This past October, our two Trulia founders, Pete Flint and Sami Inkinen were named to Inman’s 2008 Top 100 list of Most influential Real Estate Leaders.

Also in October, Frances Flynn Thorsen, our new Trulia Community Manager, was named as one of the Top 50 Most Influential Women in Real Estate by Stefan Swanepoel of the Swanepoel Trends Report.

This month, I was selected to Inman’s 2008 25 Most Influential Bloggers list. What a great honor to represent Trulia. Thank you Brad and team Inman.

PC Magazine named Trulia as one of the Top 100 Classic Web Sites. Thanks to all Trulians for your hard work!

Congrats to all and thanks to everyone for supporting Trulia.

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As the fastest growing real estate agent marketing tool, Trulia Pro allows agents the ability to cost effectively feature all their listings and create unlimited local ads that you can track with our performance stats package. Our new Trulia Partner Program enables trainers, small and mid-sized brokers, MLSs, associations and publishers to promote the Trulia Pro marketing solution to their members and visitors, while generating additional revenue.

“Trulia Pro has proven to be a cost effective and targeted way for real estate agents to market their listings and their personal brand, in the local areas that matter most to them,” said Sami Inkinen, co-founder of Trulia.  “Dozens of partners have already joined the Trulia Partner Program in order to provide their agent communities with smart, ROI driven marketing tools in today’s uncertain market.”

Do you have a large following, sphere of influence or member base? If so, our new program offers you the ability to earn a little extra income just in time for the holidays. With each monthly sign up you can earn between $34-$40. For each annual Trulia Pro subscription you can earn between $95-$100. There is no cap on the amount you can earn. You’ll be able to market Trulia Pro via banner ads on your website or company intranet and via text links that you can email. Whenever someone signs up through your link or banner you will receive payment.

“Trulia’s Partner Program has allowed us to further monetize our site and has been a success,” said Asher Matsuda, Co-founder of Postlets.com.  “In this market, Trulia Pro has been a huge win.”

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Every day you read about the hardest hit markets, the highest number of new filings and where they’re stalling the recovery of the local markets.   And everyone has the same question:  “Where will recovery happen first?”  I wonder if it’s anything like the interest in individual stocks in the stock market…Sure, the index as a whole may be down, but then you find that there are enough people interested in a select few that their individual performance turns around.

So where is the consumer interest in foreclosures and how will these markets perform in the coming months?  Here are the top ten most popular foreclosure markets — where consumers on Trulia are most interested in foreclosures, as determined by foreclosure property views in the month of September on Trulia.com:

We’ll be watching this metric, as well as others, over the coming months.  Meanwhile, if you want to stay on top of what’s happening in the housing market, check out our Surviving the Housing Crisis Resource Center for the latest real estate housing questions and answers, opinions, advice and tips.

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See fellow Trulia Voices Community members Gail Gladstone, David Kasner and Lois Hansen in our new video.

As a sponsor of the 2008 MLSLI Tech Fair, we had a great day meeting with hundreds of local Long Island real estate agents and brokers. We provided demos to everyone who stopped by our table on how to best use Trulia. The feedback was very positive. Both Pierre and I had the privilege of speaking directly to an engaged audience on the main stage. Pierre spoke on a panel that discussed How Companies are Delivering Info to Consumers. I spoke on a panel with Linda Davis titled - Social Networking: Realtors Building their Online Community. The feedback after each panel was wonderful. Thanks to everyone for coming.

Many thanks to both Beth OConner and Jenny Natale of LIBOR for being such gracious hosts.

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The results from our national American Dream Housing Study conducted by Harris Interactive are in. “70 Percent of Non-Homeowners Have No Plans To  Purchase a Home in the Next 12 Months; Nearly Half in 18-34 Age Group Say It’s Too Costly to Purchase a Home in Today’s Market”

With the current state of the financial and housing market, we wanted to get a pulse on what American’s were thinking. Clearly, there is plenty of uncertainty from coast to coast. Some of the results were quite surprising while others shed some positive reinforcement about housing.

