Late last week, we received this note from a concerned Trulia user:

“Is this the type of garbage you allow on your web site? It is unacceptable for a company not to check out their advertisers…I have enclosed a copy of the ad from your site I ran across while looking for property today…I would hope you will take immediate action to correct this.”

Not our favorite type of email to receive (although we are glad that the user sent it).

In case it’s not obvious, here’s what happened:

On every Trulia property details page we have a link to “read more” which goes directly to the listing broker or agent web site. This is an important part of our business model — we believe that the web site for the broker/agent that has actually entered the home is the best source of information for a potential buyer. In this case, the link directed to something more commonly seen late night in Las Vegas than on Trulia.

Of course, we immediately broke the link to the offending site.

While many have used the colloquialism of “house porn” to describe real estate web sites, we were notified by a user that an opportunistic adult entertainment company briefly turned real estate slang into reality. As a form of business development (i.e., a way to find more interested, albeit unsuspecting users), porn companies will often pounce on domain names when their owners don’t renew them. One target for this type of activity is agent web sites where turnover can be high.

Why are we sharing this information?

We take great pains to make sure that listings on Trulia are not only up to date and accurate, but also free of unwelcome pornographic intrusion. We imagine that you do the same. For agents building their online presence — it’s important to note that this could happen to you and to underscore the importance of managing your online office, renewing your domain names and maintaining vigilance against the pornographic blitzkrieg across the internet.

What if http://www.agentsname.com pointed to a porn site and “agentsname” was your name…ouch.

As a Trulia employee who uses the site heavily, I have these expert recommendations to make your experience on Trulia–and every other web site–easier and better:

Step 1: Download Firefox. This web browser is faster than Internet Explorer or Safari, and is compatible for both Mac or PC. If you don’t have it yet, get it. You will notice a difference. The most important feature of Firefox (that has now been copied by IE) is tabbed browsing.

Step 2: Download SuperDragAndGo for Firefox. One feature of the Firefox browser is that developers all over the world constantly build little add-ons that you can install. The installations take under 10 seconds from start-to-finish (and uninstalls are just as easy). Some are useful, like this one, and some are just for fun (this one tells you how much longer George W. Bush will be in office). After installing SuperDragAndGo, you’ll be able to press your mouse over a link and drag the mouse over an inch or two to open the link in a new tab, without losing your original page. This is a super-fast way to navigate the web, and you’ll love it (a slightly slower way is to right-click and hit “open link in new tab”).

Step 3: Use our new search! I really recommend using the Heat Map search. When we first launched this product, I learned things about a place I’ve lived for 10 years, that I’d never known before. Go to your state, then zoom in on a county, and click on any of the zips to see listings there.

Step 4: Use your new technology! This is the critical part. Today’s web sites are built with so much content that one window just isn’t enough to view all of it. But who wants to constantly hit the Back button?

Take a typical search results page; say you want to look at two properties. Often what people will do is click on one property, look at it, hit the “back” button to go back to the search results page (losing your first page in the process), then they click on the second property to look at it. Then if they want to see the previous property, they hit back again…you get the point. Instead, just Drag and Go. This will let you have the Search Results Page in one tab, property A on the next tab, and property B on the next tab. Easily navigate between them just by clicking on the tabs to compare.

If you don’t like the property, just close the tab. You’ll still have your search results page sitting right there for you. If you do like it, save it to My Trulia. Or, better yet, call the listing agent, and tell them Trulia sent you!

We caught up with Simon Baker, CEO of RealEstate.com.au, at Inman Real Estate Connect in New York. Simon discusses:
- What its like to be 58% owned by Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp, which also owns Fox News and MySpace.com.
- What its like to fly in Rupert Murdoch’s jet.
- 2% commissions in Australia & the UK
- Newspaper classifieds are dying a fast death in Australia & the UK (Newscorp owns several newspapers, including The New York Post and The Daily Telegraph.)
- Will Trulia buy RealEstate.com.au or the other way around?

Craig Newmark talks to us live at the Inman Real Estate Connect conference in NYC about what’s up with Craigslist these days. Craig discusses why they started charging for rental ads in New York, how he fights spam listings and what his day-to-day is like as “Chief Customer Service Rep”. Sorry for the interview’s sudden stop, but some poor kid tripped on the power cord in the middle of recording.

Yesterday HotPads launched a Real Estate Technology Timeline tracking major product releases going on in the industry by the various players in the space – Trulia, Redfin, ZipRealty, Rent, Oodle, Zillow, Google Base, HotPads, Craigslist and many more. With so much innovation going on, it’s hard to keep track of this industry. Big thanks to Hotpads for doing the work for us! And major thanks to Simile Timeline, the widget that is bringing HotPads’s Real Estate Technology Timeline to life.

Trulia’s rogue video-blogger Sean Black was able to capture some of the now infamous Inman Connect debate between Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman and Realtor.com’s Allan Dalton, and we thought we’d share it with you.

Allan gives Glenn a run for his money on stage at Inman Connect in NYC. In typical Dalton fashion, Allan gives Glenn the old one two punch while Brad (Inman) tries to hold him back. Allan landed a few good ones right on the chin, but Glenn held his own.

