Trulia Welcomes Our Lucky Contest Winner Into A Life of Luxury!

A few months ago, we ran a fun contest on Facebook to give away a weekend in the epicenter of luxury – Los Angeles, California! The winner would get a weekend stay in a mansion in Beverly Hills, chauffeured day trip around the glammest parts of LA with Michael Corbett and $500 to spend on whatever their hearts desired. Our winner was Trulia super fan Christin M. from Nashville, North Carolina. No, not Nashville, Tennessee – the OTHER Nashville, an hour from the beautiful North Carolina coast.

Christin and her mom Brenda arrived in LA and set out to explore all that the city had to offer. Hollywood, Beverly Hills and the beach – they saw it all! Together with Trulia PR manager Cristin Zweig and Trulia’s real estate expert Michael Corbett, Christin and Brenda got a sneak peek into luxurious living in Los Angeles on three amazing home tours.

Below, you’ll find an overview of the day and just a taste of the amazing photos. To see everything, view the Facebook album. While you’re at it, “Like” Trulia on Facebook!

A Day of Luxury in Los Angeles!

The first stop was “The House of Rock” in Santa Monica. Formerly the longtime home of the late screen legend Katherine Grayson, the home was purchased and transformed by well-known designer Elaine Culotti, and has become a showcase home with musical influences and incredible designer touches. For the next few months, the home will be a show-stopping venue for some select charity functions. It is set to hit the market later this year.

The home’s exterior. Image courtesy of The House of Rock

Brenda, Michael and Christin outside The House of Rock in Santa Monica

For Christin, Brenda, Michael and Cristin, this home hit a perfect note!

Our next stop was Bel Air, where we met with Eduardo Umanksy of The Agency. He’s as charming and smart as they come in the real estate industry, and he showed us around 655 Sarbonne Road. Listed for $16.495M, the magical Mediterranean estate appears to be worth every penny!

The home’s exterior, as seen from the outdoor living area and expansive backyard

Brenda, Michael and Christin smile for the camera alongside the stunning pool

See more images and information about this home on Trulia!

Our last stop for the day was up in the “Bird Streets” of the Hollywood Hills. Perched high atop Nightingale Drive, this amazing, brand new listing is on the market for $16M with the Gary Gold of Hilton & Hyland. Gary welcomed us into this incredible home, which boasts some of the very best views in all of Los Angeles.

An infinity pool and indoor/outdoor living make this property second-to-none

Check out those views!

When it was finally time to say farewell, Christin said, “My mom and I had such a blast! It was amazing, best day ever! I’m pretty sure we’ll still be laughing and talking about that day weeks or months from now. We couldn’t of asked for a better time than we had.”

At the end of the amazing day, we said goodbye to our lucky winners!

At Trulia, we always strive to give our users the inside scoop on real estate. Taking you inside the homes of the rich and famous is just one more way we do that. Keep up with Trulia on Facebook for a chance to win our next spectacular giveaway!

If you didn’t get enough of the images from this great weekend, view the Facebook album.

PR @ Trulia. Pop Culture Vulture

View the original article here

Better Homes & Gardens Mason McDuffie Embraces Trulia to Build Relationships with Consumers

Last week, we had the privilege of speaking with Ed Krafchow, Chairman and CEO of Better Homes and Gardens Mason-McDuffie Real Estate and an influential member of the real estate industry.

Ed was in our offices to celebrate his firm’s partnership with Trulia. He sees many commonalities between our two firms, as do we. “In our work with Trulia, we are building a consortium of agents, brokers and consumers to come together in the best interest of the consumers,” Ed said. “We believe helping consumers get the information they want is the right thing to do for consumers. With its reach, Trulia will provide our listings with extensive exposure. For these reasons, I am excited about working with Trulia.”

As part of the agreement, Better Homes and Gardens Mason-McDuffie Real Estate will receive prominent placement and brand exposure for its property listings on Trulia.

Krafchow says the industry is entering a third phase in the real estate business. In the first phase brokers owned the business, in the second the agent owned the business, and “in this third phase, I believe consumers will come to own part of the business,” he says.

