Listen to Trulia’s Real Estate of the Union Industry Call
Trulia hosted a “Real Estate State of the Union” conference call today that revealed results from a recent survey on consumer sentiment with regard to how President Obama has handled the housing crisis in his first year in office. Also discussed are the most important next steps he can take to solve the housing crisis in 2010 and whether Americans believe homeownership is still a part of the “America Dream”. The discussion was hosted by Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia, Jonathan Miller, President and CEO of Miller Samuel, and Howard Glaser, Principal of The Glaser Group.
Key data points and quotes from the panel of real estate industry experts are included below, as well as the press release discussing the survey results.
Survey Data Points:
The survey found that 37% of Americans gave President Obama a grade of “D” or “F” compared to only 22% from a survey conducted in February 2009 after President Obama’s first 30 days in office. Additionally, 54% gave him a grade of “A” or “B” in February 2009 compared to only 37% in January 2010.
Despite these lower grades, and the troubles that have continued to plague the U.S. housing market, the survey found that the “American Dream” of homeownership continues to be alive and well with more than three out of four (76%) Americans considering owning a home as a part of achieving their personal American dream.
Democrats and Republicans agree on the areas President Obama needs to focus on in 2010 to stabilize the U.S. real estate market. Creating jobs and job security continues to be at the top of the list with 62% of respondents referencing it as a key priority.
Real Estate Industry Expert Quotes:
“One thing is certain, there is no easy fix and we have a long road ahead until we see a healthy real estate market. I’ve said before and I will say it again, we will continue to see lots of volatility in the housing market through 2010.” -Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia
“Americans feel President Obama has fallen short on his promise to bring stability to the US Housing Market after his first year as President.” -Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia
“I absolutely agree that job creation and job security has to be the #1 priority of President Obama.” -Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia
“I also agree with consumers that reducing the number of foreclosures has to be a primary focus for the President and his administration. Growing foreclosures is a trend that absolutely needs to be reversed.” -Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia
“The Obama administration’s actions, and actions that were taken prior to the administration taking over, have not given the housing market the ability to be self-sustaining… We still have a housing market that is still heavily dependent on government help, and I think the primary solution in a very general sense has to be on job creation.”-Jonathan Miller, President and CEO of Miller Samuel
“I’m not suggesting that we go back to where we were a few years ago but when you think of a financial institution at the current time and they’re looking at balance sheet pressures for capitalization, they’re looking at declining housing prices, elevated unemployment at a rate that’s double what it was just two years ago and increased layoffs. They’re really only interested, in the general terms, in very clean, vanilla-type lending products.” -Jonathan Miller, President and CEO of Miller Samuel
“The only way to ease the situation is to create an environment where you have a lot more employment and that is something the administration hasn’t been able to accomplish over the last year.” -Jonathan Miller, President and CEO of Miller Samuel
“The biggest challenge that is ahead of us and no one is even talking about is the exit strategy for the housing sector from this dramatic federal involvement.” -Howard Glaser, Principal of The Glaser Group
“We’ve seen that unwinding begin in some of the other federal support bailout programs, such as the TARP money to banks, etc., but not so much on the housing side because we need to be in there right now. No one wants to talk about how you unwind Fannie and Freddie Mac and these other interventions.” - Howard Glaser, Principal of The Glaser Group
5 commentsTrulia, President Obama and the Real Estate of the Union
photo credit: hiddedevries
On Tuesday January 26th 2010, Trulia’s CEO Pete Flint will be hosting an industry call discussing how President Obama did in his first year in regards to turning around the housing crisis. Pete will be joined by real estate experts and pundits Jonathan Miller, President and CEO of Miller Samuel and Howard Glaser, Principal of The Glaser Group.
We’ll share some results from a recent study that asked consumers to grade how President Obama did in his first year and what steps they thought President Obama should take in 2010 to improve the housing crisis. Additionally, we’ll discuss if consumers still feel that home ownership is part of the American dream and whether or not they are enthusiastic about homeownership.
Last year, we asked consumers if homeownership was part of their American Dream:
Furthermore, to get a pulse from our very own real estate community of home buyers, home sellers and real estate professionals on Trulia, Pete asked our community to share their thoughts on how they felt President Obama handled the Housing crisis in 2009:
At the time of this screen capture, 248 people shared their thoughts. Many of which were extremely passionate.
