In the August edition of the Trulia Trends report (PDF), we discovered that high dollar home buyers in the major metro areas of the U.S. must have been on summer vacation in July because none of the top 10 most viewed homes were above the seven-figure price point.

Of the Top 10 most viewed homes, here are some highlights:

• The most expensive home in our Top 10 was this two-bedroom, two-bath home in the Inland Empire, listed at $849,00
• The least expensive was this three-bedroom, two-bath home on nearly an acre in North Carolina.
• Neighborhood amenities such as open space, trails, tot lots and dog parks likely drew Trulia users to seek out properties in the ‘burbs.

The most popular cities remained relatively unchanged with Chicago, Manhattan and San Francisco holding firm in the top three. Curiosity peaked with house hunters in the suburban markets, with new-kid-on-the-block Lake Mary replacing Jacksonville as the lone Floridian in the Top 10.

Austin, Texas - home to the infamous South by Southwest (SXSW) film, music and multimedia festival, nearly 200 live music venues and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and known as the Live Music Capital of the World - steals the show in this month’s spotlight.

Search activity in southwest Austin was as hot as the temperatures in July, with neighborhoods around notorious hot spots such as Sixth Street, the Warehouse District, Congress Ave., and Barton Springs among the most popular.

To check out the full report, click here (PDF).

Since spring, thousands of people have joined the conversation on Trulia Voices – asking questions, providing answers and engaging in useful dialogue on what’s happening in their local real estate markets.

So what’s the next step? Put a face to the Trulia Voice! Turn that online dialog into real-life connections offline.

That’s what we’re doing next week in NYC –unplugging as we launch our first-ever Trulia Voices Unplugged meet up at Pravda Bar in NYC’s Nolita neighhorhood on Thursday, September 6 from 7-9 PM.

Here’s the deal: we supply the cocktails and you supply the good conversation.

Share unfiltered, honest information with fellow Voices about real estate in NYC and the tri-state region, as well as thoughts about Trulia Voices with members of the Trulia Team. Buyers, sellers, professionals and amateurs alike are welcome.

You might even snag one of our cool new Trulia Voices tees with an oh-so-clever tagline.

Interested? Click here to let us know that you are attending.

And for all you non-NYC Voices, keep an eye out for more Trulia Voices Unplugged events to come…

Event details:

Where - Pravda Bar in Nolita
When - Thursday, September 6 from 7-9 PM
RSVP - click here

The Weichert Lead Network: Mike Montsko

Weichert Realtors has grown since 1969 from a single office into
one of the largest privately held real estate companies in the U.S.
A wholly owned separate entity, the Weichert Lead Network (WLN) is
responsible for generating and distributing leads to more than
14,000 participating Weichert company and affiliate agents.

Join us as Trulia’s Sean Black, sits down with Michael
Montsko, President of WLN, to talk about WLN’s focus on providing a
fast, quality response to consumer queries. Watch Michael discuss
the themes, goals, and processes that comprise the Weichert
Lead Network and what makes WLN the Kings of Conversion!

A few days ago I attended the Coldwell Banker Elite Retreat in L.A., an annual gathering of the very best-performing Coldwell Banker agents across the country.

I was excited to meet this group and understand what exactly makes them “Elite”. At dozens of other gatherings, I’ve seen idealistic optimism on the one hand and severe cautiousness on the other as agents seem to brace themselves against the tougher market conditions. Perhaps here there would be something different.

At the CB Elite Retreat, I had an opportunity to get under the hood on how these agent-entrepreneurs think. I spent two solid days full of seminars, small group chats and dinner conversations. During this time, I made a few key observations:

First, agents such as Joyce Rey, represent homes that us ordinary people only see in movies or from tour buses. A $125,000,000 price tag for a single family (and a dozen people to run your errands) home is not uncommon in her world. Getting access to these assets and ultimately winning listings around the kitchen table - or should I say around the marble fountain in the main lobby - is the ultimate demonstration of entrepreneurial skills. I can only guess that it’s her extraordinary negotiation and people skills coupled with consistent hard work that have put her where she is today.

Second, practically every person I spoke with approached the current market conditions in a thoughtful, realistic manner. Agents are carefully considering new ways to capture market share while keeping costs under control. They know it is going to take every ounce of hard work and business savvy they’ve gained over the years to continue to thrive. They are eager to face the new market and recognize that it may not always be easy.