Watch the video to see Krafchow’s complete remarks.

Popularity: 1% [?]

View the original article here

Trulia Insight Helps Agents Identify Quality Leads

One theme that we commonly hear from real estate professionals is a request to improve the varying quality of leads they receive from online sources.   As a response to this agent need, today Trulia is proud to announce Trulia Insight, our newest product that helps agents get access to the highest quality leads on Trulia.

Trulia Insight gives real estate professionals access to valuable lead prequalification information as well as consumer home search preference data, helping them identify and convert the best leads from Trulia into transaction-ready clients.  Enhanced features in the Trulia My Leads inbox enable easy lead management, such as the ability to mark leads as ‘hot’ and automatically store a lead’s information in your My Contacts address book.  Additionally, one-click listing search alerts and open/click tracking help agents to follow up with clients and understand the home search preferences of their clients.

So far the results have been overwhelmingly positive.  Thousands of  beta testers have been using Trulia Insight and 97% percent of agents have found the additional Insight information helpful when qualifying leads and working with clients. Additionally, Insight leads from consumers are very high quality—72 percent are transaction-ready and planning to buy a home in the next six months. Benefits that agents receive from Trulia Insight include:

Identify quality leads
Trulia Insight allows agents to discover serious buyers with lead qualification data such as the consumer’s loan pre-approval status, her move timeframe, and whether or not she is currently working with an agent. This information is displayed in Trulia’s My Leads inbox where agents can prioritize and manage their most important leads by marking them as hot.

Connect with transaction-ready buyers
Trulia Insight gives agents understanding about the activity and search behavior of their leads and contacts.  Agents can see how many homes the consumer is following and how many saved searches they have created on Trulia.

Share listings and view client activity
When agents stay in touch with their leads and clients using Trulia Insight, they gain a deeper understand of the homes that their clients prefer.  It takes only one click to create trackable listing alerts for your clients.  When your clients receive these emails, you will be able to see the homes they opened and clicked.

Currently, we are giving agents who subscribe to Trulia Pro and Trulia Local Ads free access to high quality Trulia Insight leads for a limited time.  You can learn more and subscribe to  Trulia Insight by visiting http://www.trulia.com/insight.

Popularity: 1% [?]

View the original article here

CFO and General Counsel Added to Senior Management as Trulia Continues to Experience Rapid Growth

2011 has been a year of tremendous growth for Trulia. We held a steady focus on creating a superior service for consumers and agents, while also aiming to build a strong, experienced management team to ensure that our growth as a company continues into 2012 and beyond.  I am excited today to introduce you to two guys that are going to play crucial roles in our next phase of growth.

First, I’d like to introduce you to our new Chief Financial Officer, Sean Aggarwal. Sean was formerly VP of finance at PayPal and CFO, US category of eBay.  As our new CFO, Sean will oversee the accounting and finance teams across Trulia’s three offices.  Sean brings more than 20 years of investment banking and finance experience, along with a proven track record of scaling finance teams at PayPal, eBay and Amazon.

Next, I’d like to introduce you to Trulia’s new General Counsel, Scott Darling. Scott was formerly VP and General Counsel of Imperva and he has more than 15 years of business and legal experience working within companies such as Microsoft and Danger.

As a company, we have ambitious goals in 2012. I expect Sean and Scott’s impact, experience and insights to immediately help us navigate an exciting path at rapid speed.  We have already seen tremendous impact from the additions of Paul Levine as COO earlier this year and Dr. Jed Kolko as Chief Economist and Head of Analytics . I believe the addition of Sean and Scott have us perfectly positioned for a big year ahead.

Throughout 2011, Trulia has seen explosive growth in mobile. Towards the end of Q1, Trulia expanded its mobile offerings by introducing both iPad and Android apps. During Q3, Trulia released a native app for Android tablets and a dedicated Android “For Rent” app for rentals and in Q4 we released our Kindle Fire app. Mobile traffic now accounts for between 20 and 30% of overall traffic.  I am extremely proud that Trulia has the top-rated real estate mobile apps in their respective app stores and we are committed to delivering an exceptional user experience in all 50 states and innovative tools for consumers.