Pete also replied to the community and encouraged more great feedback as he will quotes some of the people’s comments in the call:
Here are some of the comments Pete highlighted in his reply:
A broker from Florida responded: “Handled” the housing crisis… I think ignored might be a better statement. He’s an incredible orator and an even better actor. Take away the teleprompter and the scripts and he’s useless. The grade: an F.”
A homebuyer from Michigan said: “If you look at what really put us in this mess was several years of the “same ole same ole.” Obama was handed such a mess that no one person, or no single solution, could ever fix it in a reasonable time frame. Sure Obama did make a few mistakes, but he did come up with some programs that at least kept us out of going down the same direction and at least tried to level things off.”
An Agent from Washington: “Obama’s grade is a solid C. He has the Federal Reserve buying mortgage backed securities to hold down interest rates. He has extended the Tax credit for buyer’s and both have helped keep the Housing industry from sinking further than it already has. His keeping homeowners in their home program has been a huge failure.”
A home buyer from Santa Barbara, CA says “his policies have had some success in addressing the growing problem of falling home prices, and stemming foreclosures, all of which will satisfy some of the demands of the industry. However, the fundamentals of the economy remain vulnerable. The extent to which he has been successful in addressing the problem of the economy as a whole, need to be viewed not only in the context of the scale of the problem, but also within a realistic time frame, and one year would seem too short a time frame to pass harsh judgement.”
If you would like to listen to the call and chat LIVE, please click here on Tuesday at 12:30 pm PST……or, just watch LIVE below.
2 comments
Lock up your local market! Introducing Trulia Local Ads
Today we’re excited to announce our new hyper-local advertising platform, Trulia Local Ads. Local Ads completely open up the ad market on Trulia, making it affordable for real estate professionals and businesses of all sizes to own a slice of their local market. What does a slice of your local market look like? It’s an easy way of directly targeting audiences at the city or even ZIP code level, reaching the local customers who matter to you most.
We understand that your local market may be a crowded space. Local Ads make it simple to outshine the competition by grabbing the attention of local buyers and sellers. In each city and ZIP code, there is a limited amount of advertising inventory, so when you lock up a large share of ad space, you lock out your competition. It’s a snap to activate your Local Ads campaigns. Just select a few locations and use sliders to purchase the slice of your local market that meets your budget. Ads targeted by ZIP code will show up on listings pages, while ads targeted by city show up in search results.
We’ve spent a lot of time making Trulia Local Ads campaigns fast and easy to create. When you build your Local Ads campaign, you can select from default ad templates that dynamically update using your Trulia listing data or profile information. These ads are generously larger than competing services and perform 5 times better than the industry average for banner ads. If you’ve previously built your own advertising creative for campaigns elsewhere online, Local Ads allows you to simply upload your own custom image.
For now, Trulia Local Ads is in limited release and only available to our Trulia Pro subscribers. Update: Trulia Local Ads are now available to every Real Estate Professional!
8 commentsTrulia at Inman Connect NYC 2010 – ICNY, REBCNYC and RainCamp
This week, Trulia will be in New York City attending a number of real estate events including the 2010 Inman Real Estate Connect real estate conference, RebarCamp – REBCNYC and RainCamp. It will be a week of networking, learning, sharing and education.
We’ll have the following Trulians in attendance:
Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia
Twitter: @Peteflint
Speaking: Main Conference Program at Inman
Date: Wednesday January 13th
Time: 4:05 pm
Panel: Debate – Views, clicks, leads or social engagement? What matters and who in online real estate can actually deliver value? Two brokers and two online execs square off.
- Pete Flint, CEO, Trulia
- Michael Montsko, President, Weichert Lead Network
- Spencer Rascoff, COO, Zillow.com
- John Reinhardt, President, Fillmore Real Estate
Pierre Calzadilla, Manager Industry Relations
Twitter: @NYPierre
Speaking: ReBarcamp and attending Raincamp
Ninve Adams, Manager Strategic Partnerships
Mark Weiss, Director of Business Development
It will be a busy week of meetings, sessions and conversations, something we’re all looking forward to. So whether we’re meeting for the 1st time or re-connecting, we’d love to talk to you. If you see one of us, please say Hello and we’ll do the same. Have a great week everyone.
