Today we are excited to announce that Trulia’s top-rated iPad app has received a major overhaul. We listened to feedback from our users and incorporated user behavior data from our updated iPhone app to identify which features users love and interact with the most. Combined with our intuitive, user-friendly design, Trulia has created an even more visual and engaging way for home buyers to search for properties and get the inside scoop on neighborhoods.
The market is heating up, and 75% of people we recently surveyed think that it’s better to buy a home now than a year from now. With that in mind, we’re revamping the iPad experience to give users the tools they need to find their perfect place to live.
Let’s dig into the details on what’s new!
Updated listing pages – The listing pages for each property have been beautifully updated to showcase large HD photos, as well as thumbnails for quick scrolling. Users can also interact with photos in the full screen photo gallery by pinching and zooming to see more or less.
Other new features include:
Navigation menu – The new menu is simplified and streamlined, allowing users to easily search for properties for sale or rent, view their favorite homes, find saved searches, see open houses, and more.
Color-coded map markers – Utilizing colored markers, users can easily distinguish the newest properties for sale: Green represents unviewed homes that have just come on the market, black is used for all other unviewed homes, while a grey marker denotes properties that have already been seen.
Nearby map and local info, including median price and school ratings, displayed directly on the property pages – This information was previously only on the property results map. Now, each individual listing page gives users more of the inside scoop on properties and neighborhoods.
My Saves section - Prior to the update, this feature was split between the results map and search filters. Now, users view their favorite properties and saved searches all in one place that’s easily accessible from the new navigation menu.
You can download the new iPad app here. User feedback is important to us, so let us know what you think of the app by emailing ipad@trulia.com.
You could just use your phone to find open houses this Nationwide Open House Weekend, but why stop there? You could use it to win an extra $50 – just by tweeting photos of any open houses you visit this weekend to #TruliaOpenHouse. Every photo you tweet gives you a chance to win one of five $50 Visa gift cards.
Entering to win is easy and takes seconds:
1. Visit any open house this weekend (April 19th – 21st)
2. Take a digital photo of the open house from the curb
3. Tweet the photo with #TruliaOpenHouse before Monday
For more details, check out our Official Rules.
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Need to do any last minute planning? (It’s alright, we won’t tell.)
We’ve made it very easy to find open houses no matter where you are, with top-rated apps for your iPhone or Android phone, and online at Trulia.com. Wherever your house hunt takes you, we’ve got you covered.
To get you going, check out these Quick Start guides for iPhone, Android and Trulia.com.
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Find Open Houses with Trulia for iPhone - free in the App Store
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Find Open Houses with Trulia for Android - free in Google Play
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Find Open Houses on Trulia.com
Happy house hunting!
Andrew
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The weather is heating up, and so is the real estate market, with many people finally getting off the sidelines to buy or sell a home. Perfectly timed with the market resurgence, Trulia has completed a period of rapid innovation on a suite of tools for house hunters including refreshed apps, larger pictures on mobile and web, and more neighborhood insights.
New Market, New Tools!
Many people are looking at real estate for the first time in years, and since they bought their last home, the tools and resources available have drastically changed. Now, with Trulia’s revamped product suite, consumers have the best data and insights available at their fingertips to help navigate a hot housing market!
Let’s dig into the specifics!
While on the go, house hunters can aid their search with the newest features from Trulia Mobile:
- View screen-sized photos on mobile: Images have been optimized to be larger than life on a small screen.
- Get better access to crime and local amenities: Trulia’s redesigned iPhone app makes it easier to find crime rates and local amenities like restaurants, banks, and grocery stores.
- Color-code your mobile searches: Easily distinguish which new properties you’ve seen via color-coded markers: black represents new, unviewed homes, grey means you’ve already seen it.
- House hunt in 3D with Trulia’s new Android Maps: Trulia Android apps now incorporate Google Maps 3D, which offers more detailed, realistic map imagery, including actual structures.
