articles about “Trulia”
CFO and General Counsel Added to Senior Management as Trulia Continues to Experience Rapid Growth
2011 has been a year of tremendous growth for Trulia. We held a steady focus on creating a superior service for consumers and agents, while also aiming to build a strong, experienced management team to ensure that our growth as a company continues into 2012 and beyond. I am excited today to introduce you to two guys that are going to play crucial roles in our next phase of growth.
First, I’d like to introduce you to our new Chief Financial Officer, Sean Aggarwal. Sean was formerly VP of finance at PayPal and CFO, US category of eBay. As our new CFO, Sean will oversee the accounting and finance teams across Trulia’s three offices. Sean brings more than 20 years of investment banking and finance experience, along with a proven track record of scaling finance teams at PayPal, eBay and Amazon.
Next, I’d like to introduce you to Trulia’s new General Counsel, Scott Darling. Scott was formerly VP and General Counsel of Imperva and he has more than 15 years of business and legal experience working within companies such as Microsoft and Danger.
As a company, we have ambitious goals in 2012. I expect Sean and Scott’s impact, experience and insights to immediately help us navigate an exciting path at rapid speed. We have already seen tremendous impact from the additions of Paul Levine as COO earlier this year and Dr. Jed Kolko as Chief Economist and Head of Analytics . I believe the addition of Sean and Scott have us perfectly positioned for a big year ahead.
Throughout 2011, Trulia has seen explosive growth in mobile. Towards the end of Q1, Trulia expanded its mobile offerings by introducing both iPad and Android apps. During Q3, Trulia released a native app for Android tablets and a dedicated Android “For Rent” app for rentals and in Q4 we released our Kindle Fire app. Mobile traffic now accounts for between 20 and 30% of overall traffic. I am extremely proud that Trulia has the top-rated real estate mobile apps in their respective app stores and we are committed to delivering an exceptional user experience in all 50 states and innovative tools for consumers.
We have also taken many steps to become the number one source of transaction-ready clients for real estate professionals. We have doubled leads to agents in Q3 compared to the same quarter in 2010 and in Q3 2011, consumers on Trulia were viewing an average of more than 3.1 million homes per day. Three main drivers of the increase in quality leads to agents are the innovative new services such as Instant Leads, the introduction of Social Search and Recommendations and the expansion of Quick Connect to all mobile apps.
Some of the other highlights of 2011 include opening a new office in Denver, moving into a bigger office space in New York City, and the opening of the roof top penthouse at Trulia’s SF office, where Trulians now hold company meetings, meetups, parties and use the great space as an everyday fun and creative collaboration place for our employees. Our quarterly surveys have shown us time and time again that happy employees do great work, and I am happy that we are able to provide great spaces for our employees to thrive!
Want to join a great team changing the face of real estate? We’re hiring in all areas at Trulia in San Francisco, New York and Denver. To check out the open positions, check out our jobs pages: www.trulia.com/jobs
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Trulia Delivers More Rental Options With Apartments.com Listings
Big Congrats to Trulia’s Fearless Leaders
It’s been a big week for Trulia’s cofounders Pete Flint and Sami Inkinen, who both earned some amazing honors that we just had to brag about!
Cofounder and CEO Pete Flint has been recently awarded one of San Francisco Business Times’ 2011 “Most Admired CEOs” in the cateorgy of “Rising Star.” Pete’s hard work, leadership and business acumen has been recognized by one of SF’s distinguished local business publications and we’re happy to celebrate this major award alongside Pete when he’s honored at a gala on November 15 at Hilton Union Square.
This was also a week of amazing accomplishment for Sami Inkinen, Trulia’s cofounder and President. A dedicated and accomplished athlete, Sami had his best finish ever at his 5th consecutive Ironman in Kona, Hawaii. This time, he finished the Ironman course in under 9 hours, making him 37th in the world and a silver medalist in his age group.
Every week, Truliamazing things happen across our organization, and it’s usually Pete or Sami calling out the stellar work of an individual or group within the company. This week, we’re calling them out for their Truliamazing accomplishments. Trulia couldn’t be more proud of our guys Pete and Sami and all the hard work that they’ve put in to achieve these amazing feats. Thanks for inspiring us everyday to be the best Trulians we can be!
0 commentsTrulia Releases The Inside Scoop on the Real Estate Industry’s Online Listing Quality
One of the most common complaints from consumers and real estate professionals about searching for homes online is that many online property listings have out-of-date or incorrect data. Most frequently, basic listing information like price and status are incorrect. This past March, Trulia launched Trulia Direct Reference to help solve this problem. After evaluating the data quality of more than 1.2M listings received from more than 250 data sources, we’ve identified the primary sources for erroneous online listing data.
