Take the Trulia Challenge

Remember the Pepsi Challenge?  Making comparisons to see what you like is important for everything you do, and that’s especially true when it comes to marketing.  Sticking with the same program every year is the fastest way to guarantee irrelevance – you have to stay on top of growing trends, target new buyers and maintain a lean budget.  And that’s exactly why we bring you the Trulia Challenge.

More and more brokers call me every day while they are putting together their 2009 budgets. One of the most common questions I get: “What can you do for me that Realtor.com can’t?” Well, we can give you a lot more, and for a lot less.  Take the first step of the Trulia Challenge, and see which column looks best for your brokerage.  We think Trulia’s innovative features and flexibility (plus the multitude of FREE) leads to a pretty conclusive winner.

Getting the most bang for your buck is more important now than ever. The Trulia Challenge isn’t exactly a taste test, but we think you’ll find the results to be delicious. Watch what these real estate pro’s had to say when they took the Trulia Challenge at the 2009 Inman Real Estate Connect in New York City.  Then contact us for step two.

10 Twitter Tips

photo credit: bindermichi

I use Twitter to keep in touch with clients and to watch headlines and breaking news. Some of the people I subscribe to are industry leaders or regional companies, I also follow CNN and the NYTimes. The NYTimes has some of their sections twittering separately, like @nytimesworld, @nytimespolitics, etc.

My 10 Twitter Tips:

1) Use the “Find People” tool and search for things you are interested in Real Estate, Fishing, New York City, etc.

2) Follow people that actually “tweet”

3) Do not just twitter personal promotion and advertisements, that is SPAM!

4) The “#” in front of a word, or letters, like “#icny” means that this is a post about an event or popular topic. #icny was used for Inman Connect New York, #Obama may be used for news about Obama, etc.

5) Follow @NYPierre and @trulia if you want to see some twitter action, most of Real Estate’s techiest agents and leaders are on Twitter too.

6) As a real estate agent, you should twitter the following things whenever you can: “Just got a closing in City, State” Just got an offer in City, State”, Just listed a great home in City, State”. This will inspire people who care about those areas or real estate in those areas to follow you. It will also counteract all that negative press out there that says people AREN’T buying homes – they are!

7) Use Tinyurl.com to create a shorter URL for long things, like listings. It is very easy, copy and paste the main link – like your listing URL on Trulia – and paste it into tinyurl, it will shorten it for you for Twitter use.
Twitpic is another tool to post photos right from your phone to your twitter account and add text – like “look at this new listing” and it will insert a link to the photo.

9) Twit about local events, things you are going to, maybe people near you are there too and want to meet – note, keep a lookout for stalkers?

10) Keep it social, don’t think of it as work, follow people first to get an idea of what you can say. you can even reply to other twitters directly.

Bonus tip: Twitter can update your Facebook status too! Look for the application on Facebook.

Post Inspiration: Wendy Forsythe at the BHGRealEstateBlog 

Have tips of your own? Please add them as a comment below.

Timing – Selling Your Current Home and Buying your Dream Home

Last weeks most viewed Question on Trulia Voices was asked by Jennifer Hancock, a home buyer and seller from Fairfax County – Timing of buying and selling. She wants to know if she should sell her current home first and then find her dream home or start looking for her dream home first and then sell. It’s an excellent question. Answers can vary as it depends on a host of variables. Let’s see what our Trulia Voices real estate community had to say…

Thoughts from our Trulia Voices Real Estate Community

The first real estate agent to answer was Jeff Royce from Frankly Real Estate in Fairfax, Virginia. Jeff’s answer was so detailed that he turned it into a blog post on his own blog, OurFairfax.com. What a great way to re-distribute a valuable piece of content – nice going Jeff! Here is a snippet of Jeff’s answer to Jennifer, ” In a buyers market like we have in Northern Virginia, people who are looking to sell their current home and purchase another have a tough choice to make. Should they sell their current home, or purchase their next home first? There is no one-size-fits-all answer, but here are a couple of scenarios to consider:

A. Sell Home 1, Then Buy Home 2: In this market, you have a lot of control over the purchase of your home. If you sell Home 1 you will know exactly what you have to work with financially as you approach the purchase of Home 2. You will also get a better price on both homes. That is because you will not be under any pressure to sell Home 1, therefore you will not be tempted to jump at a low offer. You will get a better price on Home 2 because you will be working with a definite timetable, and will not need to make your offer contingent on the sale of your home. A seller who has to deal with a sale-of-home contingency will, almost by definition, expect more money for the sale of their home. Sellers look for two things when they are selling their home: top dollar and security in the sale. Which would you rather give them?….”