Third, while everyone was thoughtful and realistic, the mood of the event was still highly optimistic. Certainly these Elite agents deal with the top end of the market which, in many areas, is still doing well. But what I suspect is that they know a down market is usually the best time to capture market share and get ready for the next up market.

All of the above made me rethink the definition of what makes a great agent. I realized that I was in the midst of highly successful entrepreneurs, willing to roll with the punches, able to realistically assess the situation at hand and to adapt quickly—without complaints. No surprise given that most of these ladies and gents are making seven-figure incomes. My guess is that most of these agent-entrepreneurs would succeed any number of fields. And frankly, we all have a lot to learn from them!

There are 20 25 of these exceptional Voices, who have not only been active contributors on the site, but also provided us with product feedback, insight and opinions along the way.This week we sent them a little token of our appreciation and wanted to make sure they received a Trulia Blog shout out for the achievement and for their work putting Trulia Voices on the path to success.

So, to Deborah, Pam, Bruce, Jeannette, Melissa, Bridgette, Carrie, Keith, Cindi, Roberta, Mitchell, Jim, Paul, Kristal, Mario, Brian, Ellen, Ted, Herman, Kaye, Chris, Irina, Maureen, Ruth, and Sylvia and all of the Trulia Voices community…thanks for helping us get through the first 100 and we look forward to many hundreds more!

The Carnival visits the country this week, graciously hosted by TheLandJournal.

A few great reads were awarded the blue ribbon including:

‘How to generate leads from your real estate blog: we have proof’ posted at Rsspieces.com

‘Exploding Myths: Part 2. Web Leads - Quality Vs. Quantity’ live at Geek Estate Blog

and

‘Beyond Home Buying: How Building And Renovating Can Be The Biggest Investments Of Your Life’ from The Digerati Life

Many other posts were given second place honors as well. I’m not sure what color ribbon they receive but assure you that they are worth the read. Go meander over the pasture and take a look.

The Real Deal: Amir Korangy

Focusing completely on New York residential and commercial real estate,
The Real Deal provides a sophisticated mix of breaking news, illuminating
features, and in-depth analysis for real estate professionals.

Trulia’s Sean Black sits down with the man behind it all,
The Real Deal Publisher Amir Korangy to discuss his motivation for creating
such a publication and where he thinks this ride in going. NYC has
never lacked real estate drama, and along with his dedicated staff,
Amir has his finger on the pulse of one of the most important real
estate markets in the world.

We’ve spent a lot of time since the launch of Trulia Voices speaking with agents, monitoring Voices content and learning about how to turn online relationships into offline relationships. Given what we’ve observed and gathered, we came up with a top 10 list of Agent Best Practices to help you make the most of your time on Trulia Voices.

10. Complete your profile
Consumers go to your profile to learn who you are, see what content you have created, and get in touch with you. Upload a picture, fill out the “about me” section and make sure you click the box to enable member to member communication. This is your (free) marketing page on Trulia and you should use it!

9. Stay relevant
If a consumer asks about the market in Florida, don’t answer about the market in Arizona and provide a link to Arizona homes (?!). If the same consumer was asking you a question when you ran into her in a grocery store, what would you do? And use your comment to add new insight, not repeat what five other people just said.

8. Plagarizing isn’t cool
It’s a great practice to refer questioners to a relevant third party source, but you MUST give credit to the source. Remember your fourth grade book report? The same rules apply.

7. Validate yourself
If your comment comes from personal experience, provide context to your answer – I grew up in this area, I’ve lived here for the last 3 years, my friend’s sister used to live here, etc. Help the consumer understand why your opinion matters and he will be more likely to trust your opinion and more interested in learning more about you.

6. The hard sell doesn’t work
We all know that consumers don’t like to feel they are being sold to these days—whether they are buying toothpaste or a home. Consumers value candor and openness over what sounds like a canned sales pitch.

5. No fishing for leads or referral fees
It’s not only a bad practice, but also against the Trulia Voices Community Guidelines to post direct solicitations of business. Please flag questions and answers that do not answer the question and are posted for the sole purpose of generating leads or reselling leads. We’ll remove them asap. Hint: just writing something like “Call me or email me and I’ll give you the answer” in response to an answer counts as a direct solicitation.

4. Remember the NAR Code of Ethics & Fair Housing laws
We are all trying to provide realistic, honest answers, but it’s very important for agents to adhere to the NAR Code of Ethics and Fair Housing laws when you are online, exactly as you would in your daily practices offline.

