Recently, we’ve been hearing many success stories from Trulia Voices members. Many have extended their online interactions with consumers to actual offline business relationships. By talking to them and observing Trulia Voices behaviors, we came up with 10 tips which hopefully can help all of you make the most out of Trulia Voices.

1. Complete your profile

After reading your question or answer on Voices, your profile is where consumers will visit to learn more about you. Upload a cool photo of yourself to stand out. Add a link to your personal website, blog or listing to boost its traffic. The more detailed you make your profile and the more you contribute to Voices, over time, the higher your page rank may be for your profile. Fill out the “about me” section, add testimonials, talk about your experience, interests and anything else that is important for you share.

2. Focus on the consumer

The majority of questions on Trulia Voices are asked by home buyers and home sellers—they want clear, informative and concrete advice that answers their question. They don’t want the hard sell.

Read the rest of this entry »

Most savvy house hunters today know that foreclosed homes are a growing portion of real estate available right now. In fact, consumers are searching now more than ever for foreclosures — a pattern we’ve seen on Trulia.com with 214 percent growth in searches in the first quarter of this year alone.

But, that doesn’t mean that home buyers are comfortable with the process. Trulia’s latest and greatest consumer survey by Harris Interactive told us that while consumers see the potential value in foreclosure properties, the vast majority are also worried about a process that may have potential to go horribly wrong.

So we scoured Trulia Voices to find a panel of foreclosure specialists across the country. Here’s the first installment of their TOP FORECLOSURE TIPs to put your foreclosure fears at rest:

• Prioritize your needs: Make a list of “must-haves” for your new home. The foreclosed house you choose should have some overall appeal as well as most of the items on your list.
• Talk to experts: Make an appointment with an experienced foreclosure agent. Don’t be afraid to ask a lot of questions.
• Be current: Look at neighborhood data with emphasis on real time sales. Compare current and last year’s home values to determine which way the market is moving.
• Aim high: Find out the overall value of the neighborhood in which you are buying. A foreclosure may allow you entry into a better neighborhood.
• Make inspection mandatory: Minimize hidden costs by planning a professional inspection. Don’t be afraid to get a second opinion.
• Avoid pre-stage: The pre-foreclosure/short sales stage is typically not the most profitable. You could wait weeks or even months for an answer from the lender.
• Buy at the right time: The foreclosure stage can be profitable when it goes to public auction. The best REO deals are often situations where the home has been on the market for 60 days or more.

We’d like to thank our panel of pros for their time and great advice: Bill Boone, Fabiola Fleuranvil, John Goad Jr., Tom J. Hall, Travis Houston, Patrick Mahony, Melissa Morgan and Elizabeth Weintraub.

As always, you can get more questions answered from these pros and over 30,000 others on Trulia Voices. You can even find a foreclosure specialist in your neighborhood by entering a city and keyword foreclosure. What are you waiting for?

This week, the top thread on Trulia Voices has lots of unique points of view about low-balling offers. In many local markets around the nation, homes are sitting on the market longer then most sellers would like. Home buyers may be using this as a signal to present a low ball offer. Do you think it’s a bad thing when home buyers present low ball offers? Let’s see what our community thinks…..

1. Real estate pro, Lynn 911 Dallas stated, “Home buyers who want too low ball offers, the problems they cause cost the buyer $1000’s at closing….”

Real estate pro Gerry Vasquez says, “Are you serious? At a time when many homes are not selling because they’re priced too high, a national crusade by Realtors to chastise so-called “low-ball” home-buyers is, well, odd.”

While ML-I, a home buyer from Miami, says “This is not a game as you realtors would like it! This is real money! Offer is a offer is a offer. There is no reason to pay one dollar more than one has to and there is no reason to accept one dollar less than one has to.”

Real estate pro, Deborah Madey, says,”Unfortunately, the media has more influence over buyers and sellers than anyone else. I suggest that buyers utilize data to solidify their offers. If there is no rationale for a lower than ask price, it’s a pure play on seller motivation. April has the ability to keep walking away until she finds that highly motivated seller. ”

Trish, a real estate pro says, “You don’t normally find someone twisting a seller’s arm to sell. If a buyer is serious about a particular property, they need an agent that will work with them SERIOUSLY (low-ball offers typically come from buyers that don’t NEED to buy…they are usually ‘testing the water’ to see if they can ’snag’ it up at ‘their’ price).”

