< bloginfo('name'); ?>

2007 was a certainly the hangover year from the excess in the housing economy from the first half of the decade. Mortgage crisis, credit crunch, subprime, foreclosures, housing bust were frequent headlines throughout the year. Tough times for many and well covered in many other posts. With 2008 around the corner, here are some New Year’s resolutions for the Online Real Estate Industry that we will also be following here at Trulia. Whether you are an agent, broker, franchisor or a real estate technologist, you should be able to benefit from these resolutions, tips and links.

Be more social
If 2006 was the year that social media caught the public’s attention, then 2007 was the year when social media started to became an essential business tool for many of us. Here are some tips for the upcoming year:

• If you have not already, set up your online profiles on the major sites and real estate social networks, Facebook, Linkedin, Trulia Voices and ActiveRain. It’s free, your customers are there and your online reputation is as important as your offline one. These tools are essentially no different from building your referral network in the real world – just much more efficient and scalable. Your “profile” is networking for you 24×7 even when you sleep! How’s that for efficiency!
• Get involved. Answer questions over at Trulia Voices, comment on other’s blogs, build contacts with Linkedin, join groups at Facebook, review local restaurants at Yelp and get your blog posts Dugg at Digg.
• More resources: here, here and here

Be more open
We all know that you can hold much more with an open hand than a closed fist. The majority of franchisors and brokers have now fully embraced listings distribution with leading sites that are serving their best interests. Now we are seeing many MLSs are starting to provide listing distribution services on behalf of their clients and we see this trend accelerating. Ideas for being more open:

• Get listings up on Trulia, Google Base and countless others across the web. If you are not there, your competitors are potentially getting your business. The free traffic you can get is considerable.
• Launch a blog, share your experiences, be open, it may be surprisingly to some, the more you share the more it will enable you to build relationships with your audience and customers.
• Make sure your website is open to google and other search engines. If consumers are looking for your product or content, this is the place to be and make sure you’re thinking about search engine optimization.

Be more efficient
So whatever the current NAR economist says, 2008 is not going to be great year in general for the real estate industry. Transactions are down, home values are down and inventory is almost at an all-time high. I’m not an economist, but at least on the national level I believe 2008 will be a challenging year, that said, there are will still be millions of people buying and selling real estate. Some tips on efficiency in today’s market:

• Use free analytics tools like google analytics to measure, analyze and understand what your website traffic is doing and where users are coming from.
• Online advertising can be significantly more efficient, if you have not slashed your offline budget, you probably should do right away. Buy ads on the leading online real estate sites: Google, Yahoo and Trulia and monitor their performance. If they deliver a positive ROI, the do more of it, if not stop. Online doesn’t have to be incremental on your budget. Many of our broker clients have made the move and cut offline spending and spent only a fraction of that online with the same aggregate benefits! That’s saving dollars immediately.
• Optimize your website for your inbound visitors so they get a good introduction to your site.
• Use the market change to make tough decisions about your business: restructure, renegotiate contracts, right-size your organization, kick the bad habits. Strong companies have historically used market downturns to build market share and come out of it even stronger while others stumble.
• Online social networking. Remember again, your “profile” is networking for you 24×7 even when you sleep!

Be more active and exercise
What’s a New Year’s resolution list with this one, hey? I’ll be planning to exercise more this year, just like last year…For the online real estate industry, it means getting out more, meeting with clients and going mobile. If Santa gave you an iPhone this year you’ll know what I mean:

• Get on the mobile internet. Get an iPhone or a newer cell phone where you can keep surf the web, get connected with contacts and those hot leads. Plus you’ll impress your friends.
• Check out these voice to text tools Jott, Simulscribe, SpinVox for mobile services on the road.
• Get a broadband wireless card, while a little screen maybe good for short, miss-spelt replies, a wireless card and your laptop helps you do real business.

Have fun and play more
One of the best ways to learn more and improve your life and business is to experiment, play with new things and just have fun. We’ll all be happier and more productive. For online real estate here are some ideas:

• Experiment with online video. Try different things on YouTube, WellcomeMat and others. Production and distribution are easier and cheaper than ever, now you just need to be creative!
• Mash-ups, social apps and widgets. If you’re technically inclined, building a mash-up, using an API, build a facebook app and widgetize yourself.

I hope that you find these New Year’s resolutions from Trulia useful. Got any resolutions for the real estate industry that we should be considering?

Trulia update
Here is a quick update on what has been going on with Trulia in the last 12 months and where we’re headed.

Today, Trulia.com is the fastest growing website in the real estate industry according to Comscore (at least amongst the top 20 sites). In December 2007 Trulia.com will have around 2.5million unique visitors, we have grown 3x in 12 months whereas many other sites have flat or declining in traffic. We consistently see double digit monthly growth and expect this to continue for the foreseeable future until we become one of the top few sites in the Industry.

Trulia has been launching lots of products in 2007 as well as coming out of Beta, some highlights: in May we launched the useful and popular Trulia Voices community; in November we launched our integrated Foreclosure search and also in November made available our agent listing advertising product. We will be launching many more products and services in 2008 as well as improving many of the existing products on Trulia.com. We are particularly excited about building on the early success of Trulia Voices and become the leading online community for home buyers, sellers, agents and enthusiasts.

In 2007 we raised an additional $10m lead by Sequoia Capital with participation from existing investors such as Accel Partners and have raised a total of around $18m to date. It’s a great endorsement for the Trulia business model, chosen strategy and the team here from some of smartest and most successful minds in technology. Trulia has approximately doubled its staff to around 55 employees in 12 months (and we’re hiring). Most importantly, we’ve continued to deliver great value to our real estate industry partners and other advertisers. As a result of making our clients happy, we’re now starting to generate pretty significant revenues and with Trulia’s capital efficient model and a highly sought after audience, we’ll be focused on achieving profitability in 2008. Since inception, our goal has been to build a marketing platform that delivers greater value at a lower cost than any other option out there, whether online or offline. This is a great start and we will continue on this path. We’ll let you know how we get on in 2008.

Wishing you all a very Happy New Year and good luck with your own New Year resolutions from everyone at Trulia!

See you in 2008; it’s going to be an exciting year in the online real estate Industry.

Popularity: 3% [?]