- Find an agent on the go: Trulia’s iPhone and Android apps now enable prospective homebuyers to quickly find an agent in their search area with a single tap.
House hunters on Trulia.com can now boost their search with:
- Big, beautiful photos: The new, photo-centric experience on our property pages features big images, a sleek user interface, and faster-loading times.
- Recommended homes from Trulia Suggests: Trulia now offers a unique, personalized approach to real estate search with recommendations based on past search behavior and which properties consumers ‘like.’
- Streamlined search results: Find the right property faster with a results page that’s less cluttered and easier to scan.
- Home suggestions by email: New, targeted emails look at the preferences of millions of home shoppers like you to provide relevant home suggestions.
Try It For Yourself!
To see how Trulia can help your house hunt and to experience the revamped products for yourself, visit www.trulia.com or www.trulia.com/mobile
Holiday season is always one of the most stressful parts of the year. From battling shopping malls to fighting over parking spaces, house hunting is typically the last thing on someone’s mind. But for Nick and Meghan not even the holiday rush could stop their house hunt. Just a routine Christmas shopping day unexpectedly resulted in a day that would change their lives forever. The two sat down with us to tell us their Trulia Success story.
“We weren’t even planning on looking for a house until June 2013. We knew the location and area we wanted but we weren’t too serious,” Meghan told us.
One rainy December morning, Nick and Meghan decided to get a leg up in their summer house hunt. They met with a mortgage broker to see what they could afford and plan out finances. With their sights set on Danville, Calif – one of California’s top 25 wealthiest cities – they went in feeling positive, although not really sure it was a location they could afford.
“Here it is the week before Christmas and we’re meeting with a mortgage broker. We sat down and crunched the numbers and were really surprised on what we could afford, however, I know how expensive Danville is, and I actually left the meeting discouraged. I starting telling Nick that I just couldn’t imagine finding an available house in our price range, but he stayed positive.”
Later that day, the two then fought the rain and decided to hit the mall and finish their Christmas shopping.
“While waiting for Meghan to shop around, I decided to download the Trulia Android app. I thought to myself, ‘OK, let me just look to see if anything is out there,” said Nick. “I looked on the app and found this great house in Danville that was in our price range which also happened to be having an open house! According to the listing, the showing was over in 10 minutes.”
“In the midst of me shopping around with a sales clerk, Nick suddenly rushes up to me and quietly and says, ‘We need to leave RIGHT now.’ He held up his phone and showed me a listing to this gorgeous Danville house on Trulia. He said, ‘we need to go see this house right now. It’s in our price range. Are you ready?’”
With only a few minutes left for the open house, the two made a mad dash through the torrential downpour to what they were hoping would be their dream home.
“We made it just in time with just two minutes to spare. After jumping out of the car and basically running to the door, we stepped in and just looked at each other in awe saying, ‘wow this is amazing,’” Meghan shared.
The couple ended up really connecting with the listing agent and stayed at the house for a couple of hours after the showing ended. For it being the very first home they toured, the two left the house beaming.
Although they shared their amazing find with their real estate agent, their agent still counseled them on visiting a few more listings just in case. Despite additional options, the couple just couldn’t stop thinking of that initial house.
“Nothing came close to the first house we saw,” Nick told us. “We kept sharing the Trulia link with our friends so they could check it out.”
A couple days following, they couple went ahead and put an offer on the home they toured that rainy December day. Two short days later their offer was accepted – right in time for the Christmas celebrations.
“This whole experience was just awesome,” said Nick.
“It’s so crazy that it was literally the first house that we saw on Trulia,” Meghan added.
After wrapping up a successful holiday season, Nick and Meghan moved into their new home at the end of January. The couple is excited to kick off 2013 owning a home in their dream neighborhood.
Interested in sharing your home success story? Contact us MyTruliaSuccess@trulia.com to be featured on our blog!