Real estate pro, RK Ruthman says, “With the economy being what it is, low ball offers or not, negotiations have become a tug of war. Buyers and Sellers are equally digging in their heels. If one side lets go, then the other side falls on their arse.”

….and now to the rest of the top 10……

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Guy is a home buyer from Sacremento who asks, “I have a problem and I admit it… I call agents directly and …”

Real Estate pro Vicki Moore, from San Mateo says, “The issue with speaking to any buyer is that an agency relationship may be created. As soon as a conversation with a buyer about a particular house becomes substantive, that agent is creating an agency relationship with that buyer. The agent is now legally liable for any information that is given to that buyer and now the agent has put them self at risk for being sued.”

Guy brings up an interesting question. From my prior experience as a real estate agent and broker in Manhattan, I would always ask if the buyer was being represented by an agent. If so, I would kindly ask them to have their agent contact me with those questions. As an agent, how do you handle this situation?

Read the rest of this entry »

Source: WellcomeMat

We meet great agents at every event we attend. When we met Coldwell Banker Previews International agent Richard Rawdin at the Coldwell Banker annual convention, we were especially impressed with his market knowledge and success. And when we learned that he’s only a couple years into working professionally as a real estate agent, we had to ask to ask him how he’s done it. (SPOILER ALERT: online marketing works!)

Luckily Richard was kind enough to sit down with us and let us film the conversation. To see his insight about what helps him be successful in the competitive Hamptons real estate market, check out the video!

If you’re a home buyer and have been wondering if now is a good time to buy, then this is the thread for you. We have home buyers, home sellers, renters and real estate agents all adding their 2 cents to the conversation. It’s quite informative as well as entertaining.

1. Ryan, a home buyer from St. Louis asks, “Open Opinion Thread: Why should someone buy in this market?”

His question has received 107 comments thus far. Check out some of the comments within this massive thread below.

Chandler, a home buyer from Maryland said, “I’m a buyer in maryland, and I have learnt a lot from this thread. One new thing that I learnt was looking the futures. That was an excellent link and reasonable indicator of investor confidence.”

Roger, our very own housing bear offers 9 reasonable arguments for home ownership in a down market:

Good reasons to buy now:

1. You’ve found a house you absolutely love and you just have to have it.
2. You have a job or a hobby that would be well-served by structural changes to the average dwelling (say, a recording studio or a ceramic kiln or what have you), and you can’t do that with a rental.
3. Similar to (ii): you’re tired of rental white and you want to paint every wall in your home a different shade of chartreuse.
4. You have animals that make it difficult or prohibitively expensive to find a place to rent.
5. You’ve been evicted from an apartment during a condo conversion, and you don’t want that to happen again.
6. You can’t stand the uncertainty or interpersonal relations involved in having a landlord.
7. Gardening is your life and the only places available for that are single-family homes, which are very hard to find as rentals.
8. You want to run a business out of your home, with occasional client visits to your office, and most apartment buildings in your area prohibit that (I don’t know if this scenario ever happens, though).
9. You smoke and there’s a city ordinance against smoking in rentals; owning your home is the only legal way to indulge your filthy habit.

Real estate pro Paul Francis said, “There is an old saying with investors — “You Make Your Money When You Buy” and that’s true with real estate as well.”

Real estate pro Jer Collins said, “For most people Real Estate is a long term OWNERSHIP investment which goes through Cycles of ups and down similar to other investment markets.”

Zack is a home buyer who said, “I never believed in the “wealth is created in real estate mantra” until I bough a rental property and watched people write me checks every month for more than my mortgage payment on the place . Nothing more comforting than that - someone building equity for you. So go ahead and rent - you will make some landlord very happy - as rents in my area have probably gone up 10%+ over the past 24 months.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Got real estate questions? Our Trulia Voices real estate community has answers….

1. NRV, a home buyer in Illinois asks, “A “great time to buy” in San Ramon?? Not according to income/home price affordability fundamentals.”

Real estate pro Lance Holtman from 80138 says, “It is only a “Good time to buy” if the buyer is “ready” to buy.”

2. Ryan Burcham, a home buyer from Los Angeles posted, “I am in Los Angeles and literally the DAY BEFORE I went to put an offer on a house (short sale) I called the….”

