Local Ratings and Reviews Launch

Hi there!   I’m Brandon, and I’m a new product manager at Trulia.  I recently joined the team, and look forward to contributing to making the consumer experience great for home buyers, sellers, and renters.  As you may have heard, since we launched our new rental platform, we have been hard at work to address a feature that many Trulia users have asked for.  More local data!

For a long time Trulia has been providing school information, crime statistics, and market trends for local areas in an effort to help our buyers research neighborhoods they live in, or may want to live in.  Three weeks ago, we added local area ratings as yet another tool in this arsenal.  The response has been overwhelming, with over 140,000 ratings submitted since that time.  The cities with most ratings to date are:

• Chicago, IL : 2,052 ratings
• Philadelphia, PA:  1,754 ratings
• San Francisco, CA:  1,034 ratings
• Los Angeles, CA: 974 ratings
• Brooklyn, NY:  942 ratings

This week, I’m pleased to announce the launch of another great addition to our local area content:  Local area reviews.

To submit a local area review, click the rate and review button on the main property page, or on the maps and nearby tab.  From the there you can:

• Provide an overall rating
• Rate by category
• Recommend the area
• Specify how you know the area
• Review the area

Be sure to tell us about the surrounding area, be it the neighborhood, sub-neighborhood, or actual block.  The more local your knowledge, the more helpful it will be to another person!  Do you live on the coolest block in your city?  Tell us about it.  Does your neighborhood have the best restaurants and stores?  We want to know.  Over time we will be able to showcase the Trulia community’s aggregated local area ratings, and reviews for every neighborhood and every block!

As an added bonus, we’ve added reviews as an element of our VIP program.  And, for all you mobile users, be sure to try out local ratings on your mobile phone as well.  You can read more about our other newly launched mobile features in Rob’s blog post from last week.

Happy rating and reviewing everyone!

-Brandon

Trulia’s VP of Marketing Heather Fernandez on CNBC: The Search for a New Home

Great job by Trulia’s VP of Marketing Heather Fernandez as she provides insights into Trulia’s housing market search trends on CNBC today.

Highlights:

• Home Buyer and Seller Search Trends: Our data is a forward looking indicator as to home buyer and seller sentiment
• We looked at 250 Largest cities in the US
• Biggest losers: Sales Prices flat, transactions and searches down
- Elk Grove, CA
- Tracy, CA
- Moreno Valley, CA
- Stockton, CA
- Palmdale, CA
• California and Florida suffered the greatest earliest hits due to foreclosures
• Long road to recovery in these markets
• 3 out of 4 homes on the market are in foreclosure
• Nationwide:
- 1 in every 3 homeowners is potentially underwater
- 1 in every 4transactions is a distressed transaction
• Biggest increase in searches:
- Milwaukee Wisconson
- Frisco, Texas
- Ocala, Florida
- Albuquerque, New Mexico
- Malibu, California

How is your market doing in comparison to those named above?

Local Ads testimonial – Chris Keller, agent in San Diego, CA

Last week, one of our Trulia team members received a great testimonial from Chris Keller, agent in San Diego, CA.

Here are some neat things Chris had to say about our NEW! Local Ads product:

“I started using [a competitor's advertisement] about 1 month ago. I thought the results were very good until I joined Trulia’s Local Ad program a couple weeks ago! Not only do I receive almost twice as many hits from Trulia, the ad is larger (which gives me more room for verbiage) and the cost is around 20% less.

The hits are verifiable using Google’s analytics program. Our Trulia ad lands the potential buyer on a web page within our website dedicated to the area they are searching.

I also noticed that on Trulia you can hit the “next” button and proceed to the next listing. On [a competitor's site] you have to return to the “search results” every time you want to view the next property in your search. It makes me wonder how many people are exiting out of their site due to awkwardness of their search program.”

Here’s his ad:

This is an awesome testimonial Chris. Thanks so much for sharing! If you have feedback to share, please email us at pr@trulia.com.

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!

