Personalization - Local News Feed

The Local News Feed gives you real-time real estate news that relates to the cities that you care about. For example, let’s say you are searching in the Bay Area. You check out Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda and Walnut Creek. Go back to the homepage and the Local News Feed give you updates on homes for sale, sales prices, conversations about those cities (on Trulia Voices) and open houses. Tommorrow (or later today) when you come back to Trulia we will have the real time update waiting for you on our homepage! Want it in your feed reader? No worries, an RSS feed is available.

Portability – Trulia Mobile

This is cool. And you’ve got to see it to believe it. Now you can get Trulia on your iPhone, on your mobile device and in your car via GPS, all for free.

Imagine for a moment the “real estate date”. You are at brunch on a Sunday afternoon in your favorite neighborhood. Pull out your iPhone (3G or touch) or mobile device and it shows you all open houses within a 5 mile radius, that meet your specifications. You can narrow down the criteria (SFH, 2+ bedrooms, $600-$700K, for example), or decide to get a full look at the neighborhood. Property details, color photos, open house information, and more; it’s all at your fingertips, on the go. We also partnered with Dash Navigation to get Trulia in your car. Set your specs at home, get in your car, and see all homes for sale/open houses while you cruise around the neighborhood.

Trulia on your iPhone: get the app free in iTunes

Trulia on your mobile device: BlackBerry, Blackjack, Sony Ericsson, Nokia or many more devices

Trulia in your car: with a Dash device, you can access real-time listings of all homes for sale from the comfort of your car

Participation – Trulia Blogs

We’ve taken Trulia Voices to the next level by adding Trulia Blogs to the community. With a built in audience of 5 million home owners, buyers and real estate agents, Trulia Blogs just made blogging as easy as sending an email…all for free.

For house hunters and home owners, Trulia Blogs gives you a way to chronicle your house hunt, or share the step-by-step of your kitchen remodel.

For real estate agents, Trulia Blogs gives you a built in audience of house hunters and home owners to share your expertise and build your online brand.

Since Trulia Voices launched, the community has grown to more than 300,000 registered users and generated more than 200,000 questions and answers.  And on average, questions asked on Trulia Voices receive 4 answers per question, and their first answer within 20 minutes.

You’ll hear us talk more about this launch in the weeks to come. Check it out, let us know what you think, and stay tuned for more exciting products from Trulia…

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“I’m so happy to report my experience with Trulia has been totally positive! We’ve had tremendous numbers of page views in just the month since we’ve signed up. I’ve linked this Realtor’s website to her listings in Trulia, and when I go into the back pages of her website to see who’s visiting, the majority of URLs are from Trulia.”

But before she signed up for Trulia Pro and saw the views to the Realtor’s website increase, how did they know that Trulia Pro would be effective? As much as I’d like to say it was our brilliant marketing, it’s really because they already had proof that consumers are turning to Trulia as their first source for real estate information. Savanna’s team was first introduced to Trulia by the Realtor’s son, who was using the site to look for homes for sale before a cross-country relocation. His fondness for Trulia showed that consumers haven’t just heard of Trulia, they are actively using the tools and finding the real estate info they need - and enjoy experience.

All around a great story about how Trulia works for both real estate professionals and consumers. Pretty cool.

If you have a similar story that you’d like to share, please drop me a note at Katie (at) Trulia (dot) com.

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While Sami may not be able to swim as fast as Michael Phelps or run as fast as Usain Bolt, I am willing to bet that he would take both of them in a Triathlon. Where they may have some sort of tie is on their diets. Michael Phelps for the sheer volume of food and Sami for his creativity.
Below are examples of the diets of champions:
Michael Phelps:
Breakfast:

• 3 fried egg sandwiches
• 2 cups coffee
• 5-egg omelet
• bowl of grits
• 3 pieces of french toast
• 3 chocolate chip pancakes

Lunch:

• 1 pound pasta
• 2 ham and cheese sandwiches
• energy drink (1,000 calorie)

Dinner:

• 1 pound pasta
• 1 large pizza
• energy drink (1,000 calorie)

Sami Inkinen:
Breakfast:

• 2 ½ cups oatmeal with pumpkin puree
• 4 raw egg whites
• 3 cups of (fresh or frozen) spinach added to fruit smoothies

Lunch:
Canned chicken noodle soup prepared the following way

1. Open the can and drain all juice
2. Add 3 packets of sweet & low, 2 tablespoons ketchup, and a handful of sliced pickles
3. Mix and enjoy

Snack:

• I slice bread with peanut butter, sprinkled with pepper
• Tuna salad with peanut butter

Dinner:

• None of us really know…

While we admire and respect our fearless leader, we are often perplexed by his creativity in the Trulia kitchen.
Several of the employees at Trulia are inspired by Sami’s energy alone and have accomplished amazing physical feats outside of the coding wizardry you see on Trulia.com. Take for example our data-analyst who did 250k pushups in 16 months, or one of our product managers who recently did the escape from Alcatraz triathlon or the man in charge of special projects who took up boxing only to step into the ring with some heavy hitters.