0 commentsTrulia at Inman Connect NYC 2010 – ICNY, REBCNYC and RainCamp
This week, Trulia will be in New York City attending a number of real estate events including the 2010 Inman Real Estate Connect real estate conference, RebarCamp – REBCNYC and RainCamp. It will be a week of networking, learning, sharing and education.
We’ll have the following Trulians in attendance:
Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia
Twitter: @Peteflint
Speaking: Main Conference Program at Inman
Date: Wednesday January 13th
Time: 4:05 pm
Panel: Debate – Views, clicks, leads or social engagement? What matters and who in online real estate can actually deliver value? Two brokers and two online execs square off.
- Pete Flint, CEO, Trulia
- Michael Montsko, President, Weichert Lead Network
- Spencer Rascoff, COO, Zillow.com
- John Reinhardt, President, Fillmore Real Estate
Pierre Calzadilla, Manager Industry Relations
Twitter: @NYPierre
Speaking: ReBarcamp and attending Raincamp
Ninve Adams, Manager Strategic Partnerships
Mark Weiss, Director of Business Development
It will be a busy week of meetings, sessions and conversations, something we’re all looking forward to. So whether we’re meeting for the 1st time or re-connecting, we’d love to talk to you. If you see one of us, please say Hello and we’ll do the same. Have a great week everyone.
0 commentsTrulia’s January Price Reduction Report – New Year, New Lows $21.2 Billion Cut
Our January home price reduction report shows 21% of U.S. homes as of January 1, 2010 have experienced at least 1 price cut of their original asking price during the last 12 months. The total amount slashed off of active for sale listings by home sellers is $21.2 billion. The average national price reduction remains 11%. It’s the second straight month where inventory levels have dropped for single family homes and condos across the United States.
South Continues With Least Amount of Homes Reduced
The South has the lowest overall level of price reductions, with 20 percent of current listings experiencing at least one price cut, while the Northeast saw the biggest decrease in price reductions compared to the previous month — 12 percent. (Regions according to the U.S. Census Bureau)
- South- 20% of listings with price reductions
- West- 22% of listings with price reductions
- Midwest- 22% of listings with price reductions
- Northeast- 22% of listings with price reductions
“Consumers have a golden window of opportunity to find a great home and take advantage of the tax credit before mortgage rates start to rise,” said Pete Flint, Trulia co-founder and CEO. “Historically low interest rates currently available and tax credit incentives are the ultimate price reductions for home buyers. As rates rise throughout the course of the year, buyers will need to adjust their purchase price ceiling.”
The number of major U.S. cities with price reduction levels at 30 percent was cut by 50 percent in January. In December, 14 major cities saw a reduction of 30 percent or greater and that number has been reduced to just seven cities in January. Additionally, Minneapolis, which has the held the top spot for the past two months, experienced a 33 percent decrease compared to the previous month. Cities experiencing the largest decreases in percentage of listings with price reductionscompared to the previous month include:
- Los Angeles, CA – 46% decrease in price reductions
- New York, NY – 36% decrease in price reductions
- Memphis, TN – 34% decrease in price reductions
- Minneapolis, MN – 33% decrease in price reductions
- Honolulu, HI – 33% decrease in price reductions
Luxury Market Still Hardest Hit
Luxury homes (those listed at $2 million and above) continue to be hit the hardest by price reductions with the average discount rising to 15 percent for the first time since Trulia started tracking in April 2009. Additionally, luxury homes represent less than two percent of all current listings on Trulia, but are responsible for 24 percent of the $21.2 billion in home price reductions. The average discount for homes priced less than $2 million continues to hold at 10 percent.
January 2010 Price Reductions – Top 50 U.S. Cities
For more info on Trulia’s national home price reduction report, please visit our press release in the Trulia News Room
2 comments
More Features for Trulia’s Mobile Website
For you Trulia users who like to surf the web on your mobile phone, starting today you can now access more of Trulia on our mobile website. Get information on the schools in your local area, find great local real estate professionals in our Find a Pro directory, and browse Trulia’s blogs and real estate guides for advice and guidance about the real estate process. If you have a your own blog on Trulia, you can now edit your blog and create new blog posts on your mobile phone.
