to suck up to?
Anna likes the idea now, sure. Let me know what she thinks five years from now when whatever Trulia leads she manages to get against the 150 other Seattle agents who are also competing for them start asking her to drive them around to all those nice Trulia FSBOs they pulled up. “It was on the web site — why CAN’T you take me?”
Or here’s one — $29.95 premium Trulia membership includes a free list of Trulia-approved agents in your area, all of whom give you a 50% commission rebate? They’re already linking to those marvelous commission rebaters over at Zip Realty, 20% off the top. What’s to prevent them from competing with that business model with the Trulia-discount-Realtor ™. Here’s a ready made motto: “We bend over twice as far because we’re competing on service.”
Sure, it’s sour grapes — if NAR hadn’t allowed for IDX, I’d never be making the living I am now. Now Trulia can take that away. We don’t manufacture anything any more in this country — we used to make software and I did that for awhile until Bill Gates lobbied successfully to allow everyone and their brother through the gates, and the rest of it shipped off to Bangalore. The only wealth we have left is our Real Estate, and now some son-of-a-prawn-farmer will probably get a boatload of Trulia stock options for suggesting some way to screw people like me and your wife that I haven’t even considered yet.
But hey, maybe you can be the first-listed in Seattle and make a few bucks before they turn on you.
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Wow Trulia is truly wonderful! I expect some day it will become real time, and be an accurate source of real data. I like the graphical pins stuck in a map, similar to the sort of thing with google maps. Right now the only problem with its content is that it is rather old data. I live in Petaluma so I went to Trulia (first timer) and loved its simplicity. But I picked a Petaluma Home that was for sale on Trulia and it sold ages ago. I mean the ‘selling’ price was already listed in the local MLS here, so presumably it has been at least 30 days since it recorded and the selling price published.
The main problem behind the internet hype of these products is that they do sell the sizzle rather well, but for actual product there is something lacking. There are for example many companies that had no brick and mortar and played with an internet business model and lost a lot of money. Most companies still go out of busines because they have flair but no substance. I have no objection at all with the data being there, as long as the client / owner has agreed to have it placed on the internet. I presume the final say belongs to the client and not the brokerage.
For a buyer seeking to find product there has to be real communication in real time. It will get really good if a voice activated robot can chat with a seeker in real time to say if that home is still available.
And then there is the ‘map is not the territory’ problem. I mean a client may really like what is written down, but to purchase without foot stomping through the thing is usually a waste of time ( discounting the remote investor types ). And for that I am grateful, for at least that way I can meet a human being and be of service with local knowledge and a truer relationship.
Wow Trulia is truly wonderful! I expect some day it will become real time, and be an accurate source of real data. I like the graphical pins stuck in a map, similar to the sort of thing with google maps. Right now the only problem with its content is that it is rather old data. I live in Petaluma so I went to Trulia (first timer) and loved its simplicity. But I picked a Petaluma Home that was for sale on Trulia and it sold ages ago. I mean the ‘selling’ price was already listed in the local MLS here, so presumably it has been at least 30 days since it recorded and the selling price published.
The main problem behind the internet hype of these products is that they do sell the sizzle rather well, but for actual product there is something lacking. There are for example many companies that had no brick and mortar and played with an internet business model and lost a lot of money. Most companies still go out of busines because they have flair but no substance. I have no objection at all with the data being there, as long as the client / owner has agreed to have it placed on the internet. I presume the final say belongs to the client and not the brokerage.
For a buyer seeking to find product there has to be real communication in real time. It will get really good if a voice activated robot can chat with a seeker in real time to say if that home is still available.
And then there is the ‘map is not the territory’ problem. I mean a client may really like what is written down, but to purchase without foot stomping through the thing is usually a waste of time ( discounting the remote investor types ). And for that I am grateful, for at least that way I can meet a human being and be of service with local knowledge and a truer relationship.
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Trulia is really useful and it a really interesting real estate search engine.
Walt