The need for this analysis arose after we surveyed approximately 1000 consumers and real estate professionals about the online home search experience. Both groups agreed that their primary concern with online real estate is the quality of the listings. Most complaints about online listings revolved around the status of listings being outdated (e.g. pending) or the price often being incorrect.
Trulia compared more than 1.2 million listings received from various sources against MLS Data, and found more than 69 percent of the errors stemmed from 3rd party syndicators of non-MLS data. All other industry feeds when combined only accounted for 31% of the listing errors Trulia receives in its feeds.
Out of more than 120k listing inaccuracies, we found the following: 51 percent contained price errors, 41 percent contained status errors and 8% contained both. Through our Direct Reference program, Trulia has been able to identify these errors and notify brokers, agents and MLS’s about the data sources they should consider correcting. Trulia Direct Reference provides the ability to identify where the errors are originating and then the information to correct them at the source.
The results from this study show that MLS’s have the potential to significantly reduce the proliferation of erroneous listing data when they syndicate listings directly on behalf of all their members.
If you would like to learn more about how you can participate in Trulia Direct Reference and directly syndicate your listings to Trulia, please contact us at Truliadirect@trulia.com
(To download a PDF copy of this report, click here.)
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Trulia Mobile on Fire: Introduces Android Tablet and Dedicated Rentals Apps
We’re pumped to announce the addition of two new Android apps to our already exciting mobile line-up – the first dedicated real estate Android tablet app and an app just for renters.
The Android Tablet Market is Heating Up
The new Trulia Android tablet app delivers all the Trulia real estate information you know and love in a cool new format. With recent Android tablet announcements from Amazon and Sony, Trulia is extending our commitment to deliver innovative, top quality mobile real estate experiences on this exciting new mobile platform. Location based property search, large-screen mapview, and more info from Trulia is optimized for your Android tablet – and when you’re ready for more details you can easily contact a real estate professional from within the app.
Additionally, we’re delivering our huge property photos onto a beautiful full-screen tablet browsing experience so you can spend all day (and night) looking at the properties you find on Trulia.
Here are a few screenshots to get you started:
To celebrate launching the first real estate Android tablet app, we’re having a limited-time Facebook contest where you could win a new Android tablet – It’s as easy as being our friend on www.facebook.com/trulia.
Rentals Get Real with a Dedicated Android App
Renter Nation, get ready to find your next great place with the brand new dedicated rentals app from Trulia. Renters comprise a significant (and rapidly growing) portion of mobile visits, especially on our current Android app. We‘re now providing a dedicated “For Rent” app that caters to renters’ specific needs. Renters have to work on much tighter timeframes than house hunters, so we’ve packed our app with features that help you quickly organize and customize your searches, and keep all your notes and photos in one place!
We’ve given you the ability to instantly save or nix properties, which will allow you to re-visit the properties you love, and flag the properties that you’re not interested in.
To make your rental search truly your own, you can add your own private notes and photos to listings and share these via email with your roommates, significant other, or trusted advisors.
Get instant alerts via email when a new property is added to Trulia – simply click the star at the bottom of any search results page to “save your search,” and you’ll never miss out on another new home again:
Stay tuned for more mobile innovations from Trulia coming soon. We always appreciate your feedback on android@trulia.com.
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Trulia Names Jed Kolko as Chief Economist
Today, we’re thrilled to announce the appointment of Dr. Jed Kolko (@JedKolko) as our new chief economist. Leading the company’s housing research, he will translate economic trends, real estate data and public policies to help us provide even more vital insights to homebuyers, sellers and renters. Behind the scenes, he will also advise the development of Trulia Estimates and create new derivatives of Trulia’s data to help people make smarter decisions about where they want to live.
“Being a housing expert with a keen understanding of what matters most to consumers when it comes to buying a home, Jed brings a unique perspective of where the market is today and where it is headed tomorrow. At Trulia, he will analyze our proprietary search and listing data in order to help us shed light on how the future of real estate will evolve – from where people want to live to the type of homes that they want to live in, all the way down to the neighborhood amenities that are most important to them and their families,” said Pete Flint, CEO and co-founder of Trulia. “Today, there are more than enough economists looking at the housing market with a short-term lens and I think we can all agree that most have not been able to predict when a recovery will happen, nor have they been successful in creating policies to will foster a long-term recovery. Moving away from this way of thinking, we believe Jed’s long-term point of view on housing issues is exactly what consumers need to help them understand the health of the economy in the long run rather than another short-term crystal ball prediction about the real estate market.”
Given the current state of the housing market, Jed aims to help people understand which trends really matter for where they live now and where they want to live in the future. To learn more about Jed’s take on why we need to think locally and take the long view on housing, check out his first blog post on Trulia Insights (where he’ll be a regular contributor). To learn more about Jed’s expertise and experience, check out the full press release announcing his hire.
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Happy 6th Birthday Trulia!
