For the third consecutive month, Chicago was number one and Manhattan was in the number two spot of “Most Searched Cities” on Trulia, as we report in the September edition of the Trulia Trends Report (PDF) . For the first time since we’ve been tracking data, San Francisco tumbled from the top five, resting at number six. Jacksonville, FL and Queens, NY return from summer vacation to rejoin the Top 10 at spots nine and ten, respectively.

Of the Top 10 “Most Viewed Homes”, only one home was above the seven-figure mark - a stunning six-bedroom, nine-bath Mediterranean style home in Beverly Hills. But you don’t have to spend a fortune to get a great home. Take a look at this waterfront home in Sodus Point, NY, one of the less expensive homes to make our Top 10. It is listed just under $180,000 and comes with a wrap-around deck and a boat dock, complete with a boat hoist and boats!

Bargain hunters were out in force in August as New Orleans and Modesto were among the cities with the biggest increase in search queries.
Wanna know more? Check out the full report here (PDF)

We’ve all heard that more and more consumers are looking online as part of their home search, but you might be wondering who those users are, and specifically who they are on Trulia.com. Well, maybe you weren’t, but we were wondering and we put a survey up on our site to find out.

From 7/27 – 8/15/07, roughly 1,100 people answered our survey and the stats are in.

First – Who are you?

We found that Trulia users are a pretty well-heeled bunch of educated home owners. And consumers dominate our traffic at 76% of all users on Trulia! 13% are brokers and agents, 4% are real estate investors and 7% are “other”:

• Primarily in their 30s and early 40s
• Household income over $100,000/year
• 68% are currently home owners
• 76% are married or in a committed relationship
• 88% graduated from college and 40% have a graduate/professional degree

Second – Are the consumers serious home buyers/sellers, voyeurs, or bored Web surfers?

Given that our site is focused on helping consumers find homes for sale and make smarter real estate decisions, we were obviously glad to hear that we didn’t miss the boat.

Taking a look at consumers on Trulia, the data shows that they are a very active and engaged group of home buyers and sellers:

• 66% are looking to buy or sell a home within the next 12 months, 46% in the next 6 months
• 69% are not yet working with an agent
• 46% are pre-qualified for a mortgage
• 30% are looking to relocate out of state

The sellers – 23% have already listed their home; 40% will list in the next 6 months
The buyers – fully 81% plan to buy in the next year; 57% in the next 6 months

Finally – How are people using Trulia?

The top five reasons why people are using Trulia are to: get information on homes for sale, get information on recently sold homes, explore a move outside their area, help determine a bid price on a home and… Just for fun!

But without repeat users and word of mouth support, it would be tough (read: impossible) to continue growing at double digits month-over-month. The survey also shows that:

• 48% of our users are on Trulia at least once a week
• 94% are likely to return to Trulia in the next month
• And 83% are likely to recommend Trulia to a friend

Today marks a special day, it is Trulia’s Birthday and we are officially 2 years old! Hooray! People often ask how Trulia came about and why we started it, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to share the story of how Trulia came to be…

Sami Inkinen and I met as graduate students at Stanford University in 2003, and as newcomers (I came to Stanford from England and Sami from Finland), we were both terrifically excited to be in California and the Silicon Valley, but we both had a hard time finding a place to live. Like most people of our generation, the first thing we did was to go to the Net and search for information.

In the summer of 2004, there were a few good local sites that offered bits of information, but for people doing their early research, there was no one place to find great real estate content. Real Estate is a huge industry and such an important part of everyone’s life; it was crazy that no one had done a better job of translating listings and information for the Internet age. We knew that we had stumbled onto something big.

In the fall of 2004, as classmates who loved technology and solving big problems we got to work researching the industry, speaking to home buyers, sellers, agents, brokers, franchisors, technologists, anyone we could find to learn more about the real estate industry.

There was a lot of initial suspicion about a new technology company looking to shake up an established industry. Thanks to other technology companies that pulled a bait and switch or didn’t deliver on promises made, they were skeptical to say the least. We kept this in mind as we built out the business model, and have made it a focus to partner with the industry and listen to their concerns along the way.

