94 thoughts on “Adventures in digital listing land”

1. Pingback: Trulia Blog » Digital Listing Land

2. Great article Robbie. We need you!

3. A small-scale way of doing it for the less technical is to use a service like vFlyer. I don’t believe it works for exporting numerous listings, but for one-offs its brilliant. You input your information once, design a flyer around it, and then off it goes uploading your listing to Trulia, Edgio, and a host of others. Its solution to the Craigslist problem listed above is to simply give you a bunch of code to drop in which re-creates a very nice flyer look right within Craigslist.

4. I know this isn’t a very popular opinion, but if I was RPA, I would just concentrate on making my webpage as easy to use and functional as possible, rather than diluting my business, brand, time, energy and resources into building other competing websites.

   I want MY website to be the “go-to” site, not Trulia or Propsmart. I want buyers to come to me and not search Zillow or Craigslist for homes for sale.

   Why do you think Windermere doesn’t put their listings on Realtor.com? They don’t want to dilute their brand. Why do you think Coldwell Banker Bain forbids Trulia from crawling their agents individual websites to pull their listings? Why do you think XYZ agency is discouraging posting listings on Zillow? Ditto and ditto.

   Better for RPA to concentrate on making their site the hotdog site, making it sticky or blingy-cool, give people a reason for coming back. First, they need to keep their site within standard frames, as I have to scroll back-and-forth to view the whole thing. Next, add a map to the front page. Lose the mortgage & new construction referral logos too.

   Make sure to add a function that allows buyers to subscribe to new listings as they come on the market, that are branded with your name. Allow agents to sign up their clients via the website too. And give recognition to agents who have the most clients signed-up.

   Work on SEO so your site comes up when people are searching. Give your individual listings their own “webpage”. Add neighborhood information, perhaps some links or relocation information so your site becomes an important destination for the relocating buyer.

   I know there are many who disagree, but I believe that serious buyers are working with an agent. RPA is an agency. They want to attract serious buyers. Their agents need to educate their buyers that the only search tool they need is the RPA site. Now, a John L. Scott agent will disagree and say No, you only need the John L. Scott site, but the point is RPA should be spending their money optimizing, advertising and branding their own site and (sorry Robbie!) forget about spreading themselves and their limited resources so thin as to make themselves ineffective in the marketplace.

   Like the athlete who doesn’t have sex before the big game…. Save it up, baby.

5. Robbie
   The problem you describe is one many Realtors have. Some don’t have the time, resource or technical know-how to build feeds themselves or hire other to do it. Even those who know or can afford to have feeds built will have to maintain them over time and add support for new marketplaces. vFlyer solves this problem by allowing Realtors to enter (or bulk upload) their listings once and then automatically distributing the listings out to Turlia, PropSmart, HotPads, Google Base, Oodle, Vast.com and others. The service also generate HTML you can cut and paste into Craigslist, LiveDeal, eBay and Backpage (coming soon). Feel free to give it a try (the consumer version is free). In addition, the service allows you to email listings, generate PDFs and also get traffic stats for traffic coming from different marketplaces.

6. I have to agree with Marlow on this one. All the big agencies are falling over themselves trying to incorporate all the features everyone else has (ie, sold info, satellite maps, etc.) simply to get everyone to go to their website.

   What I’d love to see is what kind of market share each of the websites have (jls, windermere, etc.) and …what conversion % they have of people using their site that end up using one of their agents. like…a buyer that uses JLS website and ends up buying or selling with a JLS agent. ….cause…isn’t that the point? these companies are spending a butt load of cash on making their website the best one ..what metric are they actually using to gauge their success or failure? It’d be sad if it showed no particular trend.

   As for not being able to programmatically submit posts to Craigslist, …there’s a company out there called Asset Realty Group that supposedly takes their IDX feed from the NWMLS and looks for any and all new listings, automatically sends the listing agent an email asking for permission to advertise their listing and then….supposedly , …automatically posts to craigslist and other various online places. I’d be curious to find out exactly how they do it.

7. Pingback: Adventures in digital listing land : Lance Tracey

8. DISCLAIMER: The opinions below are mine, and not necessarily those of my client.

   Marlow,

   I think we all want our web sites to be the “go-to” site. Unfortunately, there is only one web site on the internet that really matters, and it is owned by Google. Everybody else, large and small, is fighting to get your attention. If Windermere, XYZ agency, and Coldwell Banker, believe that Realtor.com, Truila, Zillow, and others are threats to their brand or business, that’s their problem. Maybe they live in the same reality distortion field Steve Jobs uses over at Apple? He’s all about the brand and the customer experience. I’m not saying they are wrong for feeling that way, just saying a big brokerage has different business priorities than a smaller broker or lone agent would.

