Production Innovation and Industry Relationships Lead to Record Traffic in 2012

Spring is upon us and the first part of 2012 is in the review mirror.  It has been another busy start to the year for Trulia and we wanted to take a minute to share some Truli-a-mazing milestones and achievements.

Let’s start with a few key milestones:

In March 2012 (source: comScore) we overtook Realtor.com in unique users for the first time in Trulia’s historyMarch 2012 was a record month in mobile visitsMarch 2012 was the largest traffic month in company history

We welcomed another member to the ranks of our senior management team-Lee Clancy joined the Trulia family as our new VP of Consumer Products. He is focused on creating more local, social and mobile tools, furthering our commitment to providing the inside scoop. Here are the latest and greatest:

iPhone Rentals App — On the heels of super-popular Android rentals app, we created Trulia Rentals for iPhone, which caters to renters’ tight time frames by providing instant notifications about new rental listings, plus a color-coding system to easily keep track of all currently-available rentals.Trulia Local — “What is it like to live here?” That’s a burning question that crosses the mind of every homebuyer and renter. Now with Trulia Local, you can visually see real estate values, crime, school ratings and local amenities on a single map.Trulia Insight — Leveraging “big data,” Trulia Insight provides real estate pros with deeper knowledge of their client needs by exposing them to their clients home search preferences, plans to buy in the next six months and whether or not they are pre-qualified for a mortgage.Trulia Estimates — To help give homeowners a starting point for estimating their home’s value and understanding current market trends, we rolled out Trulia Estimates to more than 50 million off-market homes, townhomes and condos in nearly 500 counties across the country.Optimized Trulia iPad – The launch of the new iPad was a great opportunity to update our top-rated iPad real estate app to take full advantage of the great new iPad features. We’ve improved the speed of our app for users on 4G LTE networks. You’ll also see optimized “retina”-true icons and graphics. And our heatmaps look fantastic on the new iPad, too.

We’ve also been hard at work on the industry side creating partnerships with some of the biggest MLSs and brokers across the country.

Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED), the largest MLS in the country, announced a direct syndication to Trulia. This strategic partnership with Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED) to directly syndicate more than 100,000 listings to Trulia providing consumers with the most accurate information on homes for sale across Chicago, northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin and northwest Indiana.Alain Pinel Realtors is the largest privately owned and independent real estate company in California and they partnered with Trulia to further their reach and enhance their brand awareness. They are committed to reaching buyers in the places they are looking online, which increasingly is more mobile and this new partnership helps them enhance their online strategy.Better Homes and Gardens Mason-McDuffie embraced Trulia to bring their agents, brokers and consumers on Trulia closer together. This partnership provides their listings with extensive exposure.Carpenter Realtors partnered with Trulia to reach more homebuyers in the state of Indiana and within the first few weeks of this new partnership, they saw a huge spike in the amount of exposure that our listings got to prospective homebuyers, which more than doubled their incoming lead traffic.

Lastly, since we are obsessed with providing the inside scoop, we’re always looking for new ways to understand what’s happening in the real estate market. Under the leadership of our Chief Economist Jed Kolko, we published a series of new housing data reports to help shed more light on where people are looking to move tomorrow and how home prices and rents are trending today. Together, these reports–which include the Trulia Price and Rent Monitors, the Trulia Metro Movers report, the Trulia Rent vs. Buy Index and the Trulia Housing Barometer–provide a forward-looking way of understanding the housing market.

We got a lot accomplished to start 2012 but we’re only getting started!

Author information not available.

View the original article here

Innovation Week 2011: Five Eco-Friendly Houses to Try Green Living Before You Buy

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Wednesday, December 7, 2011, by Rob Bear

Shrugging off the trappings of our resource-intensive society for something a little less damaging to the environment is no easy feat, so perhaps it's wise to consider renting an eco-friendly pad before committing to a purchase. To that end, a quick search of the vacation-rental site AirBnb turns up some awesome places to try out green living. Up first is the itHouse in the desert enclave of Pioneertown, Calif. Equipped with solar panels, well water, and glass walls, the one-bedroom house is completely "off-the-grid." The self-sufficient structure rents for $350 per night and lies some two hours outside of Los Angeles, not far from Palm Springs. Like many of that town's modernist homes, the itHouse has a clean aesthetic that makes the sacrifices more bearable.

