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Trulia Homes for Sale
By Ryan Ward | April 3, 2007
Ah - once again, the hot real estate topic of the day! Did you know that if you are searching homes for sale on Trulia, you are getting a bad representation of homes that are actually available for sale in your area? Did you know that home search engines, such as Trulia and other do not have the accurate and up to date information that can be found by searching homes for sale on a local real estate agent or brokers website? Did you also know that these third party vendors want to charge me for my own information so that they can give it back to you? Do you think that is good for consumers?
Let’s look a little farther at this; They charge me, so I can show you on their website what I am already showing you for free on my website. Does that sound like a consumer oriented company? This doesn’t even begin to take into account that their information is not up to date like it is on a REALTOR’s website. My website updates new, expired, withdrawn and pending homes nightly form the local MLS. How do you think Trulia and others update? They update when agents get around to adding or deleting their listings and not everyone ever adds or delets the listings so much of what you see is sold, expired or older than represented on their website. They can’t update the way that listings are updated on real estate professionals website because they do not have access to the MLS data. Instead they rely on what is given to them. How many agents do you think go back and delete sold and expired listings? Very few do because they have moved on to other items of interest to them like getting the next listing…
At the end of the day, it is my opnion that these companies will actually hurt the consumer by needlessly increasing the costs of marketing homes for sale. Real estate sales is a business and just like other business, when costs increase, those costs are passed on to the consumer. So join me, if you will, and don’t seach homes for sale on Trulia. Besides, do you really think some guy in some other part of the country knows as much about as a local real estate agent?
Ryan Ward,
Topics: Atlanta Real Estate |
July 10th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Ryan - you are dead on. Most people do not realize the poor representation of homes they are receiving from the large sites that aggregate only a portion of the listings. A site like yours that displays all the listings in the area is the way to go!
Wayne
July 10th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
Wayne,
What gets me as much as anything right now is an email I received from KW this morning touting its effectiveness as an internet marketing tool for Keller Williams agents. It seems that they would be better off teaching the agents to get that traffic themselves…
July 25th, 2007 at 2:45 am
<p>This year however, CNNMoney has done something new by incorporating Trulia’s search engine into the site to power the homes for sale function.</p>
July 26th, 2007 at 10:57 am
I can’t tell you how many calls I’ve had recently on properties that were already sold, sometimes closed! Of course, I don’t mind it as I then (nicely) condemn the portal they found that outdated information on and tell them how my automated e-mail search can keep them up-to-date. I can’t imagine consumers going back to these sites once they realize how outdated the data is.
July 29th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Great post, Trulia seems to be getting bigger and bigger, but with their outdated information they are causing more confusion than providing answers.
July 29th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Super article. Shining the light on Trulia (and the others) inaccurate and out to date information is something consumers really need to know.
July 30th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
Ryan - how right you are. People use Trulia and a number of other sites and think they are getting good info, but they aren’t. Zillow is a great example in terms of finding a value of a home - it just isn’t accurate. In fact, I think it is misleading in many cases.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
[…] Bloodhound Blog, Galen Ward (no relation) to get me worked up. Again. About Trulia. I’ve written about Trulia before, but, before I go on about what I don’t like about them, I think that I do owe them a tip of […]