We all saw it coming…Trulia is a business, and they were going to have to capitalize on their investment better at some point. Who better to market to than real estate agents? So now, we have the “opportunity” to purchase featured listings on Trulia. Here are my (main) problems with this.
1) IDX is FAR superior to anything Trulia can provide. IDX reaches out to every visitor of every web savvy Realtor in a given market. In Austin, TX alone, there are over 2000 agent websites that display every listed property on their websites.
2) Trulia doesn’t provide localized statistics. They will provide you traffic stats, but they’re providing national stats. Their only claim is “2 million monthly visits.” In order for me to make an educated decision, I want to see how many searches are performed for the Austin MSA on their website. I love to gamble, and I’ll bet big money that my sites completely blow their Austin search volume away.
3) Simply entering a listing into Trulia (or their competitors) is redundant. I have many clients ask me to enter their listings into the slew of inferior real estate websites, and I try to educate them – but 9 times out of 10, I have to waste my (assistant’s) time and enter the listings. Again, we can’t see the true traffic statistics, however, I track all incoming call sources, and Trulia accounts for less than 1% of all traffic. Entering clients’ listings into third party marketing sites is about as effective as placing an ad in the newspaper – it’s not.
4) It’s Cheap…Right Now. Have you checked out the price for the Realtor.com featured listings? They stuck the knife a couple of years ago – and twisted it this year. Trulia Featured Listing ROI is bad at $50/month (their current cost) and it will be horrible at $100, $200, or more.
There’s really nothing that can sway my opinion about Trulia, other than localized traffic statistics. The only solution we have is to treat Trulia like any other inferior form of marketing – and not use them. Since we can still enter basic listings, I will do so if a client requests it. However, if a client requests a featured listing, I will suggest a # of more effective ways to spend $50.
Yeah, it was only a matter of time. I got a call while I was in the airport over the holidays from someone with the newest latest and greatest real estate site, where they can put my listings up for free. He claims they had over 200,000 hits in the first month on the site. Lucky me, I can help them build up their site for free with my listings so I can buy a featured listing later on down the road…. Yeah right….
Trulia and Zillow are worthless in my market. They won’t get my listings for much longer.
I could not agree more. Trulia and others are attempting to pull the wool over agents eyes. It just makes me so mad when big companies are boasting about putting their listings on Trulia. We really need to educate other agents and brokers.
I couldn’t agree more about wasting your time (assistant) placing your client’s home on inferior sites. I go through that all the time!
Trulia was less than 1% (.0087%) of my traffic when I placed listings on their site. Not worth my time!
David,
I would have to agree with you 100% instead of wasting whatever the cost is on purchasing a Featured Listing on any of those sites why not just advertise a listing with PPC under that areas name?
Way more cost effective and targeted traffic specifically looking to buy a home in that area.
Everyone can “get” info about real estate whether it’s in Tucson, LA, or New York but there is so much more to it and so many emotions to it that computer programers just can’t comprehend this. Eventually someone someday will get very close as the internet keeps improving but even then, trying to predict the real estate market is just as tough as predicting the stock market and I have yet to see a computer program/ website that can do that either. Now real estate agents will need to embrace the internet and learn it to be considered for business but thats just the new way to prospect and be highly leveraged, whereas 20 years ago it was called the yellow pages.
I saw this coming as well, in fact I wrote my own Blog about Trulia last year (Trulia; Friend or Foe). I wish more Realtors® would realize they are hurting our industry by using companies like these. Many of these agents think they are better representing their sellers by adding their listings on Trulia. It’s not true! You should not feel that you have to advertise your listings on every crappy website that is trying to infiltrate our business.
You are 100% correct that our IDX is far superior to any of these 3rd party sites, we have ALL the listings. Why would anyone search for real estate on a website that only has some of the listings?
Sites like Trulia and Zillow are desperate to get our listings because that is what their visitors want to see. I don’t care to help them, and I certainly don’t need to pay them for marketing!
Supplying Trulia with featured listings is like feeding the Eggplant That Ate Chicago. There is short term benefit. But, in the long term their goal is to eclipse individual Realtors in the serp’s. The more content we give them, the easier that is to accomplish.
Agtents need to stop adding thrie listings to Trulia, Yahoo, Zillow and all the other syndication sites. Local IDX searches are superior in just ablut all ways.