Looking for a great way to get out and enjoy the great Fall weather before wintertime cabin fever sets in? Why not hit some open houses this weekend?

Check out this weekend’s “Steals and Deals” for open houses priced at or below market!

	Colts fans should go at halftime to see this HUGE 5,651 square-foot 6-bedroom home in Westfield, Indiana. This house has a breakfast room that leads out to a wood deck, a third level with skylights, a 3-car garage and even a 1,600 square-foot basement where you can kick back and watch the game or perfect that spiral throw. Open House: Sunday, December 2nd from 2p to 5p
	Here’s a split-level 3-bedroom ranch home in sunny San Diego, California for $585,000 - around 17% less than other homes for sale there. This home has hardwood floors, a fireplace and a 2-car garage. Open House: Saturday, December 1st from 1p to 3p
	This 3-bedroom home in Chesterfield, Missouri is loaded with updates! From granite countertops to tumbled marble backsplashes - even a new gunite in-ground pool that cleans itself! Currently listed at $338,000 and below the average price of other homes for sale in that market. Open House: Sunday, December 2nd from 1p to 3p
	This two-story 2-bedroom home in St. Louis, Missouri has a refinished hardwood floors, partially-finished basement and a fenced backyard. Current list price? $129,900! Open House: Sunday, December 2nd from 3p to 4p
	Check out this 3-bedroom ranch home in Rhode Island with hardwood floors and an in-ground pool! Currently listed at $234,900 and about 10% below other homes for sale in that market - what a deal! Open House: Saturday, December 1st from 11a to 1p

Want to know about open houses in your ‘hood? When searching on Trulia you can see what day and time a house is open on the property detail page:

Then, just scroll down the page and you can:

• see how house stacks up against the competition
• learn more about the area by checking out the real estate guides
• ask the community of local experts and homebuyers about the house on Trulia Voices

Don’t miss out on next weekend’s Steals and Deals! Subscribe to TruliaBlog now.

Latest Consumer Buzz: Foreclosures

With Thanksgiving behind us, the holiday shopping craze has officially begun. Take a break from the crowds and catch up on the latest talk among home buyers: foreclosure properties.

You’ve told us you’re interested in searching for foreclosures, so we’ve added some features to help you navigate the waters. Buyers can now search approximately 400,000 foreclosures on Trulia, where you can browse by state, city or neighborhood, compare prices against average listing and sale prices, and more.

Handy tip of the week: Once you’ve entered a search, you can limit your search results to just foreclosures under the listing type filter.

Foreclosure Q&A

Want to learn from about how the foreclosure process works? Don’t worry, you are not alone. Foreclosures can be complicated and stressful for buyers and everyone involved. In fact, over ten percent of questions and answers on Trulia Voices address foreclosures.

Check out a recent question from Ann, a home buyer in Georgia, who is considering buying a foreclosed home:
Q: What would be a reasonable price to negotiate and what other things should I consider?

What’s your question? Ask it on Trulia Voices.

Learn By Example

Curious if your local market has a high foreclosure rate? This month’s Trulia Trends report highlights the top foreclosure markets in the U.S. and markets with the biggest decline in median list prices.

And how will the current credit crunch and lukewarm sales affect your bargaining power for that dream home? Find out how foreclosures can impact your house hunting decisions by reading up on some key cities in this month’s report.

Download the full report here (PDF).

Sign up to get this nifty newsletter every two weeks here. In the meantime, don’t go too crazy with the holiday shopping… after all, you still have a mortgage to pay.

In part two of our Power Agent series with Carrie Chiang, Trulia explores some of Carrie’s key characteristics and successful traits that have made her one of the nation’s most productive and busy agents.

It is clear that Carrie has mastered the art of discipline and hard work, and her efforts have paid off handsomely. With that, take a peek (and listen) to some of the fun facts and interesting qualities that has kept her at the top of her game.

(Warning: shameless self-promotion ahead…)

We’ve met with a multitude of brokers and agents recently at N.A.R, C.A.R. and some individual brand events.  In the process we’ve had a lot of really great conversations and received excellent suggestions from our broker and agent partners – thanks to all who’ve stopped by the Trulia booth!  

And then there were the real estate professionals just learning about Trulia, a group from whom I heard one consistent comment: “My clients and open house attendees say I should be on Trulia…but I don’t know HOW!”