Trulia’s January Price Reduction Report – New Year, New Lows $21.2 Billion Cut

photo credit: jared

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

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.

Trulia on CNBC – Price Reductions, Bernie Madoff and Toll Brothers

CNBC’S Diana Olick talks about Trulia’s price reductions, Bernie Madoff’s price reduction of $1,000,000 from $9,900,000 to $8,900,000 located at 133 East 64th St New York NY 10065 as seen on Trulia and Toll Brothers news of Q4 orders jumping 42% from a year ago.

Senate and House Approve Tax Credit Extension

Here are the details of the tax credit extension/expansion that the House and Senate have passed (HR 3548)

• First-timers: Extend the $8,000 homebuyer tax credit to contracts signed by April 30 and closed by June 30. Previously was set to expire after Nov. 30. First-time homebuyer is defined as someone who has not owned a residence within the past three years.

• Existing owners: $6,500 credit for those who buy a home after living in their current house at least five of the last eight years.

• Extension: Contracts signed by April 30 and closed by June 30.

• Home requirement: principal residences priced at $800,000 or less.

• Income limits: Single $75K –>$125,000, Joint $150K–>$225,000 for joint filers.

• Cost: $10.8 billion over 10 years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

The final step is el Presidente’s John Hancock on the bill, which the White House says will come tomorrow.  Stay tuned…

Extend the home buyer tax credit

There are a number of strong opinions on the extension of the $8K first time home buyer tax credit. Ultimately, the debate is about whether or not it is creating long term value for the economy, versus a short term artificial prop up for home prices.  In my view, and the view of many on Trulia Voices, it’s a logical step in bringing long term stability into the market.

Given the fluid nature of Congress, who knows what the final proposal that hits the Senate–>House–>Obama’s desk will look like.  But today’s Reid/Baucus plan which includes an extension of $8K credit to the end of 2010, with a $2K/quarter phase out starting March 2010 seems to make the most sense.

Here’s why:

1) Stability - there is little debate on whether the tax credit has been successful in spurring sales and contributing to what looks like a stabilization in home prices nationally.  Real estate was the first plank in the stool to fall with this economic downturn, and it will take a real estate recovery to stabilize the overall market.   This bodes well for the economy.

2) Foreclosures - the glut of foreclosures across the country has driven down home values across communities.  These are trashed homes that are now being purchased for cash by investors, updated, and ultimately sold to first-time home buyers.  We all know the negative externalities like vandalism and crime are tremendous and the only thing that will reverse this trend is home buyers invested in these homes and communities to bring values back.

3) Consumption - Trulia conducted a study last year which showed that consumers on average, spend $30K within the first six-months of their home purchase.  New homeowners buy furniture, paint, rugs, lawnmowers, hot water heaters, kitchen appliances and tiles, etc.  This spending contributes to stimulating the economy and ultimately job creation around the whole ecosystem of housing.

But government actions are always paired with warning:

- Let’s phase out the tax credit, and not stop it cold turkey.  Lessening the dependency on the tax credit will help avoid a major drop in prices.  The economy is generally on a recovery path – over a long enough period of time, withdrawal of the tax credit will be countered with increased spending power from the individual and decreased unemployment.

- Congress needs to be wary of too aggressively expanding the program.  What we don’t want to see is a drop off, like we did with the cash for clunkers program — where people who were planning to buy a car rushed to jump in and take advantage of the stimulus, then promptly dropped off leaving sales where they were before the program began.

- Now that the tax credit can be used for down payments, 1st time home buyers should not be tempted to buy a house beyond their means.  That would only put us back into what caused this mess to begin with.

What do you think?

Trulia CEO Pete Flint on CNBC – Report Card on Home Prices

Trulia’s CEO Pete Flint was on CNBC recently with Diana Olick talking about where housing prices are heading this fall. According to Pete, home prices have started to stabilize over the last couple of months. But some big questions remain: What will happen when the $8,000 first time home buyer tax credit expires at the end of November? Will interest rates remain low? How will the the high level of unemployment effect the fall home buying and selling season?

Good interview Pete!