We have also taken many steps to become the number one source of transaction-ready clients for real estate professionals. We have doubled leads to agents in Q3 compared to the same quarter in 2010 and in Q3 2011, consumers on Trulia were viewing an average of more than 3.1 million homes per day. Three main drivers of the increase in quality leads to agents are the innovative new services such as Instant Leads, the introduction of Social Search and Recommendations and the expansion of Quick Connect to all mobile apps.

Some of the other highlights of 2011 include opening a new office in Denver, moving into a bigger office space in New York City, and the opening of the roof top penthouse at Trulia’s SF office, where Trulians now hold company meetings, meetups, parties and use the great space as an everyday fun and creative collaboration place for our employees. Our quarterly surveys have shown us time and time again that happy employees do great work, and I am happy that we are able to provide great spaces for our employees to thrive!

Want to join a great team changing the face of real estate? We’re hiring in all areas at Trulia in San Francisco, New York and Denver. To check out the open positions, check out our jobs pages: www.trulia.com/jobs

Popularity: 1% [?]

View the original article here

Trulia Brings the Heat With A Brand New App for Kindle Fire

We couldn’t be more excited about the launch of one of the most buzzed about new products of the year - the Amazon Kindle Fire. When we first heard about the Kindle Fire, we knew we had to bring Trulia onto the Amazon platform. After weeks of hard work by our talented mobile engineering team, Trulia is excited to announce our new addition - a brand new app for the Kindle Fire called Trulia Real Estate HD.

Trulia’s new tablet app comes alive on the Kindle Fire’s vibrant color touchscreen and extra-wide viewing angle to give users an incredible search experience.

When you launch the Trulia Real Estate HD app on Kindle Fire, you’ll see a bold and beautiful home screen where you can begin your home search. The full-color tablet experience utilizes the entire screen to display helpful search filters and beautiful property photos, making searching for properties easy and efficient.

Here’s the rundown on the Trulia Real Estate HD App’s features:

Search Filter: Personalize your search from step one by setting filters and search parameters, guaranteeing that you only sort through properties that fit your needs.Full-Screen Slideshows: Unique to the Kindle Fire, use photos gallery search to view big, beautiful property slideshows on the tablet’s entire screen.Save Your Searches: Save your favorite properties and searches to your MyTrulia account, synced to www.trulia.com and across all of your Trulia devices automatically.More Information Instantly: Contact the listing agent to get more details or schedule a showing; Share good finds with friends and family. Start your search on the big, beautiful home screen

See property details on the fullscreen view

See search results in a stunning list view

Filters help you find your best place to live

Trulia Real Estate HD is available now at the Amazon Appstore for Android here

See Trulia’s entire mobile app roster here

Popularity: 1% [?]

View the original article here

Thank You Trulia!

When you love what you do, time just seems to fly by. Today is my last day as a Trulian. It’s been almost 4 years since I started bleeding green on the slopes of Lake Tahoe - my first official day at Trulia. Over that time, it’s been Truliamazing to be a part of such a great team. So may wonderful memories. So many awesome company accomplishments.

I’ve put my heart and soul into the company and our partners. I’ve proudly preached the gospel of Trulia to literally thousands upon thousands of real estate professionals nationwide. And I loved every minute of it. I will be forever thankful for the opportunity I was given to represent such a great company.

This was not an easy decision to make. It never is. But every once in a while, life presents us with an opportunity to really make a difference. To make an impact. The challenge is knowing when to pursue it. I loved my time at Trulia and am now looking forward to a new adventure

It feels good knowing that I had some small part of Trulia’s growth. That I was able to help so many people with their real estate needs. Make so many lifelong friends from around the world. Use and experiment with a ridiculous amount of new technology. Not too shabby.

So with that, I sincerely thank Pete, Sami and all the Trulians I’ve had the pleasure of working with over the years. I’m honored to have been able to work with you.

I’ll always be available to each of you. So don’t be shy to ever reach out:

rdbachraty at gmail dot com

https://www.facebook.com/rudybachraty

http://www.linkedin.com/in/rudybachraty

https://twitter.com/#!/rudybachraty

Onward!

