VentureBeat Reveals Trulia Redesigns
Business blog VentureBeat reveals today that Trulia is set to unveil a bunch of new tools aimed at helping home buyers at the end of the month.
Taking a page from Zillow’s recent redesign, Trulia will be adding heatmaps to its search pages. Sounds like you’ll be able to view them at a neighborhood level (which you can’t currently do over at Zillow). The heatmaps (I wonder if Zillow has trademarked that term…) will apparently let you overlay a number of different metrics including average sale price and average price per square foot on top of their maps, so you can gauge the activity in your area. Sounds like a nifty idea.
Trulia also promises to add a comparison tool (showing you recently sold properties side by side with your search results) and a neighborhood spotlight, that adds neighborhood features to the information mix.
While all of the features sound like great concepts, I’m a little curious as to how they plan on rolling them out. With an incomplete inventory of properties and without an established relationship with the MLS’s in each area, it remains to be seen how Trulia intends on accurately generating the metrics it proposes to display.
Also, will the features be uniformly available in all parts of the country? While some MLS systems allow the release of comparable sold data (see John L. Scott breaks the mold), it’s my understanding that many don’t. Can anyone enlighten us on the rules?
It’ll be interesting to see how these new features roll out, and to see how useful they actually are. I only hope this isn’t a PR ploy to wow the VCs and generate new sources of investment.
Update: More from Liz Gannes (GigaOm) at Trulia Expands, Gets Local
Update #2: Jonathan J. Miller at Matrix gets a sneak peak at the new site
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6 Comment(s)
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- From digg / All / Upcoming | Sep 21, 2006
- From VentureBeat Reveals Trulia Redesigns » Netscape.com | Sep 22, 2006
- From Luxury Sarasota Living :: Trulia 2.0 | Sep 24, 2006
Glaen | Sep 21, 2006 | Reply
I guess heat maps are the next big thing! Who knew tht PropertyShark was ahead of the curve?
Anyways, Trulia currently generates neighborhood statistics using census data and my guess is they will continue to do the same. They can display sold listings because they aren’t an MLS member - they crawl realtor sites, which often show sold houses too. MLS systems can’t prevent realtors from showing their own solds on their site.
Galen | Sep 21, 2006 | Reply
I guess you should take that with a grain of salt - I didn’t even type my name correctly.
Joel Burslem | Sep 21, 2006 | Reply
The neighborhood spotlight feature seems like a fairly straightforward thing to implement, something easily obtainable from Census data etc.
But, the heatmaps strike me as something that requires an accurate, timely source of local market information. Which, to my knowledge, Trulia does not have access to…
I’m curious to see how they pull it off.
Marlow Harris | Sep 21, 2006 | Reply
It is understandable why you would be curious as to how Trulia can accurately generate heat maps or any kind of worthwhile home search with an incomplete inventory.
I’m curious about how ANY of the real estate portals can be useful without MLS data. Realtor.com, Yahoo, Homes.com, Google Base, Craigslist…. none of these have complete listings. Agents either have to enter their listings themselves or the site has to have an agreement with separate brokerages to scrape to get their listings. In the Pacific Northwest, Realtor.com is practically useless, since the largest real estate company, Windermere, has forbidden display of their listings. Coldwell Banker Bain will not allow Trulia, Yahoo, nor Homes.com to display theirs.
None of these sites, no matter how fabulous the interface, will be less than complete without MLS listings. Trulia cannot be a powerhouse without this data.
Richard Johnston | Sep 22, 2006 | Reply
The MLS data can only be displayed if Trulia and zillow integrate their system with all the local MLS boards. Then at least people will have an idea of whats available for sale, sold, etc…
Calculator | Sep 30, 2006 | Reply
Regarding your question about MLS rules: Trulia doesn’t have to play by any MLS rules. By taking the brokers listings directly they are not subject to the MLS rules.
This is one of the reasons most Brokers will never put their listings on Trulia. They realize it’s only a matter of time before Trulia allows FSBO’s to advertise along side their listings, something brokers should be very uncomfortable with and most every MLS does not allow. Smart brokers are seeing right through Trulia. This post sums it up best in describing Trulia as a pimp:
“As far as agents and brokers using trulia - Its pretty simple, trulia is a pimp - and if you feed them all of your listings, you are a whore. Without your listings, trulia would not exist…they should be paying you for content…not the other way around.
Sure, they may not be charging you anything right now, but a good crack dealer never does. When you find yourself dependent, you better believe you will be paying the piper.”
http://realestate20.wordpress.com/2006/09/15/trulia-truly-a-pimp/