The details are here. This was to have been news tomorrow, but Trulia broke its own embargo. Unlike the last round of upgrades, this release is all about milking cash from Realtors in the best Realtor.com tradition. Perfectly understandable as a means of making money, but hardly earth-shaking. I would have more readily welcomed actual functionality, rather than just pay for play. The good news is, buying leads on Trulia.com is a lot cheaper than buying leads elsewhere. This argues to me that selling leads is a business ripe for disintermediation. If so, that day cannot come soon enough.
Technorati Tags: disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing, technology
Alex Mather says:
i hate this as a shopper. i dont want to see properties differentiated or sorted differently because agents paid extra money to make them stand out. i really dont. i hate it on ebay and i hate it on REALTOR.com.
i’ll still use Trulia because, even with this change, they’re far and away the best RE search site out there, but its another step in the wrong direction IMHO.
November 7, 2007 — 9:43 pm
Patrick says:
BEST ANSEWR
Let me see if I have this correct.
I allow YOU to advertise MY listings, which brings consumers to YOUR site.
I answer questions on a daily basis for those consumers, which in turn brings MORE traffic to YOUR site.
All of this and YOU will only charge ME $50. a month.
~~~2 Thumbs Down~~~
November 7, 2007 — 10:17 pm
John Wake says:
I’m hugely sceptically of all such websites… but I’m starting to be impressed with Trulia.
I even got a free lead from them and it had a legit phone number.
It seems they have emerged as the leader in this area passing all the older sites that chose other paths.
I think they have a much longer half-life than a House Values or a HomeGain.
November 7, 2007 — 11:38 pm
GoEasy says:
Guys
Go easy on Trulia. They need some way to make some dough. You can only sell so many Google ads before your VCs ask you what your real business model is. It’s not like that POS Voices thing actually generates any revenues. At least they have been smart not to raise a gazillion dollars of VC money and kept their burn rate lower (fewer heads, less SEM).
BTW, I wonder what REaltor.com thinks of all this emulation.
November 8, 2007 — 7:08 am
jrealtor says:
What they don’t tell you is that if your broker already has your listing on trulia, you have to pay the $50/month just to claim your own listing on their site. Otherwise the traffic and leads go to your broker and not you. Sucks to be with one of those brokerages who syndicate all their listings. (CB, C21, RealtyExecs, KW, etc.) Sneaky bastards.
November 8, 2007 — 9:56 am
Kelly Roark says:
Greg, Kelly@trulia here. Our blogmaster pushed the publish button too quick on our post about Agent Featured Listings – and a big apology for that! It could have been the excitement about releasing our 1st premium advertising product for agents. Nevertheless…
To the rest of the crew pondering our new product, this is one of many agent marketing tools we’re working on. The search result format remains the same w/the top 3 as premium spots. It’s just that agents now get to control whether they want their listings in those spots. On the property detail page, you’ll see a lot more neighborhood info plus the new email tool & agent contact info enables consumers to contact you direct, at the email you specify. The product is backed by weekly reporting, and in beta testing, featured listings boosted Trulia traffic to agents by 4x on avg.
November 8, 2007 — 10:38 am
Kevin Tomlinson says:
I invested too much money (like a fool) on Realtor.com.
No more. I’ve never had ANY leads from Realtor.com or “enhanced listings” and buying zip codes. Waste of money big time.
Won’t do it on Trulia either. The success for someone is for us to recieve a feed of our listings so it takes less time to put my listings up there. Until they do that—mine will not be up.
Point 2 is so close to perfect—but it takes waaaaaaay too much time to input a listing
November 8, 2007 — 9:48 pm
Ken Smith says:
jrealtor, KW sends all leads to the listing agent unlike most companies that use your listings to sell leads back to you.
Kevin if you have any level of listings it surprises me that you haven’t gotten any leads. We end up with a few closed transactions every year from R.com. It pays for itself and more important it is a great listing tool. Always looking for more tools that can pay for itself with buyers and allow me to list more homes.
As for Trulia the cost currently is cheap, but the fees will increase as they grow. With so many major companies jumping on board you are costing your sellers a marketing opportunity if you don’t use Trulia, but you are helping raise a monster that you will have to continue to feed (pay).
November 9, 2007 — 4:28 pm
Kelly Roark says:
Ken – kelly from Trulia. I can understand your concern about price increases with online services since that may have happened to you in the past. One immediate difference I see in our current market is that this influx of new online advertising services creates a competitive environment to get and keep your business. I would think that would put you in a pretty good position. If we, or another media service, is non-competitively priced and/or do not deliver good value, you will take your business elsewhere. You’re in the driver’s seat!
November 9, 2007 — 7:36 pm
Ken Smith says:
Kelly I think we first need to agree that Trulia is small in scale on a local level compared to other advertising options. Currently sellers don’t demand Trulia due to the fact that you are not a household name.
So we might be in the drivers seat as long as Trulia remain small in scale, but once sellers expect…no demand their listings to be on Trulia then who is in the drivers seat?
November 10, 2007 — 9:54 am