   I happen to think these companies are merely internet media companies that are trying to bring real estate professionals and consumers together in more cost effective manner. I happen to think they are merely a 21st century version of Harmon Homes, Homes & Land or newpaper classifieds. Sure they have impressive technology, but at the end of the day, it’s just their way to attract viewers for your advertising. They just use pixels instead of dead trees.

   I also believe that giving them listings for free web traffic (which could lead to leads) is a fair trade. It’s certainly cheaper and more effective that postcard mailings, refrigerator magents, carpet bombing folks with flyers, and other methods you might use to promote yourself or your listings. Of course, I’d rather have people visit my client’s site than a national portal. However, if you live in New York or Wyoming, and are moving to Seattle, your chances of finding my listing or my site without outside assistance from a web site with a larger reach (Google or otherwise) is remote. Especially, if you are a local broker without a national reputation.

   As you are aware, one of the tricks to getting noticed on web is getting as many incoming links out there as possible to your site. By promoting listings on Google, Trulia, PropSmart, Craigslist, and other free classified ad sites, we get incoming traffic (at no additional cost other than the time it takes me to create a feed) and they get more content. That sounds like a win-win relationship to me. Why do you think Craigslist is single handedly destroying the newspaper classified advertising industry? Why is Google the single most important company in advertising & technology? We live in a connected world. Recognize and exploit this fact!

   Regarding the RPA site, I thank you for your feedback, and I’m sure Jay, Gordon and myself will take your comments to heart when we develop future generations of the site. I admit that when the site first launched, it didn’t properly fit on a 1024 x 768 monitor. However, that shortcoming has since been fixed. Unless you’re visiting the site on a VGA monitor from 1990 or a PDA, you won’t have to do any horizontal scrolling. And if you do, it’s a bug that needs to be brought to my attention.

   As for the home page, I would’ve preferred promoting the advanced tools and technology that the site has to offer (Zillow technology, Virtual Earth mapping, RSS/KML feeds). But, there is a property search tool on every page, and I think that your typical home hunter will see that before they notice the promotion of the other business ventures they have.

   The site already has the ability to subscribe to new listings as they come on the market via branded RSS feeds. I am working on the ability to receive new listings via branded e-mail. (There’s so many cool features to implement and not enough time to implement them all). E-mail has it’s advantages, but I think the world will eventually move to RSS as it’s benefits over e-mail become better understood. However, if you really want, you can use a service like Squeet to mail you RSS feeds.

   I agree that our SEO needs work because I’ve spent no effort on it. However, we are tracking site traffic via Google Analytics (you can’t improve what you don’t measure) and I suspect that incoming traffic will improve over time, after we get more incoming links. However, like many things in life, you can’t start perfect from day one, you can only hope to work hard and improve every day.

   I should note that RPA is both a real estate and property management company. Although the real estate industry is blessed to have multiple vendors offering many high tech solutions, the property management industry appears to be 5-10 years behind and has a lot less software vendor support. If they wanted equivalent technology for their property management business, their only option they have to have somebody build it for them (or wait for a vendor that might never come).

   I feel I should also mention there are whole sections of the web site that are hidden from public view. They allow them to manage their rental properties, manage their rental property photos, and manage their agent roster.

9. I have been placing my homes on Trulia, Google base, Oodle, ets., but have yet to really see any traffic come as a result. Not sure if this is the wave of the future or if these options really don’t lead to many views. I’ll keep listing my properties on these sites, as I feel it is very important to have the widest audience availible, I am just not sure if these avenues will end up bringing more interest or not. Anyone else having similar results?

10. Posting listing to Trulia is a really bad idea in the long run, in my opinion. They are trying to create a real estate brand and portal that squeezes dollars out of brokers and agents.

    Sound familiar? Trulia is just realtor.com 2.0. As an agent I hate having to pay to upgrade my listings on realtor.com. If Trulia gets a critical mass of listings I’ll have no choice but to do the same there.

    Fortunately, though, the Internet savvy brokers recognise this and are not sending their listings to Truila. As a results, Trulia is very far from getting a critical mass of listings in most markets and are very much irrelevant to consumers. I’m hoping to keep it that way by not sending my listings. I’m also betting they will run out of venture capital long before they become anywhere near profitable. Would you fund them for a second round in this real estate market? No way.

