Today we released the findings of our April 2007 Trulia Trends report (PDF), which tracks national price trends and search behavior on Trulia.com to deliver insights on how consumers use the Internet to search for homes.

This month’s “Spotlight On” feature highlights America’s Second City, Chicago, IL, which emerged as the second most popular city in the U.S. among those searching for homes on Trulia.

Chicago bounds up from its sixth place position last month, proving that, along with ardent Cubs fans, the spring thaw also brings out people searching for new homes. Month-over-month search queries for homes in Chicago jumped a whopping 81%. Chicago follows behind perennial real estate search favorite, Manhattan, NY; neighboring borough Queens, NY was bumped by newcomer Austin, TX from the top 10 list this month.

Other findings:

• Looking nationwide, two Texas cities, League City and Cypress, were the two biggest gainers in median list price from February to March, with 10% and 6.7% gains respectively.
• Cities in the southern and southeastern U.S. suffered the biggest declines in median home prices in March, including Vero Beach, FL, with a 6.7% drop and beleaguered New Orleans, LA, which sank 7.6%.

Focus on Chicago
In March, more home buyers searched for homes with lake views, putting Rogers Park, Edgewater, Uptown, Lakeview, Lincoln Park, and Near North Side at the top of the most-searched neighborhoods list.

The Windy City’s hottest properties ran the gamut from this $250,000 condo in artsy Bucktown to an apartment that cost 37X that amount in the Near North Side. This $9.2 million apartment sits on East Lake Shore Drive—the same stretch that Oprah calls home—complete with resplendent views of Lake Michigan.

Get the April 2007 Trulia Trends report here (PDF).
Get the press release here (PDF).

I bet that many of you didn’t realize that Sunday, April 22 was Earth Day, a day for activists to connect, interact, and work to create positive change in local and global policies. A day for average citizens like us to remind ourselves to turn the TV off on our way out the door, use the recycling bin, and switch out our inefficient incandescent light bulbs.

Well this Earth Day was a special one for me, where I was afforded the great privilege of reading through 28 real estate related blog posts as I pondered what the gas mileage actually is on my euro-guzzler.

Without further rambling, my top picks…

Recycling Award: Jim Cronin at the Real Estate Tomato shows that it pays to recycle. With his The 10 biggest mistakes made by real estate bloggers, he recycles 24 quality blog posts with tips to make all of us better in the blogosphere. Not sure why Trulia didn’t get included in his #6: don’t write about what everyone else writes about (Zillow, Redfin, HousingPanic, Craigslist, ActiveRain)–but we are working on it!

Oil Company Award: Zillow actions have caused a lot of stir in the industry, with their fair share of defenders and those that…we’ll, aren’t in love with them. In Why do so many agents fear Zillow, Jay Thompson is perplexed as to why many agents perceive Zillow the way Earth Day activists see big Oil. Exactly right Jay: “I love it when a client whips out a…Zestimate. It’s a golden opportunity to display my expertise.”

Kyoto Protocol Award: Are greenhouse gases a problem for the world, should the U.S. fall in line? Well, another issue that gets nearly as much air time and debate is the state of the real estate market today. This award goes to the Salt Lake Real Estate Blog for Are we being blinded by real estate? where he defends his “rosy outlook” on real estate and concludes that all real estate is in fact local.

Plant a Tree Award: Erik Hersman from Realty Thoughts came out of the Web 2.0 conference last week with thoughts on how Web 2.0 is contributing to change in the real estate industry. His post Web 2.0 in real estate highlights its different elements–mashups, blogs, social networks, wikis and video–that are playing a part in the evolution of the real estate industry on the web.

Organic Award: Coming from the heart versus some synthetic analysis, Diane Tuman from the Zillow Blog gets this award for sincerely defending her Ranch home in Don’t rip on my Ranch house. I don’t think the brick is ugly, although I do look forward to seeing your paint job Diane!

Carbon Award: The Silicon Valley Blogger highlights a black eye on the mortgage industry today in How to kill your credit instantly with mortgage fraud and subprime borrowing. Included is a 6-point “road to broke” that should spread far beyond real estate bloggers and get in the hands of the actual targets of this practice.

Spare the Air Day Award: Jonathan Dalton and his dog get this award (which I would’ve named the “Spare Me” award…but I couldn’t figure out the tie to Earth Day) for Pricing your home to sell. Jonathan is angry with agents that will say anything to get the listing and who ultimately set unrealistic expectations for their sellers. He reminds his readers that snake oil is nothing new and it’s far preferable to have an agent tell you what your home will realistically sell for.

