Trulia Lands the Big One
Trulia announced today that it has inked a deal with Realogy Corporation (H), parent company of Century 21, Coldwell Banker and ERA, to upload more than 500,000 of its affiliates’ listings to its database. Realogy made this move to Trulia alongside a similar deal with Google Base.
Realogy putting its listing inventory online only makes sense and it’s heavyweight presence is further vindication of a broad distribution strategy. Trulia, especially, must be feeling elated with a big win like this - perfect timing too, hot on the heals of its deal with Keller Williams.
Not sure if the deal with Realogy includes branded listings like KW deal, but if it does that’d be a huge boost to Trulia’s bottom line.
We may just have seen a tipping point here; as smaller brokers, who may have hung back, race to embrace both of these platforms to keep up with the Jones’.
As they do, as Jim Duncan points out, how much longer till the local MLS databases don’t much matter anymore?
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14 Comment(s)
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Greg Swann | Mar 2, 2007 | Reply
> how much longer till the local MLS databases don’t much matter anymore?
Find me a slate roof on Trulia. Find a home with a central vacuum system. There is a difference between shopping and searching — and between advertising and marketing. You can’t do a true home search on a Realty.bot. This might change, but it will not be a sudden change.
Jim Duncan | Mar 2, 2007 | Reply
Greg -
I think that you will, in time, be able to do a search that is as good as, if not better than, an MLS search on Trulia or the like. I may be speaking from my myopic point of view, but they seem to have a greater awareness of the impending changes and more incentive to adapt and innovate than do MLSs. Just look at how far Trulia and Google (and Zillow, but that’s another conversation) have come in such a short period of time.
Vic | Mar 2, 2007 | Reply
My rep at Trulia said that they got the Branded Listings but not Featured…
Ben | Mar 2, 2007 | Reply
Great post and not to change the subject, but you have some awesome writing/blogging skills. Always very easy to read, relevant, and to the point. This is by far my favorite real estate blog. Thanks for the great reads.
John Schroeder | Mar 2, 2007 | Reply
Is it the local MLS’ that Trulia is really competing with or is it more like Realtor.com
I think many believe that once a site, such as Trulia, has access to the same kind of search capabilities and information that the local MLS sites do that there will be no use for them anymore. Is this true? I don’t think anyone knows for sure. I do see some dramatic changes on the horizon in the next few years though.
Will a mega site like this replace local real estate sites and blogs?
Will people still need local real estate professionals to sift through all of the information available to them?
Will an agent only need to list their listings on this/these mega sites?
Is an agents only value the information that he keeps?
Just my 2 cents.
John
housereview | Mar 2, 2007 | Reply
This is a big move. Are we seeing the start of more consumer choice, or the beginning of a new monopoly?
Justin Smith | Mar 2, 2007 | Reply
Divide and conquer… This was a big step, but I agree with Greg that it will be a while for a full MLS replacement.
John | Mar 2, 2007 | Reply
Greg,
>Find me a slate roof on Trulia. Find a home with a central vacuum system … You can’t do a true home search on a Realty.bot. This might change, but it will not be a sudden change.
The only reason you can’t perform the searches you mentioned on ‘realty.bot’ sites is b/c the MLS’ currently control all the detailed data adn home attributes. It’s surely not an issue of technology as the major search engines could dominate in the real estate vertical search arena (and offer search capabilities that you cited above) if they had access to the full structured data.
Only time will tell, but I believe we will reach a tipping point, the data will become commoditized, and real estate search sites with the best technology will be able to offer consumers a much better search experience than what exists today (and drive more qualified leads through to brokers/agents).
Incredible Agent | Mar 2, 2007 | Reply
I’m not sure if this is the tipping point or not, but it certainly seems to be getting close. Trulia and Google Base are definately moving in the right direction to shake up the listings market. I don’t think they or anyone else will replace the MLS anytime soon. The MLS is more agent/broker focused and not consumer focused.
The real news is that Realogy is doing it with both Trulia and Google Base. They’ve obviously seen the power of releasing their listings to drive traffic to their site and hopefully convert them into quality leads for their agents. Now that they’ve realized the power of traffic redirection, Why would they stop at Google and Trulia? Why wouldn’t other brokerages release their listings as long as home buyers are being driven to their website?
I’m more interested in the decision made by Realogy, KW, Weichert, etc. to release their listings at all. The fact they release them to Trulia or Google Base isn’t as important to me.
Dave | Mar 2, 2007 | Reply
If this isn’t a wake-up call for Realtor.com and the company (Move) that runs the site to start making some major “value” changes to the site and cut the crap of charging Realtors for every little “enhanced” feature, they will become irrelevant.
matt | Mar 2, 2007 | Reply
People don’t care about vacuums and slate roofs…why is Craigslist so popular? You can’t even search for beds and baths on CL, yet it’s one of the highest ranking real estate search sites. It’s just like online dating, who cares about descriptions, just show me faces!
I already consider Trulia an MLS replacement because the MLS are just falling apart fast. In San Francisco, to get IDX data is nearly impossible, yet in Hawaii I can get access in about 4 days and program really nice home searches for clients…
what I’m excited about is the new companies sharing the data, as the data becomes easier to access more and more great home search sites will pop up. Trulia is one of the first.
Kris | Mar 2, 2007 | Reply
Is Realogy sending their listings to Trulia from their own database or are they sending a custom feed from their MLS? We send our listings to Trulia and Google Base via our website provider, who gets the data from a custom feed of our data from the MLS. I don’t think MLSes are going away anytime soon because they are the starting point for the data aggregation. If they go away, then where are agents going to input their listings? If they do it directly to a company software product then all of these sites have to start over in prepping and translating the data. And instead of our website provider being able to do one translation for an MLS that serves hundreds of brokers, they would need to translate hundreds of feeds coming from different programs with different names and fields? I don’t think so. And I don’t think Trulia or Google Base are going to do it either. Maybe they will eventually offer an option for agents to enter their listings directly but do you think the agents are going to enter it multiple times in different places? Do you think Trulia and Google Base are going to share their aggregated data with each other because a broker requests it? Think they will share it with the broker’s chosen website vendor? Somebody is going to need to be the starting point and the MLSes are already in that position. There’s a value to the agents to do it there and let it populate out. You may see more fields included as demand grows. You may see more consolidation as MLSes become more regional. But I don’t see anyone wanting to let a commercial site run the show. It’s more valuable to agents to have many sites for their listings to be marketed on and the MLSes make that easy to do by letting brokers have a custom feed they can send to any site they want. If agents or brokerages have to do the data aggregationt themselves, it won’t happen for a lot of small brokers and then no one is served. Clients won’t see all the homes. Agents will have fewer online marketing avenues because it will be just too much work to get their listings so many places.
Austin Real Estate Blog | May 24, 2007 | Reply
Interesting. I guess what is wierd is that realtors talk about trulia alot but I never hear consumers talk about trulia. It seems more this is about trulia capturing leads to resale to agents. Since the agents buying these leads will often be agents who are new without referals I dont know if this will overall be better for the consumer.
doug | Feb 8, 2008 | Reply
Interesting stuff… I noticed recently in the chicago maket a site got rid of the confusion fo going thru sites to find info on a specific house, like look at realtor.com and find info on a specific house, its a brutal search. mestate.mobi was the site I noticed (i am a blackberry geek) so this was usefull for finding a specific house as I was out looking, and don’t have to register like all the realtor sites