Monika Kumar, a real estate agent and leader of RealtyGeeks Team – National Realty in Reston, Virginia said, “Looking at the market conditions, putting your house on the market by well preparing it to sell meanwhile browse the listings as well visit the areas and narrow down the location you may want to move. Once your house goes under contract with most contingencies removed at that point put a contract on your next home in your narrowed down area. NOW this is an ideal way to move when you have a house to sell.”

Glenda Cherry is a real estate agent with Avery-Hess in Fairfax County, Virginia said, ” I have clients who are in a similar situation – they have a house in a great school district, but their kids are grown so they want to move to a different type of community and don’t really care about the schools. After many discussions, we decided it would be best for them to wait until the spring to put their house on the market (it has incredible landscaping!) and start seriously looking once their home is under contract. In the meantime, we’ve been looking at homes in various communities – that way, they’ll already know which communities they prefer and will be able to closely target their home search when the time is right.”

Marty Jones is a real estate broker with Marty Jones Realty in Cashiers, North Carolina who said, “I would think one of the main considerations for your plan would be the mortgage amount of the home you currently own, and the debt, if any, you plan to incur on the second home.

If your current home takes a while to sell, is it financially feasible to pay both mortgages? If the answer to that question is yes, and it would not create a financial hardship, I would say take advantage of the current market conditions and go ahead and purchase in the desired school district. You might also consider renting the current home for a while to offset the mortgage.

If two mortgages would create a financial hardship, I would suggest waiting until your current home sells. You could sign a contingent sale contract, but if the first home doesn’t sell, and you can’t carry both mortgages, it will be an exercise in futility. It could also mean that you incur expenses related to the purchase, such as inspections, surveys, etc., that will be wasted.”

Theresa McSpedon is a real estate agent and Trulia Pro with Coldwell Banker in Stamford, Connecticut who said, “SELL, SELL, SELL, SELL FIRST.”

My Thoughts

Thanks to the Trulia Voices real estate community for providing such thoughtful answers for Jennifer. As many have pointed out, their are numerous scenarios that can dictate which steps you should take first. Because of this, there really is no one right answer, especially not knowing the details of her financial situation. We wish Jennifer and others in this situation all the best.

Trulia Testimonial – Arn Cenedella, Real Estate Pro in Menlo Park, CA

This week we’re featuring Arn Cenedella, a real estate agent and Trulia Pro in Menlo Park, CA  who has been in real estate since 1978.

Here’s what Arn had to say in response to the recent blog post by our CEO, Pete Flint: “Did we just pass the tipping point in online real estate?”

“My interactions and experience with Trulia have been fabulous.  I have always felt welcomed by Trulia – Trulia and I were never in competition.  Trulia wants to make the consumer experience the best it can possibly be and Trulia realizes real estate agents are an important part of the process.  I recognize that Trulia can help my business and it helps thousands of consumers.  I have been to Trulia’s office in SF as part of a realtor focus group and I felt their people were interested in what we had to say.  So congrats to Trulia – I feel we are partners.”

Arn, we understand it hasn’t always been an easy ride and we appreciate the faith you’ve put in Trulia to help support you. Thank you!

If President Barack Obama could help change or fix anything about housing what would it be?

Yesterday, I asked our Trulia Voices community to share their thoughts and ideas on how to improve housing in the world. We’ve received some good feedback already and are opening up the question to all. I’ll put together everyone’s comments and send them off to the President himself to make sure he hears your opinions.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Did we just pass the tipping point in online real estate?

When we started Trulia back in 2005, we had two big ideas that we thought could make Trulia into a successful business:

• The online real estate experience sucked and someone needed to fix it.
• Real estate advertisers wasted billions advertising offline that would be much better spent online.

For Trulia watchers, you know that we spend a lot of time and energy working to improve the online real estate experience and empower people with information and transparency. Over the last few years, the website experience has improved dramatically. However, we think that we’re  just at the very early stages of where we want the site to be and we will be adding in lots of improvements over the coming months and years. More great things to come.