? Nestled in a leafy jungle environment on the eastern coast of Hawaii's Big Island, Mahi Oli'Oli uses solar panels to power the fridge and "mood lighting," but the house relies on trade winds, rather than air conditioning, to cool the interiors. The well-appointed one bedroom sits on a six acre parcel with sweeping ocean views over the palm tree tops. Renting for just $115 per night, Mahi Oli'Oli takes full advantage of its tropical setting.

? Set on the ground floor of an eco-friendly townhouse in San Francisco's Mission District, this studio is accessed down a gated passageway at the rear of the house. Guests are supplied with two bikes for low-impact touring. The water is heated by solar power and solar provides some of the electricity. The only downside is that the owner is currently constructing the Zero Cottage, a "net-zero solar house," in the courtyard. Rent is around $130 per night.

? Not every green vacation home is located in some sunny locale. This one, in Bishop, Calif. on the interior of the Sierra Mountains, is often covered in piles of snow during the winter, but a litany of features help keep the environmental impact down. There's a "passive solar design for winter warmth and summer cooling, solar hot water, solar radiant floors, heat recovery ventilator, drain heat recovery that recycles the heat from your hot shower, and even a solar heated hot tub!" The rent is $275 per night.

? All of these American attempts at living off the grid pale in comparison to the lengths that the Swedes are willing to go for the environment. The Kolarbyn in Skinnskatteberg, Sweden is, intentionally, the "most primitive hotel" in Sweden. The accommodations consist of twelve huts built from stone, earth, and wood, and cost $50 per person per night. This sort of subterranean living is simply impractical for modern humans, but that shouldn't keep you from trying it out...and feeling much better when you return home.
· itHouse Pioneertown [AirBnb]
· Mahi Oli'Oli [AirBnb]
· Mission Garden Apartment [AirBnb]
· Eco-Home with Stunning Views [AirBnb]
· Sweden Subterranean [AirBnb]

View the original article here

Innovation Week 2011: Five Inventive Residences from the Pages of Dwell: Part Two

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Thursday, December 8, 2011, by Rob Bear Photos: Jason Schmidt/Dwell

We're back to finish up where we left off with Dwell magazine's picks for most innovative homes from their archives. Up first: a selection from the "Best Homes in America" special issue, a Canadian house with a decimal in its name, the 23.2 House in Wood Rock, British Columbia. Designed by Vancouver-based Omer Arbel, the angular structure was built using reclaimed wood for parts of the interior with the overall shape of the building impacted by one overarching maxim. At the designer's insistence, none of the reclaimed planks could be altered in any way. This determined some of the house's more absurd angles, but it's hard to argue with the results, like the roof that hovers over a seamless expanse of sliding glass.

Photos: Dave Lauridsen/Dwell

? In this pick, the Orchard House in Sebastopol, Calif., the architects left the raw wood off the ceiling and instead it found its way into the furnishings. Most notably, a gigantic slab of unsealed salvaged cypress that rests on sawhorses and serves as a primitive kitchen island. Designed by the architecture firm Anderson Anderson, the place was built for a East Coast couple relocating to Sonoma and was so designed to emulate, in part, the NYC loft they were leaving behind.

Photos: Dean Kaufman/Dwell

? The Dutch popped up in our last Dwell round-up and now they're back again to represent for the Low Countries. In a distinctly European twist, the Villa van Vijven was built as a collective home for five families. While each family lives in a distinct apartments, they all share communal spaces like the lawn and "the public square," a cobblestone plaza beneath the main structure. The design was helmed by Next Architects and has a distinctive, and very Dutch, orange exterior.