3. Answer other people’s questions, not your own!
This might fall into the “it goes without saying” camp, but it’s not going to inspire a consumer to contact you if you seem to be talking to yourself.

2. Laugh a little
Having a sense of humor is helpful. It’s okay to lighten up and show some of your personality.

Drum roll please…

1. Focus on the consumer
If you spend the bulk of your time asking and answering questions focused on other real estate agents, then you are not likely to build offline consumer relationships. We’re continuing to gain steam and Trulia Voices is starting to get coverage in the media–we’ll continue to see more consumers on Trulia Voices and all you have to do is share your knowledge with them!

Thanks to Keith Sorem for his input on the Agent Best Practices Top 10 List, and all the agents that have given us feedback along the way. I hope this list was helpful. Think its missing something? Let us know in the comments and thanks for being such a strong Voice!

Realty Thoughts hosts the 54th Carnival of Real Estate and highlights the top six posts for the week including:

‘What Have We Taught Our Clients?’ by Jonathan Dalton of DaltonAZHomes.com

and

‘Are Vacant Homes Black Holes That Suck the Life Out of their Own Sales?’ by Craig Schiller of Home Staging

Four other great articles await your read as well so go check ‘em out!

(photo by whiteafrican on flickr)

The dust has finally settled from the Inman Real Estate Connect conference which finished last week and given me a chance to reflect on some of what I heard from industry leaders and the star filled line up of speakers.

The Inman conference is a unique event for the industry and all of us at Trulia. It brings together leading technologists, brokers, bloggers, analysts and vendors. Brad Inman manages to effectively mix information, networking, insights and entertainment into an engaging 3 day event. This is my 4th year at the San Francisco Inman Connect and it has been fascinating to watch the mood over the years and see some future gazing turn into reality.

If I was to sum it up, I felt that there was an air of geeky enthusiasm at the conference. Admittedly, the industry is mostly full of optimists and while there is not too much enthusiasm about the overall housing market, I felt a new level of optimism about the role of technology. While this optimism is certainly a little self serving and possibly a reaction to the bad news back home, it feels like a new, positive era for the industry.

While I’m certainly blinkered with what’s going on here at Trulia, the two big things I saw at the conference were 1) that listing distribution is becoming more widespread and 2) that social media is alive and kicking in real estate.

Blogs are now really working for many agents, there were countless examples of using blogs to generate real leads, it is not expensive, but it can be time consuming. The combination of great content and personality is a refreshing change from the bland, self serving agent ads of old. Agents that demonstrate deep domain knowledge and are visible across the web are now becoming the go-to place online and offline for home buyers and sellers. It is pretty amazing how things have evolved.

I had the chance to meet up in person with many agents and bloggers that I had seen on Trulia Voices, like Roberta Murphy, Gina Riede, Brian Brady and Ken Glidewell.

I heard countless times, how bloggers were meeting up with other bloggers for the first time and yet thought of many of them as old, long lost friends. The virtual connections were wonderful, but there is no substitute for the real-world interaction.

Sort of like the world of real estate search, I guess. You can find a home online that you are interested in, but of course you’re still going to visit the open home before you stump up the cash.

There were literally dozens of other social media, blogging and “web2.0” companies (such as StreetAdvisor, My-Currency and Trulia Voices) all finding their niche. While some may not make it; a few will build pretty exciting businesses that will permanently change the real estate landscape for the better. We expect to be a part of that change and will continue to attend Connect to meet all the innovators that are trying to be a part of it as well.

The other big trend is that listing distribution beyond the MLS is now the norm with the large brokerages and franchisor groups. There were more announcements during the conference and many companies were starting to use the Trulia listing distribution model that we helped architect with our launch September 2005. It’s pretty exciting for me to see the industry adopt this model which will dramatically reduce the marketing costs of agents and brokers and ultimately lead to a better deal for consumers. We at Trulia are also not standing still with the launch of Trulia Connect, a service for 3rd parties and MLSs to help their clients increase the traffic to their listings.

So as the dust settles and I catch up on the emails and business cards I collected, I feel a bit of geeky enthusiasm as well. The online tools are working, the partnerships are forming and technology is slowly becoming a Realtors’ best friend. I literally cannot wait until next year–the pace of change is accelerating, there is positive momentum and Brad always pulls together the right people for an excellent show. Here’s looking forward to the next year of great strides in a great industry!