There’s been some great coverage of Inman’s Real Estate Connect in NYC, live from the conference:

Real Estate Connect’s official blog
Inman’s coverage of the Redfin v Realtor.com debate
Glenn Kelman posts his debate redux on the Redfin blog
Kevin from 3 Oceans covered the panel, complete with his predictions of what Dalton would say (and we agree, two out of three aint bad at all)
Real Estate Connect Happenings at True Gotham
Sellsius and condoDomain have pictures of many of your favorite real estate bloggers
Seattle PI’s John Cook provides his take on the panel
CruchBack shares their view here

Wednesday Additions
Joel from future of real estate marketing provided his highlights (with a promise of more to come)
Transparent Real Estate provided his updates here

When we launched our Heat Maps for major cities back in September, we were excited to be able to help people visualize real estate and popularity trends at the local level (major cities and neighborhoods).

Today, in addition to launching our first Trulia Trends report, we’ve also taken Heat Maps one step further–to full national coverage. That’s right baby, our Heat Maps now cover nearly 3,000 counties across the U S of A.

Other than the obvious coolness of a fully interactive, real-time national Heat Map showing average listing prices, median sales prices and popularity across the country, we sometimes get asked how people can use the Heat Maps in their home search.

Well, here are some examples:

1) Your job is relocating you from Florida to LA. LA is a big place, where should you live?

• Go to the National Heat Map — California looks expensive (it’s red), but you already knew that.
• Click on CA on the map, and navigate to the CA Heat Map link to see the state Heat Map county-by-county.
• You are pretty sure that you don’t hate yourself enought to want to commute 2 hours each way to work, so you start your search on the Los Angeles County Heat Map to check out real estate trends ZIP code by ZIP code.
• The area around Manhattan Beach looks cool — it’s around the right price range and close to the beach. As a Floridian, you wouldn’t have it any other way.
• Click on your ZIP codes of choice (90266 and 90245 to start) to search homes for sale in each ZIP.

2) You live in Montana, it’s the middle of winter and you hate your job. You wonder what it would be like to pack up and move to a warmer locale. Daydreams turn to action and you’re navigating Kauai homes for sale. You quit your job, move to Kauai and live a better, tanner life.

3) You are a reporter, student, or real estate enthusiast in New Jersey (insert any state here), and you want to see median sales prices county by county for your newspaper, report, or for personal enjoyment!

Those are just a few ideas, but I’m sure there are other use-cases for Heat Maps as well (feel free to share if you have ideas of your own). Enjoy!

Today, we are launching our first Trulia Trends report - a monthly look at how people are shopping for homes online.

Why’d we do it?

People have been buying homes for centuries, traditionally relying on many sources–including professional counsel, historical sales and pricing information–to understand local real estate trends. With the Internet, they can now also get a real time view point of consumer interest, before the real estate transaction occurs. While we’ve only scratched the surface, we believe this will help both consumers and real estate professionals stay ahead of their local market, and stay abreast of what’s happening across the country.

In the report, we’ve culled data from user searches for the month of December across 15 major cities in the U.S. A few things that surprised us:

• Our 10 most popular properties were evenly split into two categories: the bargain home in a hot market or high-end property listings that ranged from $1.25mm to $25.9mm
• Real estate consumers in some cities—like Boston, Seattle and San Francisco—may be interested in moving out of state, while consumers in cities like Phoenix, Charlotte and Milwaukee prefer to keep it local
• Up-and-coming neighbhorhoods were as popular as long established neighborhoods in many cities

We’ll be releasing this data on a monthly basis, so if there is anything that you think should be included, let us know. Thanks to Jonathan Miller at The Matrix for his help creating this report.

View the full report for yourself here. And the press release here.

Kaira & Harley Roada tell Trulia’s director of marketing Heather Fernandez how technology has helped make them one of the largest real estate franchises in the country. The verdict: you have to realize that the consumer is in charge of how they want to communicate with agents, not the other way around!

One of our blog posts that received the most amount of commentary to date was on the changing agent value proposition - a hot topic in the midst of a shifting economy, consumer behaviors and business models. For the first Trulia Power Panel of 2007, we decided to ask several of our advisory board members the same question since most of them have succeeded through a real estate cycle or two:

• Sherry Chris, COO, Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corporation
• Van Davis, Former CEO, Foxtons; Former President & CEO, Century 21 Real Estate
• Jonathan Miller, President/CEO, Miller Samuel Inc.
• Michael Pappas, CEO/President, The Keyes Company
• Bob Peltier, President, Edina Realty, Inc.
• Bill Plattos, COO and General Manager, First Team Real Estate
• Kaira Sturdivant Rouda, COO, Real Living, Inc

The question: With property information available across the Internet and new discount real estate services popping up everywhere, how should full service agents reframe their pitch to buyers and sellers to communicate their true value proposition in the home sale transaction?