    At the Inman conference in NY there was a great session for Brokers only, ie no web 2.0 companies allowed. Fantastic criteria came out of the session as to what websites to send listing to and which to avoid:

    1. Is the website trying to create a real estate brand? If they are trying to create a real estate brand, then they are a competitor.

    2. Would the website exist without broker’s listings? If not, then they add no value to the real estate ecosystem.

    You are are hurting yourself in the long run by sending your listings to a company trying to create a real estate brand, particularly if it would not exist without listings from brokers.

    By this criteria: Trulia, Zillow and PropSmart are competitors to every broker and agent. Google, Craigslist, Oodle, Microsoft, are not competitors.

    Trulia and PropSmart clearly would not exist without listings from brokers. Zillow is an interesting case of creating a real estate brand without broker’s listings, very innovative and much harder work.

    I’m using this criteria and I’m sending my listings to Google, Craigslist, Oodle and Microsoft, but not to Trulia, and Propsmart.

    I’m still on the fence about Zillow. I might not send my listings to Zillow, but rather advertise there to drive traffic to my site, as they have eyeballs without our listings. Just say no to Trulia and the like, as they are just trying to get you hooked so they can squeeze you later, just like realtor.com.

11. James Hsu,

    There’s more to technology than just attracting leads. Sometimes, you use it to make your employees more efficient. Sometimes you use it to cut costs. Sometimes you use it improve customer satisfaction. Sometimes, you invest in technology, because your competitors are forcing you to. JLS, Windermere, and CB may not be more successful than they were a year ago. However, I’m sure if didn’t invest heavily in their web sites this past year, I’m certain Redfin and others would have become larger competitive threats than they are today. In the long run, it’ll just be another cost of doing business to keep up with the Scott’s and Kelman’s. As I’ve said in the past, nobody thinks electricity is a competitive advantage anymore, either.

12. Laura Kaan,

    Is your site hooked up with Google Analytics or some other site traffic software? Unless you can measure your site’s performance, anything you do is just guessing.

    I don’t know if these avenues will bring a lot more interest or not. However, in our case, we are noticing more traffic, the upfront cost is reasonable, the additional ongoing costs are currently zero. And if it doesn’t work out, we can always take down the feed and stop doing business with them! I don’t see much downside.

13. When I check my stats to see what sites are referring traffic to me, the only one that seems to get traffic besides craigslist is Yahoo Classifieds. Lots of agents use craigs to try to drive traffic to their sites. I don’t. Craigslist only works for inexpensive or funky properties. As for postlets, it is really great and very simple.

14. What a great conversation.

    I think I have to agree with Afthree about the wisdom of sending listings to a company that is trying to be a competitor.

    I’m not sure if there’s any one “right” way to approach internet marketing, as, really, it’s still so new. So doing what Robbie’s doing for his client is worth a try. (BTW, I’m still having to scroll back & forth to view the whole RPA site.)

    I think hooking up to Google Analytics or Feedburner or some other site traffic monitor is ok, but just knowing the amount of visitors your site is getting is just a small part of the equation. The results worth counting are how many leads you’re getting from the site. If you get 100K hits a month to the site, but only 1 or 2 leads, then you’re doing something wrong. Either your site is difficult to maneuver or there’s nothing compelling the user to make contact with the site administrator or fill out an online form or send the site personal info.

15. Afthree,

    They way I see it, there are 4 major players in this arena.

    Lead generators like HomeGain, HouseValues, etc.

    These sites provide little to no consumer value, the value they provide agents/brokers is dubious at best, and most of them will be out of business in 5 years barring major changes.

    Real Estate only portals like Zillow, Trulia, PropSmart, etc.

    The real estate only portals provide the best consumer experience and provide excellent customer value. The value they provide agents/brokers is unknown, but they currently don’t cost anything unless you chose to purchase advertising from them, they do send traffic to your web site and your customers like them.

    Yes, they are trying to create real estate brand, but how does that make them different or more dangerous than Homes & Land magazine? The reason they are growing is because there is a demand for what they are providing. I don’t recall seeing an industry uprising against specialty print media properties. Their business model is to sell advertising. Your business model is to sell homes. How does that make you competitors?

    By that logic, aren’t you hurting yourself by putting your listings in the MLS, so all your direct competitors can advertise your listings on their web sites? I guess the big difference is that John L Scott, doesn’t charge Coldwell Banker to promote their listings on it’s web site. But when I see a Coldwell Banker listing on the John L Scott site, I see a big John L Scott logo, and small 6 pt font acknowledgement that the listing is courtesy of Coldwell Banker. How does my listing on my direct competitor’s web site enhance my brand?