The more we peeled back the surface and voraciously consumed everything we could, the more we became fascinated with the real estate industry and excited about how we might be able to make a difference.

In the spring of 2005, we started to build prototypes and think about the sort of place that we’d like to work. Once we officially turned down job offers, it all became very real—we were going 100% down the entrepreneurial path. It was exciting, and a little daunting. Even with all the research under our belts, we couldn’t really know what we were in for.

We graduated from school in June 2005 and spent that summer in a small shared office in San Mateo building the website. We were so excited about what we were building, spending endless hours designing interfaces, sourcing content and writing code.

So two years ago today on September 25, 2005, we took this photo in a small office when we launched the website. We held a modest celebration as we flipped the switch and it’s been an incredibly exciting ride ever since.

We have grown a lot since then, from 6 to 50 fantastic employees (and hiring lots more, so please apply!). We continue grow our website traffic at double digit monthly growth rates and are sending millions of visitors to our partners.

Thinking about how the vision has changed today from what we planned back in 2005, I can honestly say, it has remained much the same. We still focused on our mission as we were back in 2004 of fixing the consumer online real estate experience and helping consumers make smarter real estate decisions

So with that, Happy Birthday to us! And here’s to all the great stuff we have in store for many birthdays to come.

Kudos to For Sale By Locals. They host the 60th Carnival of Real Estate this week with a reminder that real estate needs to address the changing demographics in the U.S. They chose the following posts as winners within the following categories:

English Language Winner: ‘How to Sell a House in Over 6 Months’ by Ben Cotten

Spanish Language Winner: ‘Como Aprovechar las Bondades de Cada Pais Para Hacer Crecer to Mercado de Bienes Raices’ by Alicia Yabeta posted at CasaComprar

Portuguese Language Winner: ‘As Imobiliarias Espanholas Constroem Seu Futuro na America Latina’ by Lila Mendez

Visit For Sale By Locals to read their reviews on these posts and if you’re like me and you need a bit of help in the translation department, visit Alta Vista - Babel Fish Translation.

According to the latest data released by Hitwise, Trulia.com has jumped ahead of our peer group and now ranks alongside Google and Yahoo! (yes, THE Google and Yahoo!) as one of the top three contributors of traffic to 12 of the largest residential real estate firms nationwide in the past month (August 18 – September 15, 2007).

We’ve continued our consistent trend of double-digit monthly growth to the site, and even higher increases to partner Web sites, which now average three million user visits per month. That means we’ve outpaced fellow online real estate marketing sites Google Base, Craigslist, HomeGain, Realtor.com and Zillow.

In fact, Trulia referred, on average, 11% of the traffic being directed to a diverse group of franchisors, regional franchisee firms and independent brokerage firms, including Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC, Century 21 Real Estate LLC, ERA Franchise Systems LLC, Keller Williams Realty, Intero Real Estate Services, Weichert Realtors, Alain Pinel Realtors, Watson Realty Corp., among others.

We think that’s something worth mentioning because in today’s uncertain market, we recognize that it’s all the more important for our broker partners to tap into a huge audience of qualified consumers. The Hitwise data confirms that our model works to connect these consumers with robust real estate information and agents. That’s exactly what we will continue to do!

See the full press release here.

With the slowdown in the real estate market, it’s no wonder that industry watchers are beginning to wonder when online real estate sites like Trulia are going to begin to feel the pain. Already we’ve seen companies like Realogy announce that they’re cutting their offline spend to 70% of its home-sale ad spend by 2010, down from 84% in 2007, according to a recent Bloomberg story. But what about the online spend?

Without a crystal ball, we can’t predict exactly what is going to happen down the line, but we do know that at a time when companies are being forced to tighten their belts, the efficiency of any advertising spend becomes more important than ever.

We think that the best online advertising plays will see this slow-down not as a storm on the horizon, but as an opportunity. After all, had we been extolling the virtues of online real estate advertising over newspaper classifieds five years ago, our pitch may have fallen on deaf ears. Who re-evaluates their marketing plan when they’re making money hand over fist?