Today is Trulia’s 6th birthday, and it’s also our bi-annual Mind, Body & Spirit day… a fact we decided to take full advantage of. We had yoga, surfing, a 5k run, a delicious asian lunch… and even had a ping-pong tournament with shots of wheatgrass. Yeah, you read that right… wheatgrass (which by the way, is more nutritious than delicious)
The whole theme of today was to revive our minds, replenish our bodies, and raise (glasses of) spirits. Trulia really is an amazing company to work with. We’re always striving to find that perfect balance of work and play. We’re dedicated to bringing you the best possible real estate experience, and not only do we have fun doing it… we make it look good too.
What’s it worth? Trulia Estimates Launches in Beta
We recently launched the beta of Trulia Estimates, a new tool that provides an estimate of a home’s worth and helps inform decisions, whether you’re buying, selling, renovating or refinancing. Trulia Estimates, built by an in-house team of experts, is another way we can provide useful information about homes and places across the country. Plus, it’s something our users have requested for some time. It’s no surprise in today’s market conditions that consumers are hungry for more information about home values and for local expert advice.
Trulia Estimates is launching in beta to a test market – the San Francisco Bay Area. The Bay Area is an early adopting, tech savvy group, making it a perfect launching ground for our beta product. And it’s right in our own backyard. The beta launch only includes off market homes in five Bay Area counties (Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, Santa Clara and San Mateo), and is an opportunity for us to get feedback, watch user interaction and refine the estimates and experience.
Trulia Estimates starts with a number built from local real estate info, including prices of recently sold similar homes, and collects inputs from locals – agents, buyers and owners – to ultimately improve the estimates in those local areas. Over time, we’ll incorporate more feedback from local experts and develop additional, hyper-local user information.
While we hope that Trulia Estimates gives our users more useful information about their homes, we know that these estimates don’t replace the need for a professional appraisal. Trulia Estimates is just a starting point. On every page with an estimate, we make it very easy for consumers to provide feedback on the estimate and connect with a nearby agent to get a professional estimate.
Not in the Bay Area?
Before we span from coast to coast, we want to take the feedback from our Bay Area beta testers, refine our Estimates product and make the necessary tweaks to ensure the product is primed for a national rollout. While we aren’t announcing a timeline for a full rollout, we plan to offer Trulia Estimates nationwide, and to expand valuations to homes that are actively for sale. Stay tuned for more details in advance of the national launch!
Your Favorite Real Estate iPad App Just Got More Personalized
Exciting news for Trulia iPad fans today – we’re linking searches and favorites to your Trulia account.
Here at Trulia, we spend lots of time in the office, at home and on-the-go cruising around on our iPads looking for the best homes and apartments. We know you do too, and you have told us that you want to save all those searches and favorite properties to your “home base,” your Trulia account. With the addition of favorites and searches to Trulia’s iPad app, there’s even more reason to spend time finding your dream home.
All your favorite Trulia features including: location-based searching, huge, beautiful colorful property photos, home price heatmaps, local restaurants, schools and amenities, search filtering – and now your Trulia account – are available across all Trulia experiences. From the award-winning Trulia website to your iPad and mobile phone, your home search is easy when you use Trulia to get the inside scoop.
We’ve also added a handy, always-available visual Help experience to help you get the most out of Trulia on iPad – just look for the “?” in the top menu bar.
Here’s a few screenshots highlighting the new Trulia iPad “My Homes” and “Help” functionality to help you get started:
Download the Trulia iPad update today, and start saving all your favorites and best searches to your Trulia account.
Thanks for using Trulia Mobile. We’re hard at work with more updates coming soon, so stay tuned – and let us know what you think by dropping us a line at ipad@trulia.com
- Steven Yarger
Trulia Mobile Product Manager
0 commentsTrulia Teams Up with CNNMoney Again on MONEY’s “Best Places to Live” List
Trulia today announced that it will once again provide real estate data to support MONEY’s 2011″Best Places to Live” list that was just published today. As part of an exclusive real estate partnership, CNNMoney will incorporate Trulia’s local housing stats, trends and content into its deep reporting to help its readers find out what it’s like to live and buy a home in these locations.
“Since joining forces with CNNMoney, we have been thrilled to integrate our local housing market insights with MONEY’s prestigious list of America’s best cities,” said Pete Flint, co-founder and CEO of Trulia. “It is very rewarding to know that we were able to help even more people make smarter real estate decisions by making our millions of listings and real estate data easily accessible to the site’s readers.”
MONEY’s “Best Places to Live” list is an annual ranking of America’s best cities to live in based on a number of quality-of-life factors including housing affordability, school quality, arts and leisure, safety, diversity and health care. In addition to being a resource to the magazine’s editorial team, Trulia has also helped create a number of custom interactive online widgets and maps to provide local insights on real estate deals and home price trends for the top 100 cities.
To check out Money’s 2011 “Best Places to Live” list, visit www.Money.com/BestPlaces
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