Photos: Lloyd Russell/Dwell

? The sweltering high deserts of Southern California's interior would seem like the last place to plop an untested new design, but it's precisely the challenges of building here that drove the construction of Rimrock Ranch, a vacation getaway for surfwear entrepreneur Jim Austin. Using a solid concrete slab foundation and a steel canopy to shade the house itself, Austin and architect Lloyd Russell managed to keep the temperature inside comfortable without resorting to the government-mandated air conditioning system.

Photos: Gregg Segal/Dwell

? Followers of this year's Innovation Week should find this house pretty familiar, as it appeared in as an AirBnb vacation rental on Tuesday. It's nice to put more of a backstory to the glassy modern cottage, which rents for $350 per night. Known as the iT House, it was built by Linda Taalman and Alan Koch, of Taalman Koch Architects, as their own personal escape in the high desert in Pioneertown, Calif. The house was constructed from prefabricated components and the final cost of constructing this slick getaway was just $265K.

· Five Inventive Residences from the Pages of Dwell: Part One [Curbed National]
· A Fresh Angle [Dwell]
· Fertile Grounds [Dwell]
· Creative Commons [Dwell]
· Operation Desert Shed [Dwell]
· iT House, Joshua Tree [Dwell]
· Five Eco-Friendly Houses to Try Green Living Before You Buy [Curbed National]

View the original article here

Innovation Week 2011: Five Inventive Residences from the Pages of Dwell: Part Two

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Thursday, December 8, 2011, by Rob Bear Photos: Jason Schmidt/Dwell

We're back to finish up where we left off with Dwell's picks for most innovative homes from their archives. (For a look at more Dwell favorites, pick up the "Best Homes in America" special issue.) Up first is a Canadian house with a decimal in its name, the 23.2 House in Wood Rock, British Columbia. Designed by Vancouver-based Omer Arbel, the angular structure was built using reclaimed wood for parts of the interior with the overall shape of the building impacted by one overarching maxim. At the designer's insistence, none of the reclaimed planks could be altered in any way. This determined some of the house's more absurd angles, but it's hard to argue with the results, like the roof that hovers over a seamless expanse of sliding glass.

Photos: Dave Lauridsen/Dwell

? In this pick, the Orchard House in Sebastopol, Calif., the architects left the raw wood off the ceiling and instead it found its way into the furnishings. Most notably, a gigantic slab of unsealed salvaged cypress that rests on sawhorses and serves as a primitive kitchen island. Designed by the architecture firm Anderson Anderson, the place was built for a East Coast couple relocating to Sonoma and was so designed to emulate, in part, the NYC loft they were leaving behind.

Photos: Dean Kaufman/Dwell

? The Dutch popped up in our last Dwell round-up and now they're back again to represent for the Low Countries. In a distinctly European twist, the Villa van Vijven was built as a collective home for five families. While each family lives in a distinct apartments, they all share communal spaces like the lawn and "the public square," a cobblestone plaza beneath the main structure. The design was helmed by Next Architects and has a distinctive, and very Dutch, orange exterior.

Photos: Lloyd Russell/Dwell

? The sweltering high deserts of Southern California's interior would seem like the last place to plop an untested new design, but it's precisely the challenges of building here that drove the construction of Rimrock Ranch, a vacation getaway for surfwear entrepreneur Jim Austin. Using a solid concrete slab foundation and a steel canopy to shade the house itself, Austin and architect Lloyd Russell managed to keep the temperature inside comfortable without resorting to the government-mandated air conditioning system.

Photos: Gregg Segal/Dwell

? Followers of this year's Innovation Week should find this house pretty familiar, as it appeared in as an AirBnb vacation rental on Tuesday. It's nice to put more of a backstory to the glassy modern cottage, which rents for $350 per night. Known as the iT House, it was built by Linda Taalman and Alan Koch, of Taalman Koch Architects, as their own personal escape in the high desert in Pioneertown, Calif. The house was constructed from prefabricated components and the final cost of constructing this slick getaway was just $265K.

