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Please join us for our 1st Trulia Local Ads webinar this Thursday February 11 at 10am PT / 1pm EST. Space is limited so please register today.

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Watch CBS News Videos Online

According to CBS:

American retailers report that home sales are up, but sellers aren’t getting the amounts they used to. Ben Tracy reports on the housing market for the CBS News series “Where America Stands.”

Trulia CEO Pete Flint says- The #1 cause for Foreclosure is unemployment.

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Trulia hosted a “Real Estate State of the Union” conference call today that revealed results from a recent survey on consumer sentiment with regard to how President Obama has handled the housing crisis in his first year in office. Also discussed are the most important next steps he can take to solve the housing crisis in 2010 and whether Americans believe homeownership is still a part of the “America Dream”. The discussion was hosted by Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia, Jonathan Miller, President and CEO of Miller Samuel, and Howard Glaser, Principal of The Glaser Group.

Key data points and quotes from the panel of real estate industry experts are included below, as well as the press release discussing the survey results.

Survey Data Points:

The survey found that 37% of Americans gave President Obama a grade of “D” or “F” compared to only 22% from a survey conducted in February 2009 after President Obama’s first 30 days in office. Additionally, 54% gave him a grade of “A” or “B” in February 2009 compared to only 37% in January 2010.

Despite these lower grades, and the troubles that have continued to plague the U.S. housing market, the survey found that the “American Dream” of homeownership continues to be alive and well with more than three out of four (76%) Americans considering owning a home as a part of achieving their personal American dream.

Democrats and Republicans agree on the areas President Obama needs to focus on in 2010 to stabilize the U.S. real estate market. Creating jobs and job security continues to be at the top of the list with 62% of respondents referencing it as a key priority.

Real Estate Industry Expert Quotes:

“One thing is certain, there is no easy fix and we have a long road ahead until we see a healthy real estate market.  I’ve said before and I will say it again, we will continue to see lots of volatility in the housing market through 2010.” -Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia

“Americans feel President Obama has fallen short on his promise to bring stability to the US Housing Market after his first year as President.” -Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia

“I absolutely agree that job creation and job security has to be the #1 priority of President Obama.” -Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia

“I also agree with consumers that reducing the number of foreclosures has to be a primary focus for the President and his administration.  Growing foreclosures is a trend that absolutely needs to be reversed.” -Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia

“The Obama administration’s actions, and actions that were taken prior to the administration taking over, have not given the housing market the ability to be self-sustaining… We still have a housing market that is still heavily dependent on government help, and I think the primary solution in a very general sense has to be on job creation.”-Jonathan Miller, President and CEO of Miller Samuel

“I’m not suggesting that we go back to where we were a few years ago but when you think of a financial institution at the current time and they’re looking at balance sheet pressures for capitalization, they’re looking at declining housing prices, elevated unemployment at a rate that’s double what it was just two years ago and increased layoffs. They’re really only interested, in the general terms, in very clean, vanilla-type lending products.” -Jonathan Miller, President and CEO of Miller Samuel

“The only way to ease the situation is to create an environment where you have a lot more employment and that is something the administration hasn’t been able to accomplish over the last year.” -Jonathan Miller, President and CEO of Miller Samuel

“The biggest challenge that is ahead of us and no one is even talking about is the exit strategy for the housing sector from this dramatic federal involvement.” -Howard Glaser, Principal of The Glaser Group

“We’ve seen that unwinding begin in some of the other federal support bailout programs, such as the TARP money to banks, etc., but not so much on the housing side because we need to be in there right now. No one wants to talk about how you unwind Fannie and Freddie Mac and these other interventions.” - Howard Glaser, Principal of The Glaser Group

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On Tuesday January 26th 2010, Trulia’s CEO Pete Flint will be hosting an industry call discussing how President Obama did in his first year in regards to turning around the housing crisis. Pete will be joined by real estate experts and pundits Jonathan Miller, President and CEO of Miller Samuel and Howard Glaser, Principal of The Glaser Group.

We’ll share some results from a recent study that asked consumers to grade  how President Obama did in his first year and what steps they thought President Obama should take in 2010 to improve the housing crisis. Additionally, we’ll discuss if consumers still feel that home ownership is part of the American dream and whether or not they are enthusiastic about homeownership.

Last year, we asked consumers if homeownership was part of their American Dream:

Furthermore, to get a pulse from our very own real estate community of home buyers, home sellers and real estate professionals on Trulia, Pete asked our community to share their thoughts on how they felt President Obama handled the Housing crisis in 2009:

At the time of this screen capture, 248 people shared their thoughts. Many of which were extremely passionate.

Pete also replied to the community and encouraged more great feedback as he will quotes some of the people’s comments in the call:

Here are some of the comments Pete highlighted in his reply:

A broker from Florida responded: “Handled” the housing crisis… I think ignored might be a better statement. He’s an incredible orator and an even better actor. Take away the teleprompter and the scripts and he’s useless. The grade: an F.”

A homebuyer from Michigan said: “If you look at what really put us in this mess was several years of the “same ole same ole.” Obama was handed such a mess that no one person, or no single solution, could ever fix it in a reasonable time frame. Sure Obama did make a few mistakes, but he did come up with some programs that at least kept us out of going down the same direction and at least tried to level things off.”

An Agent from Washington: “Obama’s grade is a solid C. He has the Federal Reserve buying mortgage backed securities to hold down interest rates. He has extended the Tax credit for buyer’s and both have helped keep the Housing industry from sinking further than it already has. His keeping homeowners in their home program has been a huge failure.”