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A strong online reputation is critical for an agent to succeed in today’s market. Trulia Agent Profiles have become a leading place for agents to build their reputation by adding client recommendations, posting home tours, and showcasing previously sold homes.
Trulia offers many opportunities for agents to grow their online presence and become a local real estate expert in their market. Innovative tools, combined with our audience of more than 31 million transaction-ready consumers, make Trulia a no-brainer resource for every agent who is focused on winning new clients and closing more deals.
With a Trulia, Agents can:
- Highlight expertise and past experience by creating a free Trulia Agent Profile, ensuring it’s complete and up-to-date. This will keep your name front and center for transaction-ready buyers.
- Boost word-of-mouth marketing by asking past clients to write recommendations on your Trulia Agent Profile. Good reviews help agents earn the trust of new clients.
- Use the free Trulia For Agents mobile app to check in to every listing that you tour and give buyers the inside scoop on the property. Show your current and future clients that you really know every house for sale in the neighborhood.
- Answer questions on Trulia Voices to show off your local knowledge and real estate smarts. Every answer is an opportunity to boost your reputation.
And now, agents can showcase the homes they’ve sold on their Trulia Agent Profiles. It’s a great way to provide prospective clients with examples of their local expertise and past experience. Consumers viewing agents on Trulia can now review the types of homes and neighborhoods an agent specializes in – from working with banks on short sales to navigating the negotiation process on luxury homes.
Benefits of Adding Sold Listings to Your Trulia Agent Profile:
- Show potential new clients you’re a top agent by promoting your past sale successes
- Boost your ranking in Trulia’s agent directory with every sold listing added to your Agent Profile
- Get permanent, free branding on your sold listing’s public record page on Trulia
Adding sold listings to a Trulia Agent Profile is completely complementary to all agents when they create a free Trulia account. There is no limit to how many sold listings an agent can add. For every address and transaction date, up to two real estate professionals can claim the sale – as the seller’s agent, buyer’s agent, or both. To ensure transparency and accuracy, the seller’s agent and the buyer’s agent can verify the sales transaction and earn a “verified” badge. Only verified home sales will display a verified badge. However, certain states may prohibit the display of sold listing information.
Visit www.trulia.com/account/listings/sold to start building your online reputation today.
Finding a place to rent can be a challenge in and of itself, but finding a place to rent on the other side of the country is a whole different ball game. For Lauren, Trulia helped ease the pain.
Lauren and her fiancé were living in Cincinnati but needed to find a place to live in Seattle. They knew immediately that finding a home cross-country was going to be difficult. “We had to search for a home thousands of miles away. That’s why we turned to Trulia – to find the best place for us.”
Because they were looking so far from their current location, Lauren couldn’t travel to Seattle to see every place she loved, so she did all her research on Trulia — including reading questions and answers on our Voices community to learn more about the area. By looking through various listings on our site, and taking in the large photos of potential homes, she was able to easily visualize the houses and apartments for rent.
“The user experience on Trulia is unbeatable. You have a million other things to worry about when you’re trying to move, so I wanted a tool that was enriching to help me find the right home. I checked Trulia three to four times a week, and l liked how it was updated regularly.”
Lauren is digitally connected, so she was interested in the best site or mobile app to make her life easier. When she came across our iPad app, it was the perfect match, and was an immediate fan.
“We’re very tech savvy, so we’re into mobile apps and different technologies that can make our lives easier. I love the way the images are presented on the Trulia iPad app and how the interface works as a whole. I’ve been using Trulia on my iPad for a couple of months now, and it’s convenient because, if I have a quick second, I can easily pull up the app and see if anything catches my eye.”
Our features helped Lauren narrow down her search and filter out the homes that fit her taste, making the move to Seattle a little bit easier. She also used our inside scoop map features to familiarize herself with the area and pinpoint her commute.
