Sellsius real estate marketing blog

Trulia rocks! This will only make Prudential brokers want to work with Trulia more. Question, what does the disgusting photo of a hoof foot have to do with anything.

Hi – Sami from Trulia here. You heard right. “Why”…you ask? Not for us to say.

While we were slated to exhibit, it sounds like there was an internal disconnect with the conference organizers.

No hard feelings, though... We’ve benefited from the Starbuck's wi-fi plus great coffee to compliment the dozens of meetings we've had with our Prudential broker partners!

- Sami

Thanks for the confirmation Sami. We'll try to get to the bottom of it.

Yikes! That sounds like a corporate level issue with Prudential and Yahoo. I'm sure the Trulia folks don't mind being kicked out because they are competing with Yahoo. That's only more confirmation that they're on the right track. Being kicked out seems to be a good thing. Now they can go have some fun on the beach.

Good for Prudential.

Big time score for Trulia. Plus, they just landed Keith Louie as new exec VP who will run Sales, Biz Dev and Marketing. Apparently, they plucked him away from Turn Here. Keith was former executive at Yahoo running their Real Estate division. We heard that he bagged Inman for greener pastures as Trulia is truly hot. Congrats Keith. Congrats Trulia. I'm sure you'll kick Pru's butt in the future. With that kind of fire power, there's no stopping you.

So either RS is totally incompetent if he really didn’t know that Trulia was coming until 20 minutes before the conference or he really did let Trulia fly all their execs and their booth to San Diego fully intending to turn them away just minutes before the show, which is in fact pure “evil.” Either way, PREA needs to fire that guy ASAP.

Sigh...

It is a good thing that since I'm with Prudential, that I can take advantage or BOTH Yahoo and Trulia. I can only take advantage of Trulia because I knew of them and their capabilities well in advance.

What about all of the other helpless PRU agents out there though?

This was a clear sign Trulia looks more like a foe than a friend to Prudential, RE/MAX and other non-Realogy brands. Rightly so after Trulia got in bed with Coldwell, C-21 and ERA. Trulia is just realtor.com 2.0. Most non-Realogy brands are pulling away from both realtor.com and trulia.com.

The real story here is the resistance Trulia is facing from the non-Realogy brands. Trulia faces a very uphill battle to get to a critical mass of listings. They have less than half the listings in most markets and any consumer quickly notices all the missing listings compared to IDX sites.

Without 90% or more of the mls listings Trulia isn't a serious player in the consumer's mind, and the deal with Realogy makes it more difficult for Trulia to get the listings they are missing.

Who will buy Trulia? That's the key question. It's going to be difficult to impossible for Trulia to get their next round of funding in this market. Looks like Trulia yet another Realogy brand to me. Any wonder why Prudential doesn't want them around?

See a great discussion about Trulia's future, financials and why they are having such a difficult time getting a critical mass of listings in the comments of this rain city post here:
http://www.raincityguide.com/2007/02/10/adventu...

Hi Afthird - thanks for your thoughts.

Truth is, we are fanatically focused on serving the entire industry. The diversity on our advisory board (from major brands to well-respected independents) is evidence of this: http://www.truliablog.com/?p=83

Also, you might not be aware that some of the earliest adopters of Trulia’s model were Prudential brokers. See what they have to say here: http://www.trulia.com/testimonials/

Thanks!
Sami

I couldn't help it, this whole thing generated a .

response on my blog.

John Lockwood wrote: "Good for Prudential."

Care to expand on that John? Seems pretty classless on Pru's part to me. 20 minutes before doors open? Is Pru as clueless about other aspects of their business as they are about who is exhibiting at their own convention?

Jay,

I'm not sure that this is classless on the part of Prudential, more like one person acting that way, but he hardly speaks for the whole, or even a majority, heck there is nothing to indicate the he even represents anyone but himself.

From what I've heard on the inside at Prudential, is that it was 1 guy's point of view that resulted in them being asked to leave. It wasn't a "corporate policy," "conspiracy", or even something that represents the opinions of the company at large.

Most everyone that I know at Prudential who even understands Trulia, is fully behind them, and I've never heard of, or met the guy who kicked them out.

Yahoo sold out to Prudential--and we shifted those Overture advertising dollars to Google.

It is an ongoing search to find effective and non-affiliated sources for our advertising allocations.

Sure, Jay. Realtors(r