· Five Inventive Residences from the Pages of Dwell: Part One [Curbed National]
· A Fresh Angle [Dwell]
· Fertile Grounds [Dwell]
· Creative Commons [Dwell]
· Operation Desert Shed [Dwell]
· iT House, Joshua Tree [Dwell]
· Five Eco-Friendly Houses to Try Green Living Before You Buy [Curbed National]

View the original article here

Innovation Week 2011: Five Eco-Friendly Houses to Try Green Living Before You Buy

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Wednesday, December 7, 2011, by Rob Bear

Shrugging off the trappings of our resource-intensive society for something a little less damaging to the environment is no easy feat, so perhaps it's wise to consider renting an eco-friendly pad before committing to a purchase. To that end, a quick search of the vacation-rental site AirBnb turns up some awesome places to try out green living. Up first is the itHouse in the desert enclave of Pioneertown, Calif. Equipped with solar panels, well water, and glass walls, the one-bedroom house is completely "off-the-grid." The self-sufficient structure rents for $350 per night and lies some two hours outside of Los Angeles, not far from Palm Springs. Like many of that town's modernist homes, the itHouse has a clean aesthetic that makes the sacrifices more bearable.

? Nestled in a leafy jungle environment on the eastern coast of Hawaii's Big Island, Mahi Oli'Oli uses solar panels to power the fridge and "mood lighting," but the house relies on trade winds, rather than air conditioning, to cool the interiors. The well-appointed one bedroom sits on a six acre parcel with sweeping ocean views over the palm tree tops. Renting for just $115 per night, Mahi Oli'Oli takes full advantage of its tropical setting.

? Set on the ground floor of an eco-friendly townhouse in San Francisco's Mission District, this studio is accessed down a gated passageway at the rear of the house. Guests are supplied with two bikes for low-impact touring. The water is heated by solar power and solar provides some of the electricity. The only downside is that the owner is currently constructing the Zero Cottage, a "net-zero solar house," in the courtyard. Rent is around $130 per night.

? Not every green vacation home is located in some sunny locale. This one, in Bishop, Calif. on the interior of the Sierra Mountains, is often covered in piles of snow during the winter, but a litany of features help keep the environmental impact down. There's a "passive solar design for winter warmth and summer cooling, solar hot water, solar radiant floors, heat recovery ventilator, drain heat recovery that recycles the heat from your hot shower, and even a solar heated hot tub!" The rent is $275 per night.

? All of these American attempts at living off the grid pale in comparison to the lengths that the Swedes are willing to go for the environment. The Kolarbyn in Skinnskatteberg, Sweden is, intentionally, the "most primitive hotel" in Sweden. The accommodations consist of twelve huts built from stone, earth, and wood, and cost $50 per person per night. This sort of subterranean living is simply impractical for modern humans, but that shouldn't keep you from trying it out...and feeling much better when you return home.
· itHouse Pioneertown [AirBnb]
· Mahi Oli'Oli [AirBnb]
· Mission Garden Apartment [AirBnb]
· Eco-Home with Stunning Views [AirBnb]
· Sweden Subterranean [AirBnb]

View the original article here

Innovation Week 2011: Five Game-Changing, Solar-Powered Vacation Getaways

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Monday, November 28, 2011, by Rob Bear Photos: Shakti Himalaya

Situated an hour's hike into the wilds of northern India, the Shakti 360° Leti eco resort looks a lot more modern than one might expect. The solar-powered compound also uses recycled grey water, composts to dispose of food waste, and only utilizes local produce in its kitchen. While the positive impact on the environment certainly appeals to potential visitors, we're pretty certain that it was the remoteness of this stacked-stone getaway, rather than a green building ethos, that drove those design decisions. That said, walls of glass and a minimalist aesthetic appeal to both the left and right brain. A three-night, four-day package, including guided trekking, costs a heady $1,916 per person.

Photos: Personeni Raffaele Scharer

? This tiny, modern, solar-powered mountain hut in the Swiss Alps was formerly a tiny, aging, decrepit mountain hut in the Swiss Alps. Retaining as much of the original structure as possible, the place was renovated and is now powered by a solar panel. That's partially owing to the difficulty of stringing electric lines up to this rock outcropping at 6,069 feet. The sleek interiors are complemented by raw concrete brought in to fortify the structure. Needless to say, the views are utterly stunning.

