Chicago, Manhattan and Brooklyn were the Most Searched Cities in January
San Francisco – Feb. 3, 2009 – Trulia.com, the best place to start a real estate search, experienced a record month in terms of consumer engagement across all key metrics for January 2009. Consumers on Trulia viewed 40% more pages per visit compared to a year ago and participated in the Trulia Voices community more than ever before with a 115% year-over-year growth in real estate questions, answers and blog posts.
“Since Trulia launched, we’ve always seen a seasonal bump in consumer interest at the beginning of the year. However, given the current state of the economy, we were not so sure if this year would follow the trend of the past,” said Pete Flint, co-founder and CEO of Trulia. “In reality, consumers were engaged more than ever and we believe the dramatic increased engagement in January is a good indication that consumer optimism is on the rise. People are beginning to realize they can get more for their money and great opportunities exist if they can qualify for a loan.”
After showing strong momentum and growth in 2008, Trulia starts 2009 off with the best month in the company’s history. With consumer engagement at an all-time high, the below lists provide a look at consumer search behavior and interest in today’s unpredictable real estate market.
January 2009: Top 10 Most Popular Searched Cities
1. Chicago, IL
2. New York, NY
3. Brooklyn, NY
4. Los Angeles, CA
5. San Francisco, CA
6. San Diego, CA
7. Philadelphia, PA
8. Miami, FL
9. Queens, NY
10. Las Vegas, NV
January 2009: Top 5 Most Popular Categories in Trulia Voices
1. Home buying
2. Foreclosure
3. Market conditions
4. Home selling
5. Financing
Popularity: 2% [?]
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February 3rd, 2009 at 10:09 am
Thanks for the encouraging report. Our online real estate school can report similarly. We have a post on our “Good News in Real Estate” blog that asks the question, “Can Real Estate Website Traffic Trends Help us See the Future?” We’re watching traffic on Trulia, Realtor.com and Zillow to help us predict where the market is going. So far, it’s proving to be a reliable indicator. We’ll keep watching.
DG
February 3rd, 2009 at 3:43 pm
This is incredible stuff. I love it.
February 3rd, 2009 at 7:56 pm
“Consumers on Trulia viewed 40% more pages per visit compared to a year ago…” Why is the focus on the growth and not the actual, absolute number? Maybe because the number still lags far behind the market leader, REALTOR.com?
So what is the actual pages per visit for Trulia?
Rather than using “internal” data, let’s use an unbiased, third-party source, comScore Media Metrix, to find out what the actual number is.
For December 2008 (most recent comScore data):
Trulia: 2,839,000 total visits and 16,000,000 total pages viewed.
REALTOR.com: 9,374,000 total visits and 191,000,000 total pages viewed.
Trulia’s pages per visit: 5.64
REALTOR.com’s pages per visit: 20.38
REALTOR.com continues to be the category leader in engagement. Trulia lags REALTOR.com by almost 4x in pages per visit.