When it comes to changes in advertising spend, there have been a couple of recent events that make me feel that we just passed the tipping point in moving a large portion of the advertising spend to more effective online media. Firstly, we’ve tracked dramatic changes in the real estate advertising shifts from offline classified ad spend to online. We all knew this was happening, as consumers went to sites like Trulia, but it is happening at a faster rate due to the recession. This past summer, the LA Times canceled its Sunday Real Estate section and now the prospect of the elimination of the offline edition of a major print newspaper like the Seattle PI announced two weeks ago, will accelerate and permanently change how real estate is marketed. There will certainly be less physical newspapers in a few years time to advertise in!

The second big event announced that was announced last week was that Century 21 was stopping their TV ads in favor of online ads. Beverly Thorne, senior VP-marketing, Century 21, said in years past the company has spent up to half of its advertising budget on creative for TV, but a majority of that money will be redirected to its online efforts in 2009. She said the ability to target a consumer interested in making a purchase in the near term using an assortment of tactics has a lot of appeal. While others (including Century 21) have moved budgets to online channels steadily over the last few years, the public change announcement of their shift in strategy surely marks a fundamental change in our Industry. During 2008 we have quickly scaled to more than 100 large corporate advertising clients, mostly prominent broker and franchisor organizations, many of whom were just learning the basics of listing syndication in 2007. More than 80% of consumers searching the web for real estate information and millions and millions of visitors to sites like Trulia.com every month. With a range of cost effective real estate marketing solutions we think that one of our big ideas is very quickly becoming true.

While there are not that many bright spots in the economy right now these fundamental changes in how the real estate industry manages and markets their services, will serve its franchisors, brokers, agents and their customers extremely well as the market starts to recover.

Come on Down and Ride the Mortgage Roller Coaster!

It seems like the media coverage of mortgage activity is saying something different every week!  Today’s major headlines included: Mortgage rates drop to a record low, Mortgage applications surge, yet contrasting headlines discussed slowdowns such as Mortgage applications dipped as consumers awaited Fed just a few days prior.  With so many ups and downs in the assessment of the mortgage market, what should a homeowner do?

Buy? Sell? Refinance?

Thinking about all the options is enough to make you sick to your stomach!

Here are a few simple tips to help clear the confusion:

Should I Buy?

Interest rates are most certainly at historical lows.   Coupled with slumping home prices in many market,  for a home buyer who’s in the market and ready to acquire a home.  Assess your financial scenario and plan your home purchase logically,  responsibly, and please seek professional advice from a Realtor, Financial Advisor, or Loan Officer (all of which can be found in our Top Voices Area).  Don’t forget to consult your friends & family before making a big decision.  But in my opinion, all signs point to some great deals in the market right now!

Should I Sell?

With rates at the current levels, it makes homes more affordable for someone who can qualify for a property.  This means more people can potentially purchase your home, thus making the task of selling your home just a little bit easier and hopefully letting you keep your asking price at a level you believe it should be (with the right research of course).  When most people sell a home, it typically means they will be buying a new home, and again the signs point to great deals in the market right now.

Should I Refinance?

Not looking to start packing boxes anytime soon?  No worries, the low rates have created a great opportunity to further solidify nesting grounds with a lower monthly payment, often with little or no out of pocket expense!  But do your homework, there are thousands of mortgage lenders out there, and it can be tough to find the right one.  Start with your friends and family, someone who’s had great service and a good deal recently.  It’s important that the transaction was recent, because many loan officers change brokerages often, meaning processes and investor relationships may change, which could affect the experience as a whole.

 Here are some quick tips to compare mortgage quotes:

1.  Looking at your Good Faith Estimate, compare the 800 section (these are the fees directly associated with the lender) and the interest rate on the loan of each lender. These are the two primary sections that a lender controls, the rest are third party fees (title, insurance, taxes) that will most likely be the same regardless of which lender you use.  Just total the fees, and compare the rates side by side, this will give the best way to compare.

2.  Make sure every lender you speak to has a full understanding of your financial scenario; many factors can affect fees and rates drastically.  Things like being self employed vs. salaried, where your down payment is coming from, and your debt CAN really make a rate quote change.  Be thorough and complete when supplying your information as this will help avoid any unwanted surprises.

3. Get it in writing! An honorable mortgage lender WILL guarantee an interest rate and their fees (sometimes subject to specific conditions), and they will do so in writing.  Ask for it, especially in the beginning of the process so there is no confusion as to what you’re getting and how much it will cost.  Don’t confuse a good faith estimate as a guarantee, the title itself says “ESTIMATE” and thus is not a binding document.  However a written “rate lock agreement” or similar document that states clearly that an interest rate has been secured is a better way of assuring the deal is legitimate.