    I agree it’s like Realtor 2.0, but why do you need to upgrade your listings? It’s a simple business decision like Google or yellow page ads. If they provide more value than cost, you do business with them. If they don’t, stop writing checks. Assuming they do get a critical mass and assuming they start charging for advertising, wouldn’t you want Trulia and Propsmart around to keep Realtor’s ad rates in check?

    They wouldn’t be such a “threat” if the industry built better web sites and didn’t create the 900+ MLS problem.

    Classified only portals like Craigslist, Oodle, etc

    They provide less customer value than #2. However, they also don’t need your listings because they are diversified media companies. They can always hawk cars, jobs, personals, and whatever else they do.

    I compare it to newspaper classified ads. I might read them, but I read the multi-page full color ads first and I’m just as likely to line the bird cage with them.

    Search engine mega portals like Microsoft, Google, etc.

    These companies are scary. Microsoft & Google have the resources, traffic, talent, and drive to do whatever they want. When these giants walk, the earth moves. However, their business interests are so large and diversified, that it’s unlikely they’d ever focus on the real estate industry to the point where they’d be effective competitors to Propsmart, Trulia, and Zillow.

    But what happens if one of them decides to buy one of these companies someday, (perhaps to enhance GoogleBase or Live Expo to compete with Craiglist) then what? You can’t compete against Google (unless your Microsoft, and even they have their hands full).

16. Marlow says, “I think I have to agree with Afthree about the wisdom of sending listings to a company that is trying to be a competitor.”

    I think the rules need to loosen up so that an agent can highlight a property on market that they really like. Under current rules that is “advertising someone else’s listing”, but we put certain properties at the top of the list for our buyer clients, whether or not they are our listings. So why not on the internet?

    Why can’t we do on the internet what we do every day in real life? We can’t have online real estate until we can do on line what we do in person. Time for this rule to be modified.

    Why can’t I show all of the pictures of a house in a blog and say, “WOW! This new listing is great!”. It’s an opinion. Not asking them to call me to buy it.

    Of course I have done that with a condo complex and Redfin does it. It breaks a “current rule”, but maybe the rule needs to be changed.

17. Marlow,

    If you could please e-mail me a screen shot of what you’re seeing on the RPA site (along w/ other info like screen resolution, OS, browser version), I’d like to see what your talking about. I’ve only tested the site on IE 6/7 for Windows and Firefox 2 for Windows, so if you use a Mac or something else, you could see problems that I’m unawre off.

    Thanks!

18. Robbie,

    I agree with your categorization of sites into lead generators (HomeGain, HouseValues), real estate only portals (Trulia, Zillow, PropSmart), classified portals (Craigslist, Oodle) and search engine mega portals (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo). That’s an outstanding way to think about the different websites that all want our listings.

    I very much disagree with your analysis that brokers should send their listings to Trulia. Yes, Homes and Land is a very similar situation to Trulia, but looking at the details of each business, I believe, shows why it’s a bad idea for brokers to give their listings to Trulia.

    Trulia vs. Home & Land:

    Homes & Land: Well established, likely very profitable operation selling local franchises that publish listings on and offline. Good relationships within the industry and with the brokers that pay Homes & Land to publish their listings.

    Trulia: Upstart, likely burning enormous cash, publishing listings online only. Trulia has shaky, at best, relations with brokers. Starting their business by scraping IDX listings without permission (they have since started seeking permission) wasn’t the smartest way to enter the industry.

    My biggest concern about Trulia, Zillow and the other real estate only portals is what happens when they run out of cash? With Homes & Land, you know they will be around in five years selling ads in magazines to brokers and keeping the brokers happy since the brokers pay the bills.

    Trulia is a complete unknown. They have at most a couple years cash they are burning through. They are far from being profitable, and I have serious doubts if they can ever be profitable with their current business model.

    Given the current real estate market and the stock prices of Zip Realty and HouseValues, it’s unlikely Trulia can get additional round of funding. An IPO is pretty far fetched at this point so their venture backers are going to want to cash out.

    A you’ve speculated Robbie, I also believe Trulia will be bought. But not by Google or Yahoo, as the mega portals could recreate Trulia in their sleep. The technology behind Trulia isn’t that difficult, witness the little guys like shackprices and blueroof. Rather, I believe Trulia and the other real estate only portals will be acquired by large brokerages at some point.