We are inspired, energized, and excited to come to work everyday, especially when we are working side by side with champions.

E#48

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I don’t know about what you did last Friday, but I had a pretty awesome night. Never thought I’d represent Trulia in the Olympic opening ceremony.

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Yeah, ya got that right -$1, one buck, the price for a can of beans (refried, pinto, take your pick) is what someone paid for a house in Detroit!  This has to be a new low, at least for the last say, century or so - granted, the home was stripped of its plumbing, lighting and even the kitchen sink, but hey, whaddya expect for $1.00?  I read elsewhere that it previously sold for $65,000, so if I’ve done the math correctly, that represents a 99.99846% discount (sorry if this isn’t entirely right - I’m still using my fingers and toes to count).

Read more about it here

Check out the home here on Trulia

See our Detroit real estate guide.

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I thought it would be fun to start tracking results of those countries represented by our very own Trulians, all of whom go to Olympian lengths daily to have fulfilling, successful lives and jobs.

We’re an international bunch…

On a personal note, based on total medals count while Australia (represented by two Trulians) is coming in at a healthy fifth place, IF one was to consider ratio to population the southern isle is holding their own.

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Overall, 5% of all traffic to Trulia.com is from international visitors. We receive 5 million unique visitors per month, which means roughly 250,000 unique visitors from more than 150 countries have visited Trulia.com in the first half of 2008.  Below, I listed five cities with the most international traffic and the percentage of the top 5 countries that visit their listings.

1.    Miami — 16% of all searchers for Miami properties are from international visitors

a.    Canada - 2.38%
b.    UK - 1.39%
c.    France - 0.98%
d.    Italy - 0.73%
e.    Spain - 0.59%

2.    New York (i.e., Manhattan) — 12% of all searchers for NYC properties are from international visitors

a.    UK - 1.96%
b.    Canada - 1.49%
c.    France - 0.73%
d.    Australia - 0.58%
e.    Italy - 0.54%

3.    Los Angeles — 12% of all searchers for LA properties are from international visitors

a.    UK - 2.57%
b.    Canada - 1.98%
c.    France - 1.00%
d.    Australia - 0.73%
e.    Germany - 0.50%

4.    Las Vegas — 9% of all searchers for Las Vegas properties are from international visitors

a.    Canada - 3.44%
b.    UK - 0.97%
c.    Germany - 0.34%
d.    Australia - 0.29%
e.    France - 0.26%

5.    San Francisco — 9% of all searchers for San Francisco properties are from international visitors

a.    Canada - 1.28%
b.    UK - 1.23%
c.    Spain - 0.52%
d.    Australia - 0.50%
e.    France - 0.47%

6.    Overall US — 5% of all a searchers are from international visitors

a.    Canada - 1.39%
b.    UK - 0.95%
c.    Germany - 0.27%
d.    Australia - 0.20%
e.    France - 0.19%

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If her business is doing so well, why did she want to increase her exposure with Trulia Pro? According to Elizabeth, “I get about one phone call or email each day from people who found me on Trulia – either through commenting on Trulia Voices or through Trulia Pro advertising. With great exposure like that, why wouldn’t someone use Trulia Pro?”

Elizabeth has gotten nearly 10,000 impressions from her Local Spotlight Ad, which she’s targeted in 5 specific ZIP codes. Plus her listings are rotating in the top spots of relevant search results. No wonder she’s getting contacted by so many people from Trulia, two of whom she’s closing deals with in the next week!

If you have a great testimonial to share, contact me at Katie [at] Trulia [dot] com.

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	Prices in the city of San Francisco are down 4% year-over-year. Two neighborhoods bucking the trend: Potrero Hill - up 17% NoPa - up 7%
	Prices in the city of Atlanta are down 14% year-over-year. Two neighborhoods bucking the trend: Reynoldstown - up 11% Morningside-Lenox Park - up 4%
	Prices in the city of San Diego are down 10% year-over-year. Two neighborhoods bucking the trend: Hillcrest - up 12% Carmel Valley - up 10%

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MARKER MEN Welcome You to San Francisco from trulia real estate on Vimeo.

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