And the winner, with a topic that strikes very close to home…

An Inconvenient Truth Award: In San Francisco, there is always some neighborhood considered as “emerging” and desirable for the D.I.N.K., first-time home owner set. Individual luxury homes begin to sprout and a former crack house with new wood floors comes on the market for a mere $649,999 (cheap!!). In Misplaced Improvements, Dan Melson from Searchlight Crusade reminds us to look out the door of a newly refurbished abode before purchasing.

Thanks for reading and thanks to everyone that submitted posts this week.

Pat Kitano will be hosting next week’s Carnival at TransparentRE.com. See you then!

When I made the decision to join Trulia, I was asked to aggressively seek out talent to scale with our rapidly growing company. I can’t think of a better way to entice you than to highlight all the things that I think are awesome about this place.

CULTURE
As we all know, the bond between coworkers develops over cups of percolated coffee, creative round tables, Wii tennis matches, and runs to the local taqueria. An environment like this is challenging to sustain, but fortunately, a harder one to emulate. Trulia, with its BOFFI culture and naturally creative environment embodies the notion that people perform at their best in an environment they embrace. What happens next? Well, innovative and useful product releases, the satisfaction of success, and ultimately customer satisfaction.

THE PRODUCT
It doesn’t hurt us that we’re smack in the middle of two of the most watched industries at the moment – real estate and web 2.0. Trulia is working side by side with the residential real estate industry to create cutting edge consumer products and we’re innovating every day. We know that roughly 80 % of home buyers are going on-line during their home search, and we’re always looking for new ways to help people make smarter real estate decisions.

BENEFITS
We’re big on balance, so we offer a really competitive and comprehensive benefit package – full health coverage… options… European style vacation packages (well…not really European, but better than most start ups)…and, of course, our BOFFI culture.

What helps us to attract and continue to hire great developers, UI designers, system admins, product managers, sales people, and marketing gurus is our reputation - as a company with a marketable product, a sensible business model, fair leadership, and a work-life balance (some of the time).

Bottom line is, what I noticed when I first met the team, was that there is an obvious unspoken dedication to what we do, and everyone is on top of their game. I mean, who wouldn’t prefer being in a company where people strive for more even when it seems impossible, and where people seek that hard to define but altogether inspired and uniquely Trulia voice.

Come work at Trulia! Talk with me. I’m an advocate, an employee, and a user.

This year’s Web 2.0 Expo was this week in beautiful San Francisco, and yours Truli(a) gave a workshop on Sunday, April 15th.

It was a good crowd of 200 developers and assorted other techies. We talked about designing and building modern Web applications, with lots of hands-on examples drawn from Trulia, music site lala.com and even Safeway.com.

There is no shortage of ideas in the Web 2.0 world; it seems as though everyone is trying to solve problems in new and creative ways. More and more companies want to take advantage of these good ideas by making APIs available for developer-strangers to build upon (see Trulia API now open to the world!). So what is the biggest impediment to building rich Internet applications? It’s (unfortunately not that) simple: the implementation of these ideas.

You can download the presentation slides from Trulia’s alpha labs page.

The Carnival goes global this week with London based host, Reinthusiast.org who give nods to a few articles from blogs outside the U.S:

‘Top Honours’ are given to Dan Harris’s post on the Real Estate Investments in China Seminar. This post was hosted at the China Law Blog but the seminar will actually take place in Trulia’s hometown of San Francisco during May 3 and 4.

Reinthusiast.org also cites Adam Samuel’s post at Nubricks.com, Investment Property in Morocco: 6 Reasons it’s a Smart Buy, as an educational international piece. Those who want to buy vacation property abroad may see their dream as a more realistic prospect after reading this post.

Finally, Trulia will be hosting it’s first carnival next week so be sure to pay us a visit next Monday!

We just beefed up the Trulia Real Estate Advisory Board with several high-powered real estate executives–a strong mix of top independent brokers, as well as established and up-and-coming franchisors:

• Howard W. “Hoby” Hanna, IV, EVP, Howard Hanna Real Estate Services
• Ben Phillips, VP, New Product Development, Realogy Franchise Group, Realogy Corporation
• Michael Saunders, Founder and President, Michael Saunders & Company, and Chairman, Leading Real Estate Companies of the World
• David Therrien, Chief Technology Officer, Keller Williams Realty International

These four executives are joining an already expert Trulia Real Estate Advisory Board. The goal: obtain industry guidance from proven leaders as we continue to build out the most user-friendly, unbiased neighborhood and home search experience online that connects consumers with the richest source of property information–the listing broker or agent. (As a sidenote, Trulia is backed by ~$8M in funding that comes 100% from sources outside the industry.)