These features come on top of the first mobile website launch in December that allows you to find homes for sale, detailed property information (including big, color photos) and advice from the Trulia user community in our Advice section.
To see the new Trulia mobile website, just go to trulia.com on your mobile phone or m.trulia.com.
1 comment2009 Flashback: Pete Flint and Sami Inkinen Named to Inman’s 100 Most Influential Leaders of 2009
As we looked back at last year in yesterday’s 2009 Trulia Momentum Report, you could see that we had reached some pretty significant milestones. These product and website enhancements helped us improve the user experience on Trulia which in turn helped fuel our phenomenal growth within the real estate industry. It also helped us win the 2009 Webby Award for Real Estate, which our team took great pride in receiving.What was not mentioned, and what we consider to be the backbone of our company growth and culture, is our people.
The reason a company is successful is because of it’s people. And it all starts from the top. Leading Trulia, we are very lucky to have two very passionate, savvy and visionary people leading our team – Pete Flint and Sami Inkinen. Not only do all of us Trulians think they are great leaders but it turns out that Inman News does too. They were named to Inman’s list of 100 Most Influential Leaders in Real Estate, again. Well deserved. Congrats guys!
According to the report:
“Inman News has compiled the latest annual list of the 100 most influential people in real estate. This list reflects the industry’s best and brightest, who have risen to the challenge posed by a battered economy and housing hardships on an immense scale. The list includes those individuals from outside of the real estate industry whose actions influence the business of buying and selling homes. The people on this list embody leadership, innovation, ingenuity, power and persistence.”
So getting back to our people. Without great leadership, a ship can sink. We have many everyday heroes at Trulia that the public never get’s to meet or hear about. In 2010, we’ll change that. I look forward to spotlighting our team in the upcoming year. Onward!
Bonus:
Trulia also picked up an award for Best US Website of 2009 from Metrixlab. Thanks guys and congrats team!
0 commentsTrulia’s 2009 Momentum: Smarter Search and Personalization Leads to Outstanding Growth
2009 was a great year for Trulia. We focused on providing our users with the most relevant and consumer centric experience. As a result, Trulia grew to become one of the Top 5 Real Estate sites on the web according to Hitwise Rankings (November 2009). Last year was our largest ever with a total of 62.3 million unique visitors searching for homes, market insights and participating on Trulia Voices.
During the past year, millions of consumers came to Trulia to make sense of the real estate market, spending more time than ever looking at properties and price trend information. Consumer engagement reached record levels: visits grew by more than 45%, total page views grew by 105% and property views grew by more than 130%, according to internal data. On Trulia Voices, consumer questions doubled year over year. Along with increased engagement on Trulia, consumer interest in homes exploded, with nearly 1 million home buyer inquiries sent to real estate agents in 2009.
In 2009, Trulia focused on four key areas for product innovation and enhancements: smarter search, personalization, rich property and local data, and mobile. Here is a recap of the key initiatives and highlights from the past 12 months.
SMARTER SEARCH
Price Reduction
A search tool that allows home buyers, sellers, agents, investors and real estate junkies to search for price reductions on Trulia. Users have the ability to receive real-time email updates when homes in their search area have been reduced, or filter their search by the percentage reduced or date of the price reduction.
Allows consumers to compare up to five different properties side-by-side. Users can see all the key attributes of each listing and then eliminate the properties they don’t like and save the ones they do like for future reference. Users can compare key attributes, like price per square foot to the size of the lot, and make educated decisions on what property suits them best.
PERSONALIZATION
MyTrulia
Significant enhancements have been added to MyTrulia to make home searches more relevant for every individual home buyer. From saved searches to email alerts, Trulia will immediately notify users if a property they are interested in changes price or is sold. If a similar property comes on the market, Trulia will also notify users of the new home. Trulia also introduced “checklist” to help keep track of all things related to your home buying process and helps you make sense of the entire process.
Local Newsfeed
Trulia’s homepage provides consumers with a snapshot of activity in the neighborhoods they are most interested in tracking with a quick-glance. When a user comes to Trulia, the homepage is updated with price reductions, upcoming open houses, new homes on the market and market data such as average list prices, sales data, foreclosure information and more – only in the areas relevant to that user.