Popularity: 1% [?]

View the original article here

What’s it worth? Trulia Estimates Launches in Beta

We recently launched the beta of Trulia Estimates, a new tool that provides an estimate of a home’s worth and helps inform decisions, whether you’re buying, selling, renovating or refinancing. Trulia Estimates, built by an in-house team of experts, is another way we can provide useful information about homes and places across the country. Plus, it’s something our users have requested for some time. It’s no surprise in today’s market conditions that consumers are hungry for more information about home values and for local expert advice.

Trulia Estimates is launching in beta to a test market - the San Francisco Bay Area. The Bay Area is an early adopting, tech savvy group, making it a perfect launching ground for our beta product. And it’s right in our own backyard. The beta launch only includes off market homes in five Bay Area counties (Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, Santa Clara and San Mateo), and is an opportunity for us to get feedback, watch user interaction and refine the estimates and experience.

Trulia Estimates starts with a number built from local real estate info, including prices of recently sold similar homes, and collects inputs from locals - agents, buyers and owners - to ultimately improve the estimates in those local areas. Over time, we’ll incorporate more feedback from local experts and develop additional, hyper-local user information.

While we hope that Trulia Estimates gives our users more useful information about their homes, we know that these estimates don’t replace the need for a professional appraisal. Trulia Estimates is just a starting point. On every page with an estimate, we make it very easy for consumers to provide feedback on the estimate and connect with a nearby agent to get a professional estimate.

Not in the Bay Area?

Before we span from coast to coast, we want to take the feedback from our Bay Area beta testers, refine our Estimates product and make the necessary tweaks to ensure the product is primed for a national rollout. While we aren’t announcing a timeline for a full rollout, we plan to offer Trulia Estimates nationwide, and to expand valuations to homes that are actively for sale. Stay tuned for more details in advance of the national launch!

Popularity: 1% [?]

View the original article here

Trulia and Century 21 Team Up to Offer Premium Marketing Solutions

Today Trulia released some exciting news for CENTURY 21 Brokerages across the country:  Trulia and Century 21 Real Estate LLC have entered an agreement to offer Trulia Premium Listings as part of Century 21’s Showcase Advantage listing program.   For a limited time, Century 21 brokerages will receive discounts up to 75% off regular pricing on Trulia Premium Listings.   Using Premium Listings allows brokerages to increase the leads they receive from Truila by more than 500%.   Century 21 brokerages who wish to enroll in the program can get more information by clicking here.

“Trulia is dedicated to making valuable connections between consumers and real estate professionals through our online marketing solutions. It is our goal to become the industry’s number one marketing channel and our partnership with CENTURY 21 Real Estate brings us one step closer to that goal,” said Georg Gerstenfeld, VP of Business Services at Trulia. “We are confident that CENTURY 21 brokerages will benefit from access to Trulia’s audience of buyers and sellers.”

For more information about the Truila and Century 21 partnership, read our official press release here. 

Popularity: 1% [?]

View the original article here

Announcing Ginger Wilcox- Head of Trulia Training

I am thrilled to announce that I have joined the Trulia team as Head of Trulia Training. As part of Trulia’s goal to become the #1 marketing partner for the real estate industry, I will be developing educational programs to assist real estate agents in growing their business.  In addition to helping agents take advantage of Trulia’s tools and technology, I will be focused on helping them sort through all of the new emerging technologies to maximize their online presence.

Trulia’s company mission is to “revolutionize the real estate experience by empowering people”.  With that goal in mind, I will expand Trulia’s efforts to educate and empower agents to use technology to generate more customers, convert leads in to transactions, and increase productivity.

Why did I join Trulia?

I am a third generation real estate professional – real estate is in my blood. Over the years, I have worked in real estate and in the high tech industry. I am thrilled to be able to join an organization that combines my two loves – real estate and technology – while also sharing my passion for making real estate agents successful in their businesses.