But in these times, the market forces advertisers to evaluate the effectiveness of their existing marketing programs and consider the alternatives. Realtors and brokerages are learning that they can advertise on multiple online sites for a fraction of the cost of a print ad, boosting sales and referrals. Case in point, last month, Alain Pinel Realtors, one of the Bay Area’s largest residential brokers, signed a one-year contract with us that will allow the brokerage to purchase banner advertising for the region.

Furthermore, the oft-quoted report from research and consulting company Borrell Associates found that online real estate advertising grew from a $1.2 billion market in 2004 to a $1.7 billion market in 2005, increasing in its share of ad spending from 10.3 percent to 14.7 percent. And the company projects online ad spending to grow to a $3.1 billion market by 2010.

This isn’t to say that all online real estate advertising is created equal. There are plenty of options that are as effective at reaching consumers as flinging a pile of business cards out your window. Online real estate sites now have a window of opportunity in which to prove to advertisers that every dollar spent provides a real monetary return.

Finishing off with the third and final portion of our Weichert Lead Network (WLN) series, we are taken into the ‘guts’ of WLN’s New Jersey Call Center.

Having previously discussed WLN’s incredible impact on quality, speed, and numbers of responses to consumer queries and their 5-Prong Marketing Strategy, in this video we are able to see the actual working environment where WLN implements this process.

Kudos to Mike Montsko and his team, for allowing us to see this finely tuned machine in action!

On Thursday night, a select group of Trulia Voicers from across the NYC area made history by attending the first-ever Trulia Voices Unplugged meet up.

For one night, we decided to take the online conversation offline, meeting up at uber-chic Pravda Bar in NYC’s NoLita neighborhood to chat about what was happening in the local real estate market (heck, it might’ve been a bit too chic and hard to find without a sign on the door)! But in our opinion, the location and neighborhood were hot – lots of great eats and worth a look given that the Trulia NYC Heat Map still codes NoLita as still being a relative bargain.

Thanks to the Trulia Voicers who came – not to mention our friends Joe and Rudy at Sellsius who were in full force and voicing up a storm (see their pictures of the event here). We made great connections with some interesting and insightful people!

As a newbie Trulian, I came away with a few observations: first, people from across the real estate industry are using Trulia Voices to connect about real estate – bloggers, brokers, agents, lenders, home buyers, sellers, investors, and more.

Second, people using Trulia Voices can really see the benefits of an online community: a broker who networked with agents online, an agent who answered questions reaching consumers, and then there was Jeffery - a lender who had such a great online dialogue with a consumer that he now has a new client!

Pretty cool stuff, and an effective way to form new real estate connections in an increasingly online world. Thanks again to Adam, Joseph, Peter, Alex, Jeff, Barbara and everyone else who attended for making our Unplugged event a success!

This is just the start of Trulia Voices Unplugged. If you’d like to unplug Trulia Voices in your area, let your voice be heard!

This Monday the Carnival of Real Estate is hosted at real/diaBlog and this week they highlight the top 7 entries including:

‘News You Can Use - Real Estate is a Business’ by Kris Berg of SanDiegoCastles.com and BloodhoundBlog

‘Attn. Market Timers! The EXACT Best Day to Buy!’ from Blog.FranklyRealty.com

and

‘How To Build a Strong Real Estate Team’ posted at StewartHsu.com

Go check out the other four honorees!

Today we announced a partnership with NorthJersey.com, northern New Jersey’s on-line news leader and the online home of The (Bergen) Record, to power its online real estate section, NorthJerseyHomes.com.

Why is this a big deal?

For the consumer - beginning today, the good folks of North Jersey will have access to Trulia’s intuitive interface and full set of free and interactive tools, allowing them to research homes for sale and recently sold homes both locally in North Jersey and nationwide. They can also use Trulia Voices, which allows consumers to exchange information in real-time with homeowners, real estate pros or really, anyone with an opinion on their local market.

For our business - it’s been widely reported that newspapers across the country are suffering a blow in offline real estate advertising, while ad expenditures for newspaper Web sites are dramatically increasing. The North Jersey Media Group is ahead of the curve, partnering with us to power a robust online experience for their readers. As for Trulia, this allows us to provide our information and tools to a whole new audience.

We are excited about this announcement today and look forward to announcing similar relationships in the future! For more information or any questions, drop us an email at busdev@trulia.com.

You can read the official press release here.