To do this, we’re working with individuals who represent a variety of sizes, business models, regional perspectives and technical aptitudes to stay aligned with the marketing needs of brokers and agents across the U.S. To quote our COO & Co-Founder Sami Inkinen, “Hoby and Michael are extremely well respected for their strategic leadership growing strong, independent brands; David’s technical leadership has been integral to Keller Williams’ rapid adoption among agents; and Ben brings high-level representation from the largest franchisor brand in the industry.”

What’s the real value to all this industry expertise? In the midst of a shifting market, everyone in the mix has grown their business through at least one real estate cycle, and they know what it takes to innovate and continue to deliver value to their customers. For more details, read the press release.

The Phoenix Real Estate Guy steps in at the last minute to host the 37th Carnival of Real Estate and in honor of the very recent Master’s Tournament he’s got a bit of a golf theme going on.

Here are a few highlights:

Amy Fontinelle’s post, ‘An Introduction to Closing Costs’ is a must read for anyone about to embark on their first home purchase.

And anyone about to show a home that is being rented should check out ‘Peeing Dogs Do Not Sell Homes’. Maureen Francis talks about the bad and the good that a tenant can bring to the sale situation and offers up some sound advice.

In an unexpected twist this week, no one winner was selected. Instead Jay chose a series of posts from Bloodhound Blog regarding Zillow’s latest release.

There are far too many posts to list them all here, so head on over to Jay’s corner and check them out.

Editor’s Note - Given that Trulians don’t have a monopoly on quality blog content, we’ve decided to periodically post contributions from our friends and colleagues. We are equal opportunity - if you want to be a guest contributor, just let us know.

Guest Blogger: Rory Siems

What is the main way a good restaurant keeps their customers coming back? By serving tasty stuff to their customers, your real estate website should do this as well.

Take a pizza for example, there are literally thousands of places that make them, but some are better than others. They all have similar ingredients, but it is how they blend the ingredients that keeps you loyal, and craving those slices.

Now websites are getting to be just like foods. Some have great flavor, some are not so great. They are all made of the same or similar ingredients, html, graphics, information.

This is where the mashup literally resembles not only potatoes, but foods of every kind. Think of the main ingredient in a website mashup, hint: that would be RSS.

RSS has completely revolutionized the whole concept of web content. Just as you may plan a meal by first going to the store and collecting the various ingredients, you must do the same to make a successful mashup website.

So here are some simple steps to whipping up something good for your site:

1. Begin with RSS. Research different feeds that apply to the content that you want your clients to be informed with. You may have to make some long lists of which RSS feeds seem valuable. The Trulia Map, and search results feeds are great examples of some really flavorful ingredients that are actually meaningful to your audience.
2. Group your ingredients logically. Don’t overload your site visitors with incongruent information keep the like items on pages together.
3. Integrate the RSS, use something like Feedburner, or the RSS to HTML converter of your choice to get the elements to actually “live” on your site.
4. Limit and focus your content & engage your visitors. Just because you can find 50 RSS feeds that provide similar information, doesn’t mean that you have to display them all on the same page. For neighborhood websites that I have designed, I limited the content to the Trulia Map widget, and a text RSS feed with similar information in a different format. This provides contrast. My Laguna Beach Real Estate Listings page is a great example of this.
5. Don’t fear the outbound links. Links going from your site to a bunch of different sites are more likely the thing that is going to signal to your users “This page is important, and I’d better bookmark it, because all of these great links are in one place.”
6. Push yourself to innovate. If you can’t evaluate your website objectively, ask someone else to. It’s just like asking someone to try the pizza to see if they like it.
7. Study your metrics. You should be examining your website traffic, but you should also pay attention to which parts of your site your users and potential clients are spending most of their time. Chances are, they want you to give them more of whatever that is.

NY Houses 4 Sale plays hostess to the 36th Carnival of Real Estate by throwing a very fashionable dinner party and this weeks top entries make up an enticing spread.

My two favorite courses:

Antipasto: Joshua Dorkin’s post, ‘Why Pets Are Better Tenants than Children’, on BiggerPockets, makes a witty and thoughtful case to rethink landlord discrimination against pets.

Dessert: Greg Swann’s entry on BloodhoundBlog, ‘Egoism in action: How you can grow and prosper, at work and everywhere, even in the face of hostile criticism’ is a great read for anyone regardless of their current occupation. I won’t attempt to summarize as the title speaks for itself.

Sadly the food stops there, but fortunately the fun doesn’t. Trulia was crowned the winner this week with the video blog series: ‘Must see Trulia TV: Real Estate Baroness Barbara Corcoran‘. Our very own Vice President of Sales, Sean Black, interviews the multi-talented Corcoran in a three-part, Truli-a thought-provoking and entertaining series.

Go take a look!