Sherry Chris - COO, Coldwell Banker
When I think about the future of our business, it is a balance between technology and the services provided by a real estate professional that always comes to mind. Smart agents will demontrate to buyers ansd sellers how technology enhances the services they provide, and those services will continue to include negotiating, consulting, communicating and the knowledge and history of areas and properties. Technology is great, but the human element is what will continue to drive this business.

Van Davis - Former CEO, Foxtons; Former President & CEO, Century 21 Real Estate
The Internet has empowered real estate buyers and sellers by virtue of the vast amount and array of information it provides. That said, information is only one of the keys to a successful real estate transaction. The utilization and dissemination of the information is what can make or break the purchase or sale. Real estate buyers and sellers are confronted with complex data as well as changing terminology. The average person is challenged by the rapidly changing national market conditions and even more importantly the changes in their local markets. So why should you use a full service versus limited service real estate professional? Because there is no free lunch.

When brokerages discount their fees there is a reason. It is because you get less; less traditional marketing, less on line marketing, less experience, less attention, less professionalism. When competing for listings full service agents must explain thoroughly and accurately what they do, why they do it and how it benefits the client. They must have comprehensive knowledge of what their discount competitors are doing and not doing. A small increase in sales price resulting from the full service agents efforts will generally more than compensate for the higher fee paid for the service. And after all isn’t it appropriate that more efffective agents get paid more since ultimately they net their sellers more!

Jonathan Miller - President/CEO, Miller Samuel
Many of the alternative brokerage services for buyers and sellers were born in a booming real estate market where the seller was empowered by their strength in the transaction and more willing to experiment. Now that market conditions are weaker, sellers feel less empowered about the transaction and may be more reluctant to try something that is so new. Yet it’s foolish for full service agents think that that these alternative services are going away; many will thrive. Often, full service agents can not compete with many of these alternative service models on a cost basis, nor should they.

As a non-agent, I am not sure how to reframe the full service agent pitch, but I am certain that it needs to be clear and must happen immediately because the industry is changing right now. Most buyers and sellers do their homework on the Internet prior to contacting any service, including full service agents. Full service agents are there to counsel and negotiate, to hand hold and shuttle along the transaction. As more and more information flows into the public domain, their message needs to move from one of “exclusive access” to information to one of “interpreting and acting” on information quickly using a wide variety of tools and expertise that will create a successful transaction.

Mike Pappas - CEO/President,The Keyes Company
Tailor your message to the audience. The generations buying homes today range from young adults in their 20’s to retirees looking to relocate.Emphasize that in today’s market, there is much more inventory. If you are a seller, you can get the most for your home by insuring it is professionally marketed and competitively priced. A trained real estate associate can provide invaluable expertise in these areas.

The power of the Internet combined with the knowledge of a real estate professional will enable buyers to evaluate and select the best option for their financial health and lifestyle. The associate project manages the entire transaction — buyers and sellers can focus on other priorities.

Bob Peltier - President, Edina Realty
There is a difference between information and knowledge. We can all access information, but we need an experienced REALTOR® to provide the knowledge necessary to make an informed real estate decision. Today’s REALTOR® must be savvy in pricing, marketing and negotiation skills. What the REALTOR® provides today is networking that he or she has established through relationships with another REALTOR® to provide critical input the consumer needs at the right time to make the right decision.

Bill Plattos - COO & General Manager, First Team Real Estate
We have seen this cycle repeat itself for 30 years. If it didn’t, we would still be using MLS index cards. For buyers, the only new element is the number of consumer choices available: do-it-yourself, discount broker and traditional agent. Sellers have a number of choices, too: do-it-yourself, discount agent or top agent who can offer the marketing accountability sellers expect.

But the reality is that nearly 80% of all real estate transactions are done by full service real estate EXPERTS who, armed with knowledge and great tools, will offer more than any discount service can ever provide. And as the REAL ESTATE EXPERT, a full service agent should focus on providing expertise in real estate negotiation, marketing, neighborhood information and legal issues relating to mortgage, title, etc.

E.g., Would you hire a paralegal to handle a divorce…or would you hire the best attorney you could afford? If you were going to invest your life savings on your dream home, would you hire someone who lacked negotiation skills, insights about your neighborhood or knowledge of real estate law? Of course not.

Bottom line: Many real estate professionals believe that we should get paid for having the information, but that is a fallacy. The client has all of the information. The true value of a full service agent is to advise, faceplate, negotiate a win-win contract, close it properly and finally, do a true follow up — not for days, but years.

Kaira Sturdivant Rouda - COO, Real Living
A professional real estate agent’s true value proposition is his or her local market knowledge, negotiation skills, marketing savvy and financial planning skills. A huge competitive advantage continues to be agents who can demonstrate acumen and expertise online. Let’s face it: it’s easy for consumers and agents to focus on the wrong venues and hype. And, things change daily. Key elements agents must be able to master and pitch to clients today include: immediate e-mail response time, a robust personal and brokerage Web site, a blog, a listing search marketing strategy, and online contextual and key word advertising. It’s critical to be where today’s consumers are - and she’s there - online. And the majority are, as always, seeking a professional real estate agent’s help.