As always I recommend consulting experts in the industry when making a decision as large as this, most often the biggest transaction of your life.  There are many VERY good and reputable people in the industry, many of which use our Trulia Voices platform to help thousands of people every day, if you ever have a question just ask! When making a decision on your home, all we ask is be cautious, be careful, and be smart!

Trulia Testimonial – David Childress, Realtor- Howard Hanna- Akron, Ohio

This week we’re featuring David Childress, who is a Real Estate Pro in Akron, Ohio.

Here’s a recent comment from David:

“As a regular user of Trulia I was waiting for an opportunity (or a closing) to try out Pro. I have had several leads due to Trulia Voices, it works.”

It’s great hearing about your leads.  Thanks for the note of positivity David and keep up the great work!

Employee Happiness can be Reduced to a Single Number…No?

I’m a sucker for statistics. Typically anything that can be reduced to numbers, dashboards or charts, will do. How about weekly running distance for the past six years? Sure, I have a spreadsheet and chart for that. Distance scale omitted on purpose.

Given both of the Trulia founders have strong backgrounds in Physics, it may not come as a surprise that we have the entire Trulia business modeled as a dashboard on a single Excel spreadsheet. Each metric is updated at least on a daily basis and shared openly with key stakeholders, so that we can quickly react to changes and adjust the business levers behind every core metric. Sometimes these adjustments are subtle design changes on our web site, investments on our customer service or – even menu upgrades to our free Friday lunches.

Employee happiness dashboard – Really?

We typically have a small group lunch with all new employees and one of the questions I often ask is “What is different at Trulia? What can we do better?” Erika, offered an eye-opening response yesterday: “During my career, I’ve never worked for a company that surveys and listens to all the employees on a regular basis, not to mention shares all the results with the entire company in an all-hands meeting.”

I thought that – tuning into employee happiness – was what every respectable organization does in a professional environment, where the most valuable assets of the company walk out the door every evening (sometimes in the morning). We even have fresh new Harvard University backed research proving that happiness is actually contagious between people.

So what is it that we survey and Erica found so valuable? We started asking specific questions about employee happiness and motivation levels, among many other things, quickly after launching the company in 2005. Below is the “Pulse check” for two specific questions from August 2005 until November 2008. Please note that five (5.0) is the maximum level and one (1.0) is the lowest possible score. This chart is limited to 3-5 scale to show some detail in the result variation.

A few interesting observations about the results:

-    Overall we have had very high “happiness” scores throughout our company life, about 4.25 on a 1 to 5 scale, which is especially impressive considering we have grown rapidly from just 4 people to about 85 today as well as moved offices three times during this period
-    For the first few months we were only 5 or so people and when just one of the team members had a bad/superb day or week, the entire pulse results bounced like the Dow Jones in the past few weeks
-    We’ve also noticed some annual cyclicality tied into summer time, all company off-site event and holiday season
-    Our team reacted into the overall economic downturn and dozens of other (online) media companies’ aggressive lay-offs; after we announced that we would not do lay-offs, but continue hiring selectively, the index bounced back again (last month)

While we may not be able to reduce the secret of happiness to a single number (and hopefully never will!), we have found that these anonymous surveys are an invaluable tool in adjusting and improving our culture, as well as other company practices to stay on the right growth track!

How’s your daily happiness and excitement level when you walk into your office? If you’re looking for something, possibly greener grass, check out our jobs page.

It’s Raining Points – Trulia Rewards Program

Got Points on Active Rain?

Hello Rainers! Have you accumlulated a significant amount points by your participation on Active Rain? Have you been wondering if you could ever use them for something? Well, today is the day. Trulia, in collaboration with Active Rain, is announcing It’s Raining Points -  a new Trulia Rewards Program where you can get cash for your Active Rain Points. [ends 1/23/09]

So How Does It Work?

We have 3 levels of rewards:

Now you can apply your Active Rain Points for cash usable towards an annual Trulia Pro subscription. We won’t actually take your points from you, or deliver you greenbacks, rather, you’ll get a sweet Trulia Pro reward for all your hard work. Great job! If you’re not ready for an annual subscription and have more than 1,000 points, you can try Trulia Pro first for one month free.

Where Do I Accept My Reward?

Simply visit rainingpoints.com and fill out the rewards form. Once we confirm your status, we will send you a one-time use coupon to redeem Active Rain points for Trulia Pro. Congrats Rainers!

Thanks to the Active Rain for collaborating with us….

Update:

The first 20 Rainers that get their rewards will also get a Free Raining Points T-Shirt