Real estate pro Ron Deutsch from Los Angeles says, “I would try to proceed as before, through the listing agent. If the lender(s) (and seller) agree to your offer, they would most likely cancel the auction.”

3. Firsttimer, a home buyer from Alexandria asks, “When will house prices start to appreciate again?”

Real estate pro Bridget Laszlo says, “A home is a great investment. You are building equity and not throwing money away on rent so that alone you are building towards your future.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Source: WellcomeMat

Our Trulia Voices real estate community is growing fast. We’re getting more great feedback from our members about their experiences on Voices and thought we’d share some of their stories with you.

Last week, we published our New York City area Trulia Voices video interview with 3 of our members highlighting their opinions of what Truia Voices is. Today’s video gets the perspective from 3 of our top San Francisco members about what Trulia Voices is to them and how they have benefited from their participation in our real estate community.

Mario Pinedo has received about a $100,000 worth of revenue over the last 6 months which can be attributed to the connections he made on Trulia Voices.

Kathryn Golden was contacted by a buyer from Japan after she read her answers on Trulia Voices.

Jed Lane says was contacted by buyers from Chicago looking to relocate to San Francisco.

If you have a great Trulia Voices story you’d like to share, please contact us at rudy [at] trulia.com.

As you might have seen, we just launched Google Street View nationwide — yeah we think it’s cool too.

But the fun doesn’t stop there…we’re also welcoming Spring with some fresh new features and designs. Check out our new Profiles (here’s mine and here’s Rudy’s) and Navigation bar and you will see what I’m talking about.

Why should I have a Trulia Profile?
As a Real Estate professional you can showcase your professional attributes to the Trulia community, which is 4.5 million strong and growing rapidly. On the new profile, you can display testimonials, contact information, your photo, specialties & experience, as well as your amazing Trulia Voices contributions. You will also have the ability to specify up to twenty locations where you do business, so buyers and sellers can easily find you. Check out Debbie’s profile here.

Any other benefits?
Well, here is the deal, every time you answer a question on Trulia Voices, it links to your profile. The more you participate, the more exposure your profile receives within the Trulia website, the higher page rank it can obtain in popular search engines. Additionally, if you add links to your own web site on your profile, it will help your site to be discovered more easily by people searching Yahoo!, Google and other major search engines.

Convinced? Good. Just click here to update your profile.

What’s up with new with the navigation?
Our navigation bar has a refined design with new drop downs suggesting useful links to help you find the information you care about faster. The site sections have been renamed to be more intuitive to home buyers looking for information; you can find Trulia Guides under ‘Stats & Trends’ and Trulia Voices under ‘Advice & Opinions’.

Cleaner, prettier, better.
You might also have noticed that the whole site has shifted to the center of the browser. It’s been a while coming, but we’ve finally made the site fixed width and centered. The biggest advantage of this layout are that it ensures a consistent experience of the Trulia site no matter what your screen size is. For those of you with bigger browsers you get a little breathing room on either side, making the site that much more pleasing to use.

Enjoy!

So where can you find active home buyers and sellers in your neighborhood online?

Have you checked Trulia Voices? If not, you should. The majority of the top 10 questions on Trulia Voices last week were asked by home buyers [6] and home sellers [3]. Only one of the top 10 questions was asked by a real estate agent. Our real estate community is thriving and great things are happening for home buyers, home sellers and real estate agents alike. If you’re not a part of the conversation already, then jump in today. Everybody’s voice counts!

1. M, a home buyer from Alexandria asks, “I am getting mixed signals regarding what’s happening in this spring market….”

Real Estate pro Cindy Jones from Burke says, “The answer depends on the location of where you want to buy. Right now some areas are moving very well and others we will may see a downward trend for months.”

2. Jackie, a home seller from 33442 asks, “We just received our first offer for 280,000 for the house in deerfield. The buyer will not negotiate.”

Snor, a home buyer and seller from Brooklyn offers this advice, “Jackie, am going to say something here, and I hope you don’t take it the wrong way. Asking a question of this nature in this forum is the stupidest thing on earth. with that said, her is my advice….”

3. Gupta is a home seller from Freemont who asks, “Hi Agents - A Myth or a Fact”

Real Estate Pro Ken Vason from Silicon Valley says, “Typically, a FSBO thinks he knows every thing about the real estate industry and he can handle all situation.”

Read the rest of this entry »