[Repeat:  “My clients and open house attendees say I should be on Trulia” = “Marketing opportunity I should pay attention to!”]

As those of you who are already working with Trulia know, the HOW is easy (and this part isn’t for you).  However, for your agents and colleagues who have clients asking them about getting onto Trulia, how could I do anything short of providing a two-step Trulia primer?

1.  Submit your listings to Trulia at no cost to make them easily accessible to more than 2 million monthly searchers on Trulia.com. 

2. Join Trulia Voices to become a local neighborhood expert, for free!

Will we hear the same question next week when we’re at the Triple Play conference in Atlantic City?  If I were a betting woman, I’d put it all down on “YES!”  But with your help, we can continue to spread the Trulia word to more innovating real estate professionals across the country.  And if you’re on the east coast and heading to Triple Play, stop by BOOTH 1106 to say hello and find out more about the marketing opportunities on Trulia!

‘Tis the season for giving thanks and Trulia would like to say thanks by giving you an early holiday gift! If you are a Trulia Voices user and Real Estate professional, we are giving you a free trial of Trulia’s hot new agent advertising product: Agent Featured Listings.

Make sure you check your stocking…errr inbox and see what Trulia delivered last night - a $100 coupon for two months of free service. No coupon? Let us know that you want to use Trulia’s holiday gift and get 4 times more buyers to your properties and email leads from Trulia! Although billing information is required to sign up, the coupon gets each agent two months of free service which they can cancel anytime (but why would you??).

Some Real Estate Agents are thrilled with Trulia’s service:

“When Trulia says they deliver serious home searchers to agent Web sites, they’re right on target! I was in final negotiations on a home sale that included numerous stipulations before closing. A couple who saw the home on Trulia called to view the house immediately and placed a higher bid without stipulations. Everything moved super-fast and smooth, and I would highly recommend Trulia to my fellow agents.” — Mary Ann Brettell, Howard Hanna Real Estate

Want more information on agent featured listings? Get it here or watch this video:

http://www.trulia.com/agent_featured_listings.html

Have Truli-a Merry Holiday!

According to an article in today’s New York Times, 2007 marks the year that “CyberMonday” — the promotion initiated in 2005 by online retail trade organization Shop.org to create an online counterpart to the brick-and-mortar “Black Friday” — moves from gimmick to genuine trend.

The phrase “genuine trend” immediately got me thinking about online real estate traffic and the uptrend in traffic at Trulia —something we live and breathe on a daily basis at Trulia. We devote considerable time to assessing targets and metrics for almost everything on the Trulia.com site and how we’re performing relative to our targets. And, like holiday shopping, I’m seeing that there’s a little bit of art, science and luck to the process.

Factoring in just a little over two years of operating experience, we consider various factors that might impact real estate search habits and overall Trulia.com site traffic, taking into account things like:

• Seasonal real estate trends – compare homes for sale relative to Christmas tree sales

• Cyclical real estate trends, macroeconomic factors and other housing data

• General momentum of Trulia’s growth

• New product announcements

• New partnerships

Interestingly, while I doubt that CyberMonday will be the most popular day for online real estate shopping across the web, our own predictive tools are telling us that today could be our most heavily trafficked day ever.

So what is the X factor? Is it delayed demand from people who didn’t have Internet access over the Thanksgiving holiday, or an uptick in consumer interest in real estate after winding down from the big four-day weekend? What other trends do you factor into your real estate forecasting??

In today’s uncertain housing market, forecasting can get pretty tough. I’d love to hear your own thoughts based on previous real estate cycles.

Consumer search behavior on Trulia continues to reflect na­tional trends in the real estate market. In this month’s re­port (PDF), foreclosures take a front seat as cities with an increas­ing number of foreclosures are also posting an increasing number of consumer searches. For the month of October, all five cities in our “Movers and Shakers” list of biggest search gainers were among the nation’s largest metro areas with the highest foreclosure rate, according to a Q3 study by RealtyTrac. Buffalo, New York and Kansas City, Missouri were among the cities with the biggest decline in search queries in October. Those cities are feeling the pain of an increasing number of foreclosures, however, the overall pace of those markets may also be slowing.

The housing market has suffered a one-two punch from the subprime mortgage meltdown and subsequent credit crunch, and the dizzying effects of the market’s downward fall are widespread. Recently, the ripple effect has been felt all the way down Wall Street - from new home builders who are saddled with inventory, to home-improvement retailers who face big earnings losses, to mortgage lending companies forced to cut jobs or close.