Here are some interesting results:

• 70 percent of non-homeowners surveyed say they have no plans to purchase a new home in the next year
• 44 percent of 18-34 year old’s do not own a home right now is because it is too cost-prohibitive
• 41 percent of 35-44 year old respondents polled confirm that concerns about being able to qualify for a home loan is keeping them on the sidelines of home ownership
• 12 percent of non-homeowners say they expect to buy a home in the next 12 months
• 92 percent of homeowners and 70 percent of non-homeowners say they plan on just staying put over the next 12 months
• 49% of homeowners still believe that their home is a great long-term investment

Here are some positive results:

• More than half of all non-homeowners said they still believe home ownership is a central point in achieving their own personal “American Dream.” Women aged 35-44 in the survey agreed on this sentiment more than men aged 35-44 (66 percent versus 47 percent).
• Non-homeowners with an annual household income of $50,000 to $75,000 agreed more strongly (78 percent) on a home being central to achieving their own personal American Dream than those with an annual household income of under $49K or over $75K (51% and 53%, respectively).
• Nearly half (49%) of U.S. homeowners who responded to the survey said they still believe their home is a great long term investment. Interestingly, men (55 percent) were more likely than women (43 percent) to indicate that their home was a great long term investment.
• Some 77 percent of homeowners say they haven’t taken equity from their home in the past 24 months, which offers evidence to help allay some concerns that cheap debt had led many Americans to over-invest in their homes.
• Only 4% of non-homeowners said that “Waiting for the new Housing Recovery Act to take effect” was keeping  them from home ownership – suggesting that this act will likely have little effect on home purchases made by those who do not currently own their own home.

For more info, you can find our American Dream press release here.

What are your thoughts on the state of the market and how it effects the American Dream?

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Here’s the summary:
•    Total print ads in Q2 were down 16% year-over-year
•    Online ads came to only $777M in Q2, down 2.4% from the year before
•    Real Estate Classified ads were down 36% over the prior year

WOW! That’s a pretty incredible drop in overall advertising revenue for the newspaper industry.
Let’s look at the real estate classified portion, the bit that I’m most interested in. Revenues here have halved in two years and it is not clear that there is a light at the end of this tunnel.

The dramatic change is seen in the chart below.

At Trulia, we believe a good portion of this expenditure will transition to online advertising products (from our perspective that’s Trulia Pro, Trulia Ads and Trulia Ad Network) but some of it will just evaporate as it is free to get exposure for listings on many large online real estate sites, including Trulia.com.

Sure, not everyone is smiling, but we think this is great news for the real estate industry and consumers. Removing costs and shifting ad spend to more efficient means will help brokers and agents build profitable businesses and also benefit home buyers and sellers as it helps take unnecessary costs out of the process. It is fascinating to watch the Industry change so quickly before our eyes.

Have you shifted your spending during the past 12-months?  Share your stories in the comments; we’d love to hear them!

Update: I was interested in the changes in automotive and recruitment. You can see them here on my personal blog.

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I posted this on my blog, but wanted to share with our community on Trulia Blog as well.

For those that follow the mortgage crisis, I’m sure everyone saw the news. Here is the summary of the discussions appearing on Trulia and across the web. Email me or in the comment section, tell me about any I’ve missed and I’ll add them in. Keep the discussion going, I’d love to hear your opinion.

Blogs on Trulia:

• US Takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and what it means to you by Candace Evans
• Government Takeover of Freddie & Fannie….what does it mean? by Cindi Hagley 

Mainstream media (very small selection as there so many articles right now…):

• A delicate balance in the Freddie and Fannie action  FT
• U.S. Outlines Fan-Fred Takeover  WSJ
• After The Bailout  Forbes
  
• U.S. Unveils Takeover of Two Mortgage Giants  NYT
• Fannie, Freddie: The biggest losers  Fortune
• S&P slashes Fannie, Freddie preferred stock to junk Reuters
• Fannie, Freddie: Feds Step In BW 
• Winners & Losers of the Fannie & Freddie Bailout WSJ Blogs
  

Have an opinion. Share it here.
Have a question. Ask it anonymously here.

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Education will be a widely discussed topic during the next two months, so we decided to look at the public schools in both Wasilla, AK and Wilmington, DE.  Surpise, surprise - both are highly rated by parents; with Wilmington having a slight edge.

Stay tuned for Part Two where we will look at the crime statistics in both cities.

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We took a quick look at the median list price of homes for sale on Trulia, and the median list price of REO, or bank-owned, homes in five cities with the highest number of foreclosures. We found that sellers in areas like Phoenix, Vegas and Bakersfield may have a long wait ahead of them as the median price of REO homes in those cities is lower than the median list price of non-REO homes by 12 percent or more, while would-be bargain hunters in cities like Riverside and Cape Coral may have a more difficult time finding a large selection of below-market deals.

Foreclosures can be complicated - whether you are trying to avoid one, or trying to buy one. Got a question about foreclosures or the foreclosure process? Get answers on Trulia Voices, a Q&A forum on Trulia.com where consumers and professionals can exchange information and ask and answer questions about their local real estate markets.

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Right on, Mr. Trump! Say, if you’re interested in extending a hand to anymore Beverly Hills millionaires who are in foreclosure, you can start your foreclosure real estate search right here at Trulia.com!

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