“Trulia was my main search site. Sometimes I looked to see what other sites were offering, but again, for me, the visualization of the maps was so welcoming. I love Trulia because it’s fast, easy, and approachable.”
After finding a place and making the long drive to Seattle, Lauren and her fiancé are unpacked and settled in to their new home in Seattle. “We’re excited about our new place and thankful that Trulia was able to help!”
We want to hear from you! Send us an email at MyTruliaSuccess@trulia.com and your story could wind up on our blog and newsletter.
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Dream job alert! Trulia just launched the “Be the First Altman Brothers’ Intern” contest, which will give one lucky Trulia user the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be the first intern to Josh and Matt Altman, two of the most well-known and well-connected real estate agents in the industry.
Amidst the glitz, glamour, and ultra-luxurious lifestyles of Hollywood, the Altman Brothers dominate their local housing market – now representing some of the biggest household names, from celebrities to entrepreneurs and socialites, and Josh Altman is becoming a bold-face name in his own right. You’ve likely seen Josh on TV, where he sells high-end real estate to the rich and famous. Together with his brother Matt, Josh recorded a staggering $200,000,000 in sales in 2012. With 2013 off to an even more impressive start, the duo is turning to Trulia to help them find their first superstar intern.
Could it be you?
The Altman Brothers’ very first intern will learn from Matt and Josh by witnessing and playing a part in their day-to-day business. Roles and responsibilities of their first Los Angeles-based intern include rubbing elbows with the rich and famous, as well as the following:
- Building and executing online marketing plans for properties
- Shadowing the duo as they show for-sale homes to prospective homebuyers
- Touring some of the most exclusive private residences in Los Angeles
- Aiding in scheduling appointments with clients
- Planning and attending open houses alongside the Altman Brothers
To enter, visit Trulia.com/altmanintern and complete the submission form. Entrants are asked to test their online marketing prowess by “writing a compelling – and authentic – local review that sells your neighborhood to potential buyers,” and by also penning a brief overview of why they want to work for the Altman Brothers. Submissions will be judged and select entrants will advance to the next round, where an eventual winner will named the Altman Brother’s first intern.
Trulia’s “Be the First Altman Brothers’ Intern” Contest Timeline:
- March 21, 2013: Contest opens to user submissions for four weeks
- April 18, 2013: The initial entry window will close and second round finalists will be notified
- April 22 – May 2, 2013: Second round interviews with the Altman Brothers commence
- May 15, 2013: The winner is selected and notified by the Altman Brothers
- August 1, 2013: The Altman Brothers internship begins!
- August 30, 2013: The internship concludes
Think you have what it takes to work for the best in the business this summer? Enter here!
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Marla and her husband weren’t really looking to buy a house. But Marla, as a Trulia user and fan, would browse through Trulia listings to see what was available in her area.
“I’m always looking but not really looking. Some people like to read celebrity gossip, but my thing is to read my Trulia listing’s email.”
A couple of months ago Marla and her husband decided to get a little more serious about their home search and decided to begin attending open houses seeking them out through our Trulia Android app. Because of the competitive market in San Francisco, Marla knew that they had to be open-minded and make the home search fun.
“I think the real estate process can be exhausting, overwhelming and stressful. Back in the day we had to print out all the MLS listings and weed through paperwork while we drive around finding the houses. Trulia’s Android app made it super easy to just pick a neighborhood, narrow down our search using the filters and drive around to find the houses that met our criteria. We made the home search like a game because it was so fun and easy.”
Finding a home nearby local restaurants and a fun nightlife was crucial for Marla and her husband. They began their journey by using Trulia’s inside scoop map features to see the amenities nearby local homes for sale. After a few weeks of searching, they stumbled upon a home on the San Francisco beach that had something special.
“We walked in and fell in love, it was just gorgeous. It was unfortunately in contract so we started stalking the house on Trulia just in case the deal fell through.”
