Use Trulia for your next house hunt: Real Estate vertical search

I have just been pinged by the Pete Flint, the CEO of Trulia that their Real Estate search engine is now open for (beta) business. I had been aware of Pete’s plans for some time and found them interesting, but the implementation they have done is really very clean and easy to use: enter a Zip code or a city, and you get a list of houses and a google map showing their location. You can filter the results by price, number of bedroom/bathroom, price, sq footage, etc. Results also contain some statistics about average house prices in the neighborhood, etc.

Clicking on a house link gives you a detailed page, providing more information about the house, a link to the original listing, a list of houses that have been sold recently, etc.

Amazing! Go check this out.

PS: Sorry for the slow posting. Am just swamped. More later.

Tag: trulia

 

Comments

[Jeremy Pepper]

That is cool, and it's like what a few realtors have done with their own Websites, incorporating Google Earth into the listings.

Should be interesting how the MLS system works with them, and where they are getting their listings. And, of course, the business model. Are they going to have premiere listings from Realtors, or sponsored listings, or side ads?

[Francisque]

Sympa ce service...cela me fait penser à un site connexe : http://www.reservemy.com/

[Marianne Quarre Dean]

I agree that Trulia looks great but ... garbage in/garbage out. I understand they are in beta but many of the listings are old news and some of them VERY old news. In an industry where accuracy and speed count, this does not cut it. Ask a person who is in the market for a house to use it. It will only take one search to see the flaws.

I am in the real estate business.

[Rick Ho]

Tight Google map integration is definitely the trend of the next gen real estate search engine.

Take a look at http://www.housingrobots.com In additional to what Trulia is providing, they have a couple of unique features that I can't find in similar sites.

1) "SCHOOL-FIRST" search where buyer can have an overview of top school districts and start from there.

2) "PRICE-HISTORY" tracking, so you see all the price changes of the houses.

3) "SURROUNDING" info. They provide surrounding schools, restaurants, church and bank info for their listed house. Very handy.

4) Their Google Map integration is very well done. All the nearby cities will be updated when you move around. Unlike Trulia which give an approximation at high zoom level, their housing information is accurate at all zoom level.

5) I also like their Google Earth integration

Take a look to see if you like it.

Rgds, Ricky

[Kalpa]

This is in response to a comment here referring to "garbage in/garbage out, which doesn't quite cut it." I agree with it to some extent. It's important for the data to be as clean as possible, or it'll put off users. But say in a fast-paced environment such as New York City, how far do New Yorkers actually go! They're going around in circles, hunting for rentals; or running from pillar-to-post to meet deadlines, rushing around to place their bids on hard-to-find desirable condos, etc. There's so much exasperation all around before you can find one decent rental, or a single home that meets your criteria. Now, if there's a large database to select from, a free, easy-to-access service, users could do some prior research (call it homework) before contacting the broker/s. Somewhere down the line, services provided by the real estate vertical search engines will improve. www.urbanregistry.com went live recently, though quietly. It's a locally based company, NY-centric and as users begin to get aware of the site, I'd think it'll be a very useful service. At the end of it, these sites finally drive traffic to the brokers' website, right, because to walk through a door and check out the place, it's the broker who has the key and access into the property. It's a partnership that will benefit users, the real estate vertical and the brokers. Bear with these folks, guys.

[Zone]

Here's a better perspective on Trulia:
http://realestate20.wordpress.com/2006/09/15/trulia-truly-a-pimp/

The truth about Trulia is they have no content of their own. They depend on Realtors to give them content then they plan to sell ads back to those same Realtors. Not a viable model in the long run. How stupid do they thing Realtors are?

[John]

Trulia, Zillow (http://zillow.com), and HotPads (http://hotpads.com) have recently added detailed neighborhood and city information, census data, and heat maps to their search portal. The areas are outlined on the maps. HotPads.com includes Wikipedia articles for every city and neighborhood.

These types sites of have really developed a lot over the last year.