Meanwhile, many of the hundreds of thousands of families who bought homes using loans with so-called “teaser” interest rates and minimal down payments are defaulting on their loans and facing foreclosure. Foreclosed homes are often listed below market price and the additional inventory of available homes, along with foreclosed homes’ reduced sales prices, can further depress a struggling market.

Here are some highlights from our analysis of median list prices and Real Estate Owned (REO) prices in the cities with the highest foreclosure rates:

Download the full report here (PDF)

Want to stay on top of current market trends? Sign up for the monthly Trulia Trends report.

Today, through a partnership with RealtyTrac, we are announcing the addition of foreclosure properties to our inventory of more than 2 million searchable home listings on Trulia.com. Consumers will now be able to find information on approximately 400,000 foreclosure properties across the country and in their local markets. This is an important milestone in our goal of delivering a great real estate search experience.

When searching for a property on Trulia, consumers now have access to foreclosure listings in addition to resale and new construction. We have added a new search filter on our results page, where house hunters can filter by listing type (resale, new homes and foreclosure) and property type to narrow their results. With this powerful filtering consumers can really search and find a multitude of properties that match their search criteria.

Along with providing property information on foreclosures, we are also providing tools that allow consumers to compare foreclosure properties to the local real estate market. Each property detail page includes information like approximate note balance on a Notice of Default home, how the sales price of a Real Estate Owned home measures against listed homes on the local market, as well as a quick-reference pop up of foreclosure types to educate as well as inform potential buyers. To view full information for each foreclosure property, consumers can register with RealtyTrac for a 7-day free trial subscription before signing up for a monthly subscription.

See examples:
Foreclosures in Las Vegas , Foreclosures in Stockton and Foreclosures in Detroit

We know that numbers and transactions are only part of the story. At Trulia, we recognize that the foreclosure process is often a complex and emotional one for both buyers and sellers, and should not be taken lightly. Make sure you are fully informed and do your research. We have already seen that Trulia Voices is a great platform for consumers to talk to local professionals and other homeowners, buyers and sellers about the foreclosure process, including ways to potentially avoid foreclosure, or what to do if you rent a home that is in foreclosure. Go ahead and ask a question. With this launch, Trulia now offers consumers a way to search and find foreclosure properties while utilizing the Trulia Voices community to find answers to their foreclosure questions.

With last week’s completion of the elegant Real Estate Top 200 by Lore Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and Real Trends, we have taken the opportunity to speak with another amazing agent and SVP of the Corcoran Group, Carrie Chiang.

Despite a lacking marketplace, Carrie has demonstrated her prowess as one of the nation’s most productive and busy agents, securing mind boggling numbers in total sales volume.

Amidst a down market, Carrie has posted one her best years to date by virtue of hardwork, assistance from a dedicated staff, and constantly acting as a high-end match maker for her buyers and sellers; efforts that made Carrie Corcoran’s 2006 Salesperson of the Year.

As quoted in her Corcoran bio, “[Carrie has] an encyclopedia-like knowledge of her New York City territory, Carrie offers buyers, sellers and investors the utmost in full-service attention. Her phenomenal sales volume itself speaks volumes about her performance, yet she especially prides herself on her extraordinary ability to focus on each individual’s needs.” With that, Sean Black of Trulia sits down with Carrie to speak about her experience as a top-producing agent in our two part series.

It’s the 68th Carnival of Real Estate - also known as the The 2007 Dundie Awards thanks to host A Better Mortgage. Inspired by America’s take on the BBC series, The Office, staring everyone’s favorite 40 year old virgin, Steve Carell as boss Michael Scott, the Dundie Awards is best explained by Michael himself in the clip provided at the awards hub.

The Dundie Awards certainly make for some very entertaining award categories:

Winner of The Spicy Curry Award goes to ‘Owning a condo in Thailand’ by Adam Bryan-Brown of artThailand.

The Don’t Go In There After Me Award was given to Cindy Lin of staged4more for her post ‘How A Stager Can Potentially Kill Your Deal’.

and The Whitest Sneakers Award was bestowed upon Craig Schiller of the RealEstaging Blog for his entry ‘Will Home Stagers Buts Your NUTS?’.

Head on over to A Better Mortgage to find out who wins The Busiest Beaver Award and more.