    Seem far fetched? So did Prudential buying erealty.com.

    My greatest fear: Trulia or another real estate only portal becomes a well know consumer brand and contains a critical mass of listings, but is owned by a competitive brokerage. Good for Trulia and the competitive brokerage, but really bad for me. Imagine a realtor.com where you couldn’t even pay to feature your listings – but all your competitors listings were featured. Yikes.

    RE/MAX, Coldwell, Prudential, who knows? But I believe there is a good chance Trulia will end up in the arsenal of a competitor, and I don’t want to be feeding them ammo with my listings. At least with the MLS and IDX it’s a level playing field on which we all compete. I have no problem fighting a fair fight. What I’m afraid of is a potential future realtor.com owned by and giving a substantial competitive advantage to one brokerage. If Truila were owned by your biggest competitor, would you be giving them your listings?

19. Now that’s an interesting analysis, Afthird. I like it, and I want to improve on it in this way: I don’t think Trulia, Zillow, or any other current real estate poral could be purchased by a competing real estate brokerage because those corporations would be well aware that their competitors would surely abandon ship, leaving them with a shell.

    The purchase of a real estate portal would be made by a national title company. Well, they don’t really call themselves title companies anymore. The corporations call themselves “Information Service Companies.”

    Full disclosure: I own some stock in First American as a former employee but I have no inside information.

    What I have been saying for months now in my RE2.0 class is that a national “information services company” purchase of a real estate portal would leapfrog over what Zillow already offers, simply because the info services company already holds access to the jewel in the crown: all the public records data.

    Merge that with listings and you no longer need an MLS.

20. Of course, we’ll “need” an MLS. The MLS exists to provide a vehicle for brokers to share information and a legal way to enforce payment of a commission for the sale of a property. The MLS also provides a consisent way to provide showing information for the sales agent and a proscribed way to do business.

    With no MLS to enforce the listing contract to pay a sales agent, then all the rules will change. Agents will not show houses without a contract to get paid and Buyers often barely have enough for a down payment let alone to pay a commission. That’s one good reason why it’s paid by the seller, why we have a listing signed assuring payment by the seller, and why we advertise that listing in the MLS with the amount paid to the sales agent by the seller.

21. All,

    A very interesting discussion, to be sure. Full disclosure: I’m a software developer at Trulia.

    What I can tell you objectively is that the listings on Trulia are never acquired from IDX or MLS sections of anyone’s site, and never have been. From day one we’ve always been very careful to abide by existing industry rules and regulations, and our business has grown by working very closely with agents and brokers so our product provides industry professionals with the most efficient advertising vehicle for their listings while enhancing their brand. The listings on Trulia are YOUR listings, with your name and brand displayed prominently, and we send traffic directly to your site.

    As far as measurability, I’d like to refer interested parties to our industry research page http://www.trulia.com/truth/ and specifically to our case study white paper, which details how real estate professionals can benefit from partnering with Trulia.

    Thanks all for a very interesting discussion and constructive feedback.

22. Any complex system where different parties have competing interests, needs, and goals will have to have a set of rules by which to play the game.

    I’m looking at this from the perspective of changing the existing game and creating a new set of rules to go with the new game.

    The information services company becomes the MLS and markets direct to consumer. How agents are paid transforms to conform to the corporate structure of reducing expenses and maximizing corporate profits for their shareholders.

    Just a working theory.

23. But why would I, or any other real estate sales agent, agency or brokerage, cooperate or facilitate such a change?

    How can “the information services company becomes the MLS”?

    The MLS is a separate stand-alone entity owned by thousands of brokers. Unless there is a federal or state mandate, it would not dissolve on its own volition. It would have to be “nationalized” like some steel mill or oil company in a 3rd world country.

    It could, as a stretch, be broken up like the telephone companies or airlines if declared a monopoly by the DOJ, but then listings just go back to being “in-house” like we used to do or like they still do in NYC.

    Then, here in Washington State, we all go work for Windermere.

24. Afthird,

    I agree with Jillayne, in that if a real estate portal were to get bought by a real estate brokerage, nobody would do business with them any more. To paraphrase Scott McNealy, a listings database has the self life of a banana. If the listings go away, so does the traffic. If the traffic dies, all you have is the source code for a cool web site. I think it makes more sense for a media company to buy them than a real estate company, because then the traffic won’t dissapper because of competitve self interest.