RICH PROPERTY DATA AND DETAILS
Home Price History & Data – Trulia’s product detail pages now includes each home’s price history, including sold transactions, listing prices and price reductions. Trulia also added school information and rankings, crime data and competitive mortgage offerings; with a click of a button you can also see all the restaurants, grocery stores, banks and gas stations nearby any individual home.
Neighborhood Coverage – Trulia increased its neighborhood coverage by more than 300%. The expanded coverage improves property search and map displays to help consumers search for and compare neighborhoods, view and track neighborhood market trends, receive advice from local market experts through blogs and Q&A, and find local real estate professionals.
iPhone and iPod touch – The updated Trulia application offers more than 3.5 million homes for sale and has been downloaded more than 300,000 times by real estate enthusiasts, engaged buyers and sellers, and real estate agents.
The update adds significant new features:
• Dynamic Maps – Visual searchers can toggle the map to find homes in areas they most desire. Once the area is defined in the map, a new set of homes that match their criteria is delivered.
• Price Reduction Search –With a touch of a button, users can now search for all price reduced homes in their area.
• Bigger, Unlimited Pictures – Taking advantage of the fantastic screens on the iPhone and iPod touch, the bigger photos provide searchers with a realistic view of the property.
Augmented Reality Browser Integration
Trulia has integrated with the Layar Mobile Augmented Reality Browser to overlay listings on top of the mobile phone’s camera view. The app allows you to scan all the properties available around you while you look at the actual buildings through your screen.
Trulia for all smartphones – Trulia has also launched a mobile version of its web site, m.trulia.com, which delivers all the power and functionality of the web site in a format optimized for mobile handsets. The mobile web site works on all mobile handsets from the Blackberry to the Plam Pre and all devices with a web browser, including the iPhone and iPod touch. Users can search homes for sale, view extensive property details, find price reductions or upcoming open houses, utilize their MyTrulia account, and the Trulia Voices community.
“We dedicated 2009 to delivering a great consumer experience. Looking back on the engagement data makes me believe we are delivering on what the consumer wants. Consumers have told us over and over that they are looking for a real estate site that can deliver relevant and personalized results,” said Pete Flint, CEO and co-founder Trulia.com. “Mobile and local information will be two areas of focus for the coming year. The world is becoming more mobile and real estate information on the go is a very natural combination. On the weekends, 5 to 10 percent of our overall traffic comes from mobile handsets. Deep local information, data and insights is also key to consumers interested in real estate and we will introduce more data and local knowledge during the next year.”
3 commentsHow to Crushit in 2010 using Social Media – Trulia Podcast with Gary Vaynerchuk – @garyvee – 1/11/10
Are you ready to Crush It in 2010?
Update 2:
The podcast is back on!
Date: 1/15/10
Time: 1pm EST
Please register below.
Update:
Today’s Trulia Social Media Podcast with Garyvee was postponed due to mother nature. Garyvee’s sister was giving birth and Gary went over to the hospital with the rest of the family to be a part of it. We wish Gary, his sister and their family all the best and will reschedule the podcast soon.
If you registered for the podcast already, we will send you the updated date and time for the podcast. If you haven’t registered, please do so below.
The new year is upon us and everyone is looking for a fresh start. Resolutions have been made. Business and marketing plans have been tweaked. Many are starting with a clean slate altogether. But how many will follow through? How many will see results?
Trulia wants to help our ever growing Trulia Voices real estate community of over 400,000 real estate professionals start off on the right foot when it comes to integrating social media into their 2010 business plans. We invite everyone to join us for a LIVE podcast with Gary Vaynerchuk, a.k.a. @garyvee, author of the best selling book Crush It! who has grown his business from $4M a year to over $50M by using technology and social media. We’ll talk about Social Media strategies and etiquette that can help grow your business and sphere of influence in 2010.
Date: January 11th, 2010
Time: 3pm EST
Register for Trulia’s LIVE Social Media Podcast
If you plan on attending, please visit our Trulia Facebook event page too. Have questions you want me to ask Gary? Are you crushing it already? Just leave them in a comment below or on our Trulia Facebook page.
Gary wants to know:
Which social media strategy worked the best and/or the worst for you in 2009? Please let us know so we can address them and help you out as much as possible to crush the competition!
Register for Trulia’s LIVE Social Media Podcast
Get social with us.