Photos: Eggleston Farkas Architects

? Just when we got to thinking that the only cool solar-powered escapes were to be found in far-flung locales, this stateside beauty, set in the foothills of Washington State's Cascade Mountains, proved us wrong. Designed by Seattle-based Eggleston Farkas Architects, the Nighthawk Retreat is a sleek mountain retreat that's not only powered by solar panels, but also utilizes further green tech that won it an award of "Sustainable Merit at the Excellence in Concrete Construction Awards."

? Thankfully, not all solar-powered homes are clean-lined modernist creations. This wood-framed home in Big Bear City, Calif. has a boring beige-on-beige color scheme and far-from-distinguished furnishings, but it's still powered by the Cienaga Creek Ranch's solar array. Nightly rates start at $650.

? The sun-drenched deserts near Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California are ripe for solar power, and this understated country escape takes full advantage. The mid-century structures sit on five acres of solitude, and rent for as low as $75 per night. Still, the name, Rattler Ranch, is more than a little off-putting for the snake averse.

· Shakti is a Solar-Powered Eco Retreat Nestled in the Himalayas [Inhabitat]
· Tranquil Swiss Alps Shelter Renovated into a Cozy Solar-Powered Retreat [Inhabitat]
· Eggleston Farkas Architects’ Nighthawk Retreat is an Eco-Getaway in the Cascade Foothills [Inhabitat]
· Secluded Luxury [Tripadvisor]
· Rattler Ranch [Tripadvisor]

View the original article here

Innovation Week 2011: Five New Innovative Toilets That Deserve the Title "Throne"

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Tuesday, November 29, 2011, by Rob Bear

Photo: All-Dreaming

In its broad strokes, the toilet is a household appliance that really hasn't changed much in the past century. Perhaps designers have been avoiding the icky parts of the bathroom—after all, showers certainly have received a fair share of attention—but now all that is changing. Motivated by a desire to limit water consumption, designers have tackled the problem of making an eco-friendly toilet. Korean Jang Wooseok devised this innovative system that diverts greywater from the sink drain into the toilet tank. An LED light indicates when the tank is full of recycled water or when fresh water is being used to flush, so the user can decide which of the two handles to use. The only trouble with this design is its hyper-modern form, which would look at home in the Jetsons space pad, but maybe not so much in a pre-war apartment.

Photo: Roca

? This wall-mounted design by Buratti + Battiston Architects uses the same water recycling principal as the Jang Wooseok design, but also incorporates an automatic cleaning system to stave off the growth of bacteria in the recycled water between flushes. Produced by Roca, the W+W won many Euro design awards, but we can't help but note that this innovative toilet is a little too unconventional in form to garner mass appeal.

Photo: Troy Adams Design

? For those more concerned with appearances, the bench toilet by Troy Adams disguises the fixture itself when not in use. At $11K, it is one expensive restroom upgrade, but considering how we react to listing photos that depict toilets, this might be $11K well spent. Plus, it saves space by providing seating when the toilet section is closed.

? The Japanese love their toilets. There's no culture in the world more devoted to disposing of their waste in the highest style and with the most technology. Japanese bathrooms regularly come equipped with control panels for the toilet that, with a push of a button, can warm the seat or clean the user's rear end. That's all well and good, but this design from Toto, the Neorest AH, costs a whopping $4,000. A pretty penny compared to most western toilets, but hopefully the water savings from the tankless design—which uses less than half the water of a traditional toilet—will help pay back that high upfront cost.

? Seeking to one up its Far East competition, American toilet manufacturer Kohler recently released the $6,400 Numi. Equipped with similar features to the Toto, the Numi also boasts, get this, a built-in stereo system. Nothing like listening to tunes on the toilet.

· Modern Eco Bath System Designs by Jang Wooseok [All-Dreaming]
· W+W | Roca [official site]
· The Bench Toilet [Trendhunter]
· Go Green When You Go... With the Toto Hybrid Toilet [Inventor Spot]
· I Sat on a $6,400 Toilet and It Changed My Life [Gizmodo]

View the original article here