    After all, Google still bought YouTube for $1.65 billion and a legal minefield despite the fact they already had Google Video. Why? The only answer that makes sense they think that kind of web traffic is worth that kind of money.

    Besides, at least up here, the big 3 (John L Scott, Coldwell Banker, Windermere) already have impressive web sites and large databases of listings. There’s nothing stopping a traditional broker from hiring software engineers and building a good web site. The smart ones already have!

    As for the financial viability of real estate portals, I think they’ll do fine. HouseValues has 500 employees and no customer enthusiasm. Trulia, Zillow, etc, probably have about 100 employees each and have a lot of customer enthusiasm. As long as they stay exciting and stay lean, I think they’ll succeed or get bought. In any event, they have a lot smaller overhead than Zip & HouseValues does. Besides, even if they do go away, why is that your problem? Somebody else will want to promote your listings online.

    The MLS isn’t going away any time soon. I’d like to see fewer of them (or least a single standard for feeds) and I’d like to see them mirror the securities industry such that we have one or more organizations managing market data and another for self-regulation and industry advocacy.

25. This is Pete Flint from Trulia.

    Lots of great comments and food for thought for us at Trulia. We’re pretty honored that you guys think our model is interesting and I like the debate. I thought I’d join the discussion to clarify a couple of points about our business and direction to avoid any confusion.

    As company we believe in choice for agents and brokers and empowering them to freely advertise their listings on the web. It is always up to the listing broker how and if they want to work with us. That will always be the case.

    Myself and the team at Trulia have spent a considerable time speaking to many groups within the real estate industry over many years to understand the complexities to build a technology company in this industry. We always have things to learn, so we have surrounded ourselves with some of the smartest people from within the Industry through our Advisory Board ( http://www.truliablog.com/?p=83 ) and we always listen and read everything that people tell us through feedback ( http://www.trulia.com/leave_feedback/ ) and on blogs like this one (which is a personal favorite of mine).

    For our business model, we are not at all “burning enormous cash”. We have an incredibly lean and focused organization and are extremely frugal. We obsess about saving money just as much as we obsess about building a great website. Are we profitable? Not yet, but we are well ahead of our plan to get there and I think profitability will happen sooner than many people expect. We are focused on building an independent company to use innovative technology to become an efficient and cost effective way for brokers and agents to get interested and educated consumers to their websites. It’s that simple and we think it is badly needed and a huge opportunity.

    Thanks Robbie for spurring this dialogue!

    Pete

26. Wow, it’s amazing that this debate is still going on at this late date with such fervor. Hasn’t this ship already sailed? Hasn’t one of the major MLSs already posted it’s entire database to Googlebase? Others soon to follow?

    Regardless it’s still quite interesting to hear the different positions on the subject.

    For those that aren’t too opposed to the idea, we also automate posting to Trulia, Propsmart, Oodle, Vast and others at NReal.com

    Louis

27. Wow, you really hit a hot topic here Robbie! Sounds like a Star Trek fan fest… I LOVE IT!

    In all honestly I want to send you a very sincere THANK YOU! I have been trying to find a good home for my blog that is about 1 month old now. I tell you that like any one-month-old baby there really has been no sleep in my life until now. Does that make me a blog junkie?

    I read your article and hit a link and now have a good blog page for free!

    I agree with Marlo that your site needs to be a “go to

28. Louis, Yes, the debate is still raging, and rightly so. It’s very transparent when those seeking listing from brokers, like yourself, just pretend that “everyone is giving us their listings” when in fact that isn’t the case. I see your site NRreal.com has ZERO listings in Seattle, SF and Manhattan – maybe the ship hasn’t sailed!

    Trulia has been one of the most successful in getting listings and they only have 1/3 of the listings of realtor.com, and realtor.com doesn’t even have all the listings. Trulia’s work to get so many listings has been pretty amazing, but it’s far from a sure thing they will get the other 2/3 of the listings. They have convinced the easy brokers. The remaining brokers will be much more difficult.

    Jillayne, I like your theory of a title company buying Trulia. Another possibility would be a mortgage company buying Trulia to generate mortgage leads from both consumers and agents. They could give free upgraded featured listings to agents who bring them mortgage business! I just don’t believe we currently have any idea who will own Trulia or Zillow five years from now, or in what business they will be engaged.

    I don’t think you all should dismiss a large brokerage buying Trulia so easily. Trulia only has 1/3 of the listings. With every listing from either RE/MAX or Coldwell they would probably more than make up for the listings lost from brokers that pull their feeds.