A home buyer from Santa Barbara, CA says “his policies have had some success in addressing the growing problem of falling home prices, and stemming foreclosures, all of which will satisfy some of the demands of the industry. However, the fundamentals of the economy remain vulnerable. The extent to which he has been successful in addressing the problem of the economy as a whole, need to be viewed not only in the context of the scale of the problem, but also within a realistic time frame, and one year would seem too short a time frame to pass harsh judgement.”

If you would like to listen to the call and chat LIVE, please click here on Tuesday at 12:30 pm PST……or, just watch LIVE below.

Live video by Ustream

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Today we’re excited to announce our new hyper-local advertising platform, Trulia Local Ads. Local Ads completely open up the ad market on Trulia, making it affordable for real estate professionals and businesses of all sizes to own a slice of their local market. What does a slice of your local market look like? It’s an easy way of directly targeting audiences at the city or even ZIP code level, reaching the local customers who matter to you most.

We understand that your local market may be a crowded space. Local Ads make it simple to outshine the competition by grabbing the attention of local buyers and sellers. In each city and ZIP code, there is a limited amount of advertising inventory, so when you lock up a large share of ad space, you lock out your competition. It’s a snap to activate your Local Ads campaigns. Just select a few locations and use sliders to purchase the slice of your local market that meets your budget. Ads targeted by ZIP code will show up on listings pages, while ads targeted by city show up in search results.

We’ve spent a lot of time making Trulia Local Ads campaigns fast and easy to create. When you build your Local Ads campaign, you can select from default ad templates that dynamically update using your Trulia listing data or profile information. These ads are generously larger than competing services and perform 5 times better than the industry average for banner ads. If you’ve previously built your own advertising creative for campaigns elsewhere online, Local Ads allows you to simply upload your own custom image.

For now, Trulia Local Ads is in limited release and only available to our Trulia Pro subscribers. Update:  Trulia Local Ads are now available to every Real Estate Professional!

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This week, Trulia will be in New York City attending a number of real estate events including the 2010 Inman Real Estate Connect real estate conference, RebarCamp - REBCNYC and RainCamp. It will be a week of networking, learning, sharing and education.

We’ll have the following Trulians in attendance:

Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia

Twitter: @Peteflint

Trulia Profile

Speaking: Main Conference Program at Inman

Date: Wednesday January 13th

Time: 4:05 pm

Panel: Debate - Views, clicks, leads or social engagement? What matters and who in online real estate can actually deliver value? Two brokers and two online execs square off.

• Pete Flint, CEO, Trulia
• Michael Montsko, President, Weichert Lead Network
• Spencer Rascoff, COO, Zillow.com
• John Reinhardt, President, Fillmore Real Estate

Pierre Calzadilla, Manager Industry Relations

Twitter: @NYPierre

Trulia Profile

Speaking: ReBarcamp and attending Raincamp

Ninve Adams, Manager Strategic Partnerships

Trulia Profile

Mark Weiss, Director of Business Development

Trulia Profile

It will be a busy week of meetings, sessions and conversations, something we’re all looking forward to. So whether we’re meeting for the 1st time or re-connecting, we’d love to talk to you. If you see one of us, please say Hello and we’ll do the same. Have a great week everyone.

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Our January home price reduction report shows 21% of U.S. homes as of January 1, 2010 have experienced at least 1 price cut of their original asking price during the last 12 months. The total amount slashed off of active for sale listings by home sellers is $21.2 billion. The average national price reduction remains 11%. It’s the second straight month where inventory levels have dropped for single family homes and condos across the United States.

South Continues With Least Amount of Homes Reduced

The South has the lowest overall level of price reductions, with 20 percent of current listings experiencing at least one price cut, while the Northeast saw the biggest decrease in price reductions compared to the previous month — 12 percent. (Regions according to the U.S. Census Bureau)

• South- 20% of listings with price reductions
• West- 22% of listings with price reductions
• Midwest- 22% of listings with price reductions
• Northeast- 22% of listings with price reductions

“Consumers have a golden window of opportunity to find a great home and take advantage of the tax credit before mortgage rates start to rise,” said Pete Flint, Trulia co-founder and CEO. “Historically low interest rates currently available and tax credit incentives are the ultimate price reductions for home buyers. As rates rise throughout the course of the year, buyers will need to adjust their purchase price ceiling.”

The number of major U.S. cities with price reduction levels at 30 percent was cut by 50 percent in January. In December, 14 major cities saw a reduction of 30 percent or greater and that number has been reduced to just seven cities in January. Additionally, Minneapolis, which has the held the top spot for the past two months, experienced a 33 percent decrease compared to the previous month. Cities experiencing the largest decreases in percentage of listings with price reductionscompared to the previous month include:

• Los Angeles, CA – 46% decrease in price reductions
• New York, NY – 36% decrease in price reductions
• Memphis, TN – 34% decrease in price reductions
• Minneapolis, MN – 33% decrease in price reductions
• Honolulu, HI – 33% decrease in price reductions

Luxury Market Still Hardest Hit

Luxury homes (those listed at $2 million and above) continue to be hit the hardest by price reductions with the average discount rising to 15 percent for the first time since Trulia started tracking in April 2009. Additionally, luxury homes represent less than two percent of all current listings on Trulia, but are responsible for 24 percent of the $21.2 billion in home price reductions. The average discount for homes priced less than $2 million continues to hold at 10 percent.

January 2010 Price Reductions – Top 50 U.S. Cities

For more info on Trulia’s national home price reduction report, please visit our press release in the Trulia News Room

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