Marla’s close eye eventually paid off. The home resulted in falling out of contract causing it to be relisted for-sale on Trulia. After quickly reconnecting with the listing agent, Marla and her husband were well on their way to getting the keys to their new home.
“It was a dream scenario. We made an offer, didn’t have a bidding war and literally closed in 30 days. I pinch myself every day because I feel like really feel like we won the lottery. We found our unexpected dream beachfront home using Trulia.”
Now Marla gets to look at the beautiful San Francisco sunsets from her balcony from her beautiful new home – a special perk that she stumbled upon during her home search.
“I feel absolutely blessed. I feel like this house found us through Trulia.”
You never know when the right house will come along. If you’ve found your dream home like Marla and want to share your story, email us at MyTruliaSuccess@trulia.com.
0 commentsToday, we announced Trulia Suggests—a personalized, photo-centric way to discover homes you might like. Trulia Suggests considers what homes you do and don’t like, as well as the property preferences of users similar to you, to suggest other homes you might find appealing. You can continually improve your suggestions by liking and following homes you like, or hiding homes you don’t.
Think about it: you get suggestions for movies, books, and music online. But when it comes to the largest purchase of your life, there’s no technology that makes personalized recommendations. Our Data Science team applied machine-learning and smart algorithms to this problem, and as a result, flipped the home search experience on its head.
Instead of using filters that may unnecessarily limit your search, we look at your property preferences in the context of Trulia’s 31 million unique monthly users. Then, billions of user actions are applied to algorithmic groupings of millions of properties to best predict which homes you’ll like. And the more you interact with homes on Trulia, the better your suggestions will be.
If the technology sounds complicated, well, that’s because it is. But the beauty of Trulia Suggests is that for you, the user, the experience couldn’t be simpler—or more fun:
- To get started, we’ll show you a list of homes; you pick the one that is the closest match for you.
- Next, ‘like’ 5 properties, and we’ll provide your first round of suggestions. (You can skip these steps if you’ve already liked 5 properties)
- Once you’ve liked five homes, our proprietary algorithm works its magic to produce your first round of suggestions.
Like and follow the homes you love and hide homes you don’t, and we’ll refine your suggestions as you go. It just takes a minute to get started, but you may find yourself gawking at your home suggestions all day.
See what Trulia Suggests for you.
0 commentsVince had his sights set on buying a new house in the Bay Area – not an easy task, considering asking prices around the Bay Area rose substantially in December 2012 — but he was committed to his goal.
An avid mobile user, Vince has iPhones, iPads, and Android devices galore – he even admitted to us that he rarely uses a computer. So it’s no surprise that when it came time to look for a house, Vince turned to a mobile app. He downloaded other real estate apps, in addition to Trulia, but quickly found that the features offered weren’t as helpful as what Trulia provided.
“The features on the other apps that I tried just annoyed me. Trulia’s app was clear to understand and easy to use. I trusted Trulia’s information.”
Initially, Vince was having a hard time finding a new home within his price range, so he started looking at areas in the East Bay and stumbled upon Richmond, CA.
Richmond has had a reputation for chronic violent crime over the years. In 2010, the city was ranked the 6th most dangerous city in the United States.* So the first feature Vince turned to was our crime map, which includes the most up-to-date nearby crime reports.
“I knew I wanted a new home. Richmond had areas that met my requirements, but the crime in the city was definitely an issue. Trulia’s iPad app has features that helped me find my new house. The crime and school maps were exactly what I needed to make sure we were going to be safe.”
After nearly four months of searching, Vince found his new home — built in 2002 – using Truila’s iPad app.
He and his fiancé moved in to their new place at the end of 2012 and are enjoying every minute of being homeowners. They even threw their first party during this year’s Super Bowl, showing off the home to all their friends.
We’d love to hear your story! Email us at MyTruliaSuccess@trulia.com to share your Trulia success, and have it featured on our blog and newsletter.
*Wikipedia source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond,_CA
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