    Pete, thanks so much for chiming in! It says a lot about you guys how involved you are in the industry. I think you have wonderful team and you have built a great site. I just don’t think it is in the best long term interest of my brokerage to give you our listings. No hard feelings, and nothing personal.

    I do have a very hard time believing Trulia is anywhere near profitable. I doubt you can share any numbers, but I do suggest any brokers considering partnering with you should ask to see your financials. Based on the publicly available information, they don’t look good from the outside.

    I’ve run an Internet business, so I’ll take a stab at Trulia’s monthly burn rate: 30 employees ($300,000), marketing ($40,000) and hosting/operations ($10,000), for monthly total expenses around $350,000.

    My guess at Trulia’s monthly revenue: 1M visitors with 7 pages/visit = 7M page views. At an optimistic $7 RPM (revenue per 1000 page views) makes Trulia’s monthly revenue around $49,000 ($7 x 7,000,000 / 1000), for a monthly loss of $300,000. $5.7M in funding raised a little over a year ago gives a 19 month runway at a $300K/month burn, meaning Trulia will need another round of funding in the next 12 months. Getting that round won’t be easy in this environment.

    Even a wildly optimistic case of $100,000 in revenue on $300,000 in expenses still isn’t pretty. Pete, please correct me if I’m way off base anywhere if you are able.

    Zillow is in a similar tough spot. Zillow has three times the traffic of Trulia, but they also have three times the number of employees. Their traffic also isn’t as targeted as Trulia’s, making it less valuable. Zillow’s traffic is dropping each month while Trulia’s is growing nicely. Good thing Zillow raised $57M, as they are going to need it!

    I point all this out because most brokers have no idea how difficult it is to run a profitable ad supported Internet business. I personally believe the only path for Trulia or Zillow to become profitable is to 1) get a piece of the transaction or 2) somehow grow traffic 10x, which seems unlikely.

    My message to brokers is simple: we really have no idea what Trulia, Zillow and the others will morph into… friend of foe? I do know they will be *very* different businesses in five years. I just have no idea what those business will be, and truly either do they. No matter what Trulia and Zillow say today, their venture backers will force them, rightfully, to do whatever it takes to get their return. And if it doesn’t look like the return is possible they will be sold to the highest bidder. It’s just business, sorry Pete.

29. Louis, Yes, the debate is still raging, and rightly so. It’s very transparent when those seeking listing from brokers, like yourself, just pretend that “everyone is giving us their listings” when in fact that isn’t the case. I see your site NRreal.com has ZERO listings in Seattle, SF and Manhattan – maybe the ship hasn’t sailed!

    Trulia has been one of the most successful in getting listings and they only have 1/3 of the listings of realtor.com, and realtor.com doesn’t even have all the listings. Trulia’s work to get so many listings has been pretty amazing, but it’s far from a sure thing they will get the other 2/3 of the listings. They have convinced the easy brokers. The remaining brokers will be much more difficult.

    Jillayne, I like your theory of a title company buying Trulia. Another possibility would be a mortgage company buying Trulia to generate mortgage leads from both consumers and agents. They could give free upgraded featured listings to agents who bring them mortgage business! I just don’t believe we currently have any idea who will own Trulia or Zillow five years from now, or in what business they will be engaged.

    I don’t think you all should dismiss a large brokerage buying Trulia so easily. Trulia only has 1/3 of the listings. With every listing from either RE/MAX or Coldwell they would probably more than make up for the listings lost from brokers that pull their feeds. It’s possible a big brokerage could drive enough traffic off Trulia in a few years to pay for an inexpensive acquisition.

    Pete, thanks so much for chiming in! It says a lot about you guys how involved you are in the industry. I think you have wonderful team and you have built a great site. I just don’t believe it is in the best long term interest of my brokerage to give you our listings. We’ll happily compete online against Trulia just as we compete against hundreds of other brokers every day. No hard feelings, and nothing personal.

    I do have a very hard time believing Trulia is anywhere near profitable. I doubt you can share any numbers, but I do suggest that any brokers considering partnering with you should ask to see your financials. Based on the publicly available information, Trulia’s financials don’t look good from the outside.

    I’ve run an Internet business, so I’ll take a stab at Trulia’s monthly burn rate: 30 employees ($300,000), marketing and PR ($40,000) and hosting/operations ($10,000), for a monthly total expenses around $350,000.

