Trulia "on the Move" in a Couple of Ways
Trulia, who most acknowledge as the #3 home search site behind Realtor.com and Zillow/Yahoo Real Estate, has made a couple chamges that they hope will increase their market share.
First of all, they have acquired Movity a company which specializes in allowing buyers to get to know the places they are moving to. In addition, they recently moved to a larger office in San Francisco and have doubled their workforce in 2010.
There is a lot of debate on whether or not it is a worthwhile investment for Realtors to “pay for play” for the enhancements that these Big Three offer. That being said, nobody can argue with the fact that the vast majority of buyers and sellers look to the Internet for assistance.
On the advice of information I received at the RainCamp in Prescott Arizona, I made an “exploratory” investment in Zillow and have been pleased with the leads that have been generated by them. A team member of mine has has good results with Trulia while my Broker is constantly expounding on the merits of Realtor.com. Depending on your budget and marketplace (you need to consider how many realtors are also targeting your areas) I feel that these “mega” sites cannot be ignored.
At the very least, you should be manually posting to Zillow and Trulia as I do with every listing I receive. In addition, you should be also utilizing a free site that sends your listing to dozens of other sites. I use ListHub (two leads in the past week, one now under contract on a home) and Postlets and a team member of mine swears by Property Nut.
Let’s face it, the Internet is here to stay and those that do not embrace it will be left behind! It’s just a matter of doing your research (lot’s of blogs about it in AR) and deciding on a budget of time and/or money.