I have had the opportunity to get to know and work with many of the Trulia team members over the last four years including Pete Flint, Rudy Bacharaty, Heather Fernandez, Ken Shuman and many more. I have always been impressed with Trulia’s commitment to innovation in our industry, but what I didn’t truly understand was its absolute passion to serving all of its customers – home buyers/sellers and the brokers/agents who represent those consumers. Trulia’s commitment to real estate professionals is evident in their desire to create an agent education program specifically designed to help real estate professionals succeed in their businesses.

Over the coming weeks, I will be seeking out input from our current and prospective customers on how we can better serve you through new educational programs. I look forward to working with you to continue to make Trulia your technology partner.

Popularity: 2% [?]

View the original article here

[Trulia] 78% of Homeowners – Best Investment They Ever Made

Last week I was invited to co-anchor a press briefing for Trulia (I’m an original advisory board member) with Co-founder Pete Flint (one of the nicest, smartest people I’ve ever met). He covered the survey results and I provided an overview of the state of housing in the US.

I addressed the fear and self-loathing housing discussion largely brought about by the expiration of the federal home buyers tax credit last spring. Far from being an apologist on the state of housing (we clearly have more pain in front of us), its more about the unintentional misdirection caused by relying on housing metrics that lag the market by as much as 5 months.

Their Harris Interactive poll results:

What we found this time around is that despite the nightmarish housing market, 70% of Americans still view owning a home as part of their personal American Dream. Moreover, we’re seeing positive signals for recovery from Millennials (young adults aged 18-34) and in the South & West.

American Dream Survey Q1 2011 [Trulia]

Listen to the press conference [iTunes]

View the original article here

Trulia Set to Open Denver Colorado Office

photo credit: Ishmael Orendain

Today we announced plans to open a Denver office to expand its sales force and services. The new office, will open its doors in February with a team of 25 employees in place and plans to expand to up to 100 employees by the end of the year. Current openings include Manger of Insides Sales, Inside Sales Supervisor, Inside Sales Associates and a Customer Service Manager.

“As an organization, we are obsessed with serving our customers.  This expansion is a significant investment in our customers and our overall business growth,” said Sami Inkinen, co-founder and COO, Trulia.com.  “After evaluating 25 different cities across the country it was clear that Denver, as a technology hub with a highly educated work force and a strong talent pool, was where we needed to be. We are excited to bring jobs to the region and better serve our growing customer base.”

During 2010, Trulia gained the most market share of all the leading national real estate sites according to Hitwise(a). This past year, Trulia doubled its workforce and revenue and opened a new 30,000 sq foot office in downtown San Francisco in December.

“In 2010, we focused on building the industry’s best marketing solutions for real estate professionals and that fueled our revenue growth,” said Georg Gerstenfeld, Vice President of Business Services, Trulia.com. “In 2011, we will continue to build products that drive the industry forward. We are focused on becoming the top marketing channel for real estate professionals to reach the tens of millions of consumers that visit Trulia.com each year.”

Trulia offers a generous benefits package for all full-time employees including: fully paid health, dental and vision coverage, a 401K retirement plan with company match, commuter benefits, paid time off and more. To see all current job openings please visit Trulia’s career page.

Popularity: 1% [?]

View the original article here

Trulia Trends Relaunches

Looking for real estate data? Check out the Trulia Trends section of our News Room - this is where we’ll be releasing and archiving all our industry data reports and consumer opinion surveys going forward.

Speaking of which, we’ve revamped our data program to kickoff 2011 with a fresh start. Our Rent vs. Buy Index and Price Reduction Report will now be issued on a quarterly basis while the results of our biannual American Dream Survey and Foreclosure Survey will continue to be released during our quarterly industry conference calls. Here’s the full schedule:

Popularity: 1% [?]

View the original article here

Trulia PSA: Facebook Connect Integration Temporarily Halted Due to Overwhelming Demand

The good news: Today, we launched our Facebook integration.

The not so good news: Due to an overwhelming amount of users trying to sign in with Facebook, some of our servers “melted” and had to pull the plug for now.

Our engineers are working hard to get everything back on track. Thanks to everyone for your patience

Popularity: 1% [?]

View the original article here