    My guess at Trulia’s monthly revenue: 1M visitors with 7 pages/visit = 7M page views. An optimistic $7 RPM (revenue per 1000 page views) puts Trulia’s monthly revenue around $49,000 ($7 x 7,000,000 / 1000), for a monthly loss of $300,000. $5.7M in funding gives a 19 month runway at a $300K/month burn, meaning Trulia will need another round of funding in the next year. Getting that round won’t be easy in this environment.

    Even a wildly optimistic case of $100,000 in revenue on $300,000 in expenses still isn’t pretty. Pete, please correct me if I’m way off base anywhere if you are able.

    Zillow is in a similar tough spot. Zillow has three times the traffic of Trulia, but they also have three times the number of employees. Their traffic also isn’t as targeted as Trulia’s since Zillow gets more window shoppers, making Zillow’s traffic less valuable. Zillow’s traffic is dropping each month while Trulia’s is growing nicely. Good thing Zillow raised $57M, as they are going to need it!

    I point all this out because most brokers have no idea how difficult it is to run a profitable ad supported Internet business, in spite of having witnessed multiple debacles at homestore. I personally believe the only path for Trulia or Zillow to become profitable is to 1) get a piece of the transaction or 2) somehow grow traffic 10x, which seems unlikely.

    My message to brokers is simple: we really have no idea what Trulia, Zillow and their like will morph into… friend of foe? I do know they will be *very* different businesses in five years. I just have no idea what those business will be, and truly either do they. No matter what Trulia and Zillow say today, their venture backers will force them, rightfully, to do whatever it takes to get their return. And if it doesn’t look like the return is possible they will be sold to the highest bidder. It’s just business, sorry Pete.

30. It would be nice if there was a standard format for posting this type of information for other to consume. Now it is such a custom job for every site.

31. Cid,

    I completely agree. Fortunately, since the file formats are simple XML lists and most sites will just read the feed from your web site, it’s not a lot of redundant work. But it is still redundant work that ideally shouldn’t have to be done. Perhaps, the vendors could support importing data in multiple formats and get us part way there.

    Still compared to the 900+ MLS problem, this is a non-issue.

32. To the average man on the street, the only go-to site is probably realtor.com. But it is NOT the only go-to site. Internet buyers go to many websites (at least if you believe Jakob Nielsen’s research). There may be a pecking order but no one owns the whole real estate enchilada. That being the case, an agent who could get their listings on every website and have the greatest coverage on the billboards dotting the internet highway is maximizing what the net has to offer. This includes the portals, youtube, blogs, niche sites, chamber of commerce sites, EVERYWHERE,..until Google decides it wants to rule the world of real estate and the DOJ lets them.

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34. Robbie,
    What exactly you did to automate the craigslist submission? I take it that its essentially an automation of the form submission.

35. Dave,

    Correct, I just automated the process of filling out the form (Launch IE, navigate to correct page, fill in form). I still require a user to fill out the CAPTCHA however.

36. Hello, Would you consider doing some similar side work for me? I have a client that needs this, we currently have a Trulia feed in XML but nothing for Google base.

    Drop me an email if your interested.

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41. What a great read. Can’t wait ’til Zillow gets off their butt and finishes their feed.

42. We’ve been running a Google Base feed for about a year, and it hardly drives any traffic. We just got approved for Trulia feed today, and I’m hoping it’ll drive more traffic than Base.
    Of all the free datafeeds out there, which of the free datafeeds would you guys say drives the most traffic?

43. Surprisingly, to date, Trulia has driven the most referrals to my client’s web site.

    It’s hard to determine how much traffic is coming from Google (the search engine) vs Google Base vs Google Maps, but Google is a solid second if you exclude the search engine.

    This is followed by Microsoft (MSN & Live), Yahoo, Zillow (which we expect will go up when the feeds go live), and Craigslist (we just started automated Craigslist postings, so we expect this will go up as well).

    The most surprising thing is that Realtor.com hasn’t sent any traffic to our site. We get more traffic from edgeio, oodle & vast than Realtor.com.

44. Add PropBot.com to your syndication list. We just started accepting Free Bulk Property feeds a couple months ago

45. Anybody have a recommendation to a method of automated Craigslist postings that are reliable and non-spammy? We’ve put some beautiful Craigslist postings out there, but we have to do them one at a time.

46. You can’t completely automate Craigslist postings, because of the CAPTCHA. However, it is possible to automate them up to that point with IE automation.

47. Robbie,

    Can you automate the playing of the audio version of captcha and then capture the sound and turn it to text using something like jott and submit? I am sure there are better speech to text apps out there than Jott but just a thought on a workaround.

    What do you think?

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