Trulia Launches Rentals

Consumers Can Now Search Millions of Units in Multifamily Buildings, Agent Represented Rentals and Landlord Submitted Properties

Over the years both consumers and real estate professionals have been asking us to add rentals to Trulia. During that time we’ve been listening to you and the market, taking notes, planning and building based on your wants and needs. Today, we’re proud to announce the launch of Trulia Rentals. At launch, in addition to the over 4 million homes for sale on Trulia, we’ll have millions of rental properties nationwide for consumers to view  – more than any other single online apartment site out there today.

“With the burst of the housing bubble, more consumers than ever are trying to decide if they should rent or buy so we’re giving them the tools to make the best decision for their lifestyle, ” said Pete Flint, Trulia co-founder and CEO. “We saw the opportunity to take our world-class interface, advanced search, rich maps and local neighborhood information and make Trulia.com available for renters, as well as home buyers.  This is an exciting new market for us and we’ll continue to innovate to make it the best experience on the web.”

Built into our rental launch, we have included some fantastic new user generated functionality on the hyper-local level. Introducing Local Ratings. Now, anyone can rank a neighborhood based on 12 traits including Restaurants, shopping, walkability, safety, traffic, parking and more. Think a neighborhood is great for singles or families? Let others know. Have a dog and looking for a pet friendly neighborhood? See what others have said.

Just like our For Sale listings, submitting your Rental properties to Trulia is FREE. So if you’re a property manager, landlord, real estate agent or broker now you can add your rental listings to Trulia at anytime via a feed or manually. You’ll be able to manage, edit and track how your rental listings are doing via your free MY Trulia account.

Trulia uses the newest technology to make the home buying, selling and now renting process for consumers and real estate professionals as easy as possible. Helping our users make better informed real estate decisions is what it’s all about.

Here are some interesting stats and trends regarding rentals and consumer behavior:

• 30% of consumers consider renting and buying at the same time and need more tools to help make better decisions (Internal Trulia Data)
• Home ownership levels are now back at the same level as 2000 and hit the peak in 2005
• Shift in consumer behavior – Hitwise data: Sum of the market share of ‘sale’ terms declined slightly from 2.74 percent to 2.53 percent, while the sum of the market share of ‘for rent’ terms increased 46 percent, from 1.96 percent to 2.86 percent.
• One year ago only 3 rental sites were in the Top 20 for the real estate category and now there are 7 rental sites in the Top 20 according to Hitwise
• 60% of adults strongly/somewhat agree that renting currently makes better financial sense at this point in their life according to recent survey from Trulia/Harris Interactive

Consumers can utilize a wide range of Trulia tools to find the best place to rent – key functionality at the time of launch includes:

1. Smarter Decisions - The decision whether to rent or buy is often a complex decision that requires intimate knowledge about each alternative. To help guide consumers through this process, Trulia offers a Rent vs. Buy calculator and Expert Renters’ Guides such as: 10 Questions to ask a building manager when touring a rental , How much rent can you really afford?. Consumers can also post questions in the Trulia Voices community to get answers from the largest real estate social networking community on the Internet.

2. Local Ratings and Information - Users can rate local areas on 12 different traits including parking, cleanliness, safety, public transport and weather, along with many more topics. They can also see information about nearby schools, local amenities and businesses provided by Trulia partners Greatschools.net and Yelp.com.

3. Advanced Search - Consumers want flexibility when they search for a place to live. Trulia gives people the ability to search by keywords (ie. pool, waterfront, covered parking) multiple locations and custom ranges, as well as the capability to search by location, map and radius.

4. Search on the Go – Having the ability to search for a home or real estate information anytime, anywhere is critical today. Consumers can easily search for a place to rent or buy on Trulia’s mobile Web site, which is compatible with iPhone, Blackberry, Android and other mobile devices. Read more about it at Trulia Mobile.

5. Personalization - Finding a new apartment or house is a very personal decision. Trulia gives consumers the ability to save communities and individual rental listings, easily send favorites to friends and family members via Trulia or Facebook, and sign up for real-time email alerts about new rental properties that match their saved search criteria.

Illustrated below, are examples of our new Rental Apartment Search in New York City.

1. Currently we show over 25,000 rentals found in New York City.

2. You’ll see a combination of  available Condo units for rent, Lofts, Townhomes and new Rental Apartment buildings.

Here’s a detailed view of Condo for Rent.

You can use Keyword search to find a specific rental community such as Trump Place.

Here you’ll see 13 different floor plans within Trump Place.

You can fine tune your rental apartment search by bedrooms and square footage and more

As you fine tune your criteria, we’ll update the currently available rental apartment floor plans as illustrated below.

Next, click on the apartment to see the floor plan.

Market Your Rental Listings on Trulia

Brokers or property managers marketing a large number of listings should contact Trulia at  rentalfeeds at trulia.com for details about submitting a data feed.  Anyone with one or a small number of listings can submit through Trulia’s Single Listing Submit program, which allows users to submit, manage, edit, and track their properties.

We hope both consumers and real estate professionals enjoy our new Rentals section and the opportunity to connect with each other for their rental needs on Trulia.

Cheers!

- Team Trulia

Update:

Techcrunch interviews our CEO Pete Flint:

Trulia Launches Rentals

Consumers Can Now Search Millions of Units in Multifamily Buildings, Agent Represented Rentals and Landlord Submitted Properties

Over the years both consumers and real estate professionals have been asking us to add rentals to Trulia. During that time we’ve been listening to you and the market, taking notes, planning and building based on your wants and needs. Today, we’re proud to announce the launch of Trulia Rentals. At launch, in addition to the over 4 million homes for sale on Trulia, we’ll have millions of rental properties nationwide for consumers to view  – more than any other single online apartment site out there today.

“With the burst of the housing bubble, more consumers than ever are trying to decide if they should rent or buy so we’re giving them the tools to make the best decision for their lifestyle, ” said Pete Flint, Trulia co-founder and CEO. “We saw the opportunity to take our world-class interface, advanced search, rich maps and local neighborhood information and make Trulia.com available for renters, as well as home buyers.  This is an exciting new market for us and we’ll continue to innovate to make it the best experience on the web.”

Built into our rental launch, we have included some fantastic new user generated functionality on the hyper-local level. Introducing Local Ratings. Now, anyone can rank a neighborhood based on 12 traits including Restaurants, shopping, walkability, safety, traffic, parking and more. Think a neighborhood is great for singles or families? Let others know. Have a dog and looking for a pet friendly neighborhood? See what others have said.

Just like our For Sale listings, submitting your Rental properties to Trulia is FREE. So if you’re a property manager, landlord, real estate agent or broker now you can add your rental listings to Trulia at anytime via a feed or manually. You’ll be able to manage, edit and track how your rental listings are doing via your free MY Trulia account.

Trulia uses the newest technology to make the home buying, selling and now renting process for consumers and real estate professionals as easy as possible. Helping our users make better informed real estate decisions is what it’s all about.

Here are some interesting stats and trends regarding rentals and consumer behavior:

• 30% of consumers consider renting and buying at the same time and need more tools to help make better decisions (Internal Trulia Data)
• Home ownership levels are now back at the same level as 2000 and hit the peak in 2005
• Shift in consumer behavior – Hitwise data: Sum of the market share of ‘sale’ terms declined slightly from 2.74 percent to 2.53 percent, while the sum of the market share of ‘for rent’ terms increased 46 percent, from 1.96 percent to 2.86 percent.
• One year ago only 3 rental sites were in the Top 20 for the real estate category and now there are 7 rental sites in the Top 20 according to Hitwise
• 60% of adults strongly/somewhat agree that renting currently makes better financial sense at this point in their life according to recent survey from Trulia/Harris Interactive

Consumers can utilize a wide range of Trulia tools to find the best place to rent – key functionality at the time of launch includes:

1. Smarter Decisions - The decision whether to rent or buy is often a complex decision that requires intimate knowledge about each alternative. To help guide consumers through this process, Trulia offers a Rent vs. Buy calculator and Expert Renters’ Guides such as: 10 Questions to ask a building manager when touring a rental , How much rent can you really afford?. Consumers can also post questions in the Trulia Voices community to get answers from the largest real estate social networking community on the Internet.

2. Local Ratings and Information - Users can rate local areas on 12 different traits including parking, cleanliness, safety, public transport and weather, along with many more topics. They can also see information about nearby schools, local amenities and businesses provided by Trulia partners Greatschools.net and Yelp.com.

3. Advanced Search - Consumers want flexibility when they search for a place to live. Trulia gives people the ability to search by keywords (ie. pool, waterfront, covered parking) multiple locations and custom ranges, as well as the capability to search by location, map and radius.

4. Search on the Go – Having the ability to search for a home or real estate information anytime, anywhere is critical today. Consumers can easily search for a place to rent or buy on Trulia’s mobile Web site, which is compatible with iPhone, Blackberry, Android and other mobile devices. Read more about it at Trulia Mobile.

5. Personalization - Finding a new apartment or house is a very personal decision. Trulia gives consumers the ability to save communities and individual rental listings, easily send favorites to friends and family members via Trulia or Facebook, and sign up for real-time email alerts about new rental properties that match their saved search criteria.

Illustrated below, are examples of our new Rental Apartment Search in New York City.

1. Currently we show over 25,000 rentals found in New York City.

2. You’ll see a combination of  available Condo units for rent, Lofts, Townhomes and new Rental Apartment buildings.

Here’s a detailed view of Condo for Rent.

You can use Keyword search to find a specific rental community such as Trump Place.

Here you’ll see 13 different floor plans within Trump Place.

You can fine tune your rental apartment search by bedrooms and square footage and more

As you fine tune your criteria, we’ll update the currently available rental apartment floor plans as illustrated below.

Next, click on the apartment to see the floor plan.

Market Your Rental Listings on Trulia

Brokers or property managers marketing a large number of listings should contact Trulia at  rentalfeeds at trulia.com for details about submitting a data feed.  Anyone with one or a small number of listings can submit through Trulia’s Single Listing Submit program, which allows users to submit, manage, edit, and track their properties.

We hope both consumers and real estate professionals enjoy our new Rentals section and the opportunity to connect with each other for their rental needs on Trulia.

Cheers!

- Team Trulia

Update:

Techcrunch interviews our CEO Pete Flint:

Rent Stabilized Apartments in NYC get New Proposed Increases

So, here we go again. Every year New York City landlords and tenants are pitted against each other to determine who gets to feel the pain of the economy.You can read more about who the NYC Rental guidelines board is here. Essentially they over see the nearly one million rental apartments that fall under NYC’s rent stabilization laws.

As a born and bred NYC resident I have seen and experienced first hand the benefits and pains on both side of the fence. Here is a little editorial before we get to the nitty-gritty proposal.

My 2 Cents

Why have rent control anyway? Why not let a free-market determine the value of the apartments? I think that if people aren’t renting, then landlords will lower rent. Essentially the rent control rules tie the hands of landlords from getting fair market value for their product – in this case, apartments. I know that there are special cases, and people who need the rent stabilization rules to live in the city – but is this just a sign of a greater problem? Does stabilizing rents really help anyone – or is it simply another bubble that can potentially burst if a long term solution is not found.

Should rent stabilization be based on historical values, i.e. year over year – or present market value? To me, rent stabilization does not allow the economy to work. It limits the price of a commodity, and therefore limits advancing the product and improvements to the product. Why should a landlord fix things in an apartment that they can’t get market value for – the whole thing really doesn’t make sense to me.

I am not on the side of landlords or tenants. I rent, I have rent increases every year, and I have owned 2 multi-family homes in NYC. Since they were less than 4-family I did not have to stick to rent control rules, so I truly just want to understand – why bother with all of this?

How about this idea? Warning it may be half-baked: What if  the rent stabilization rules were tied to income? For example, If the household makes above $200K a year, you get a 5% increase, if you make above 100K a year you get a 3% increase, if you make less than $100K a year, you get 1% increase, less than $50k a year, no increase. The current rules are based on the year the building was built, number of units, and whether the rent was then $2K since 1993 (whatever). It just prevents the free market from working and keeps people stagnant in apartments just because they are cheap.
(/end editorial)
What makes an apartment rent stabilized? Here you go:

How to tell if a building is rent stabilized

In general, stabilized buildings:

• Contain 6 or more units;
• Were built before 1974;
• Are not co-ops or condos;

However, not all apartments in these buildings are necessarily rent stabilized. For an apartment to be stabilized it must:

• Have had a rent of less than $2,000, if one initially moved into the apartment in 1993 or later.

There are many exceptions to these rules. read more here

The Stabilization board consists of nine members, as it says on their site:

“…all of whom are appointed by the Mayor. Two members are appointed to represent tenant interests. One of these serves a two-year term, and the other a three-year term. Two members are appointed to represent owner interests. Like the tenant members, one serves a two-year term, and the other a three-year term. Five members (including the chairperson) are appointed to represent the general public. One of these serves a two-year term, another a three-year term and two serve four-year terms. The chairperson serves at the pleasure of the Mayor.”

Source: http://www.housingnyc.com/html/about/rgbmembers.html

Last night they determined the PROPOSED increases for this year:

They are proposing an increase of  2 percent to 4.5 percent for one-year leases and 4 percent to 7.5 percent for two-year leases. Last year, the board approved its highest set of rent increases in 20 years. Those raises were 4.5 percent on one-year leases and 8.5 percent on two-year leases.

The problem, of course is that the landlords are asking for MORE this year and tenants want a freeze since last year’s increases were so high. Furthermore, with the current economic conditions many tenants are feeling the pinch or are fearing layoffs. The landlords on the other hand are feeling the pinch of increased property taxes and expenses in building management.

Clearly, this is a tough situation.

The board will hold two more public hearings, on June 15 and June 17; it is to take a final vote at a meeting June 23. The public needs to get involved and voice their opinions to this board. Here is the link to see where to go and when: NYC Rent Guidelines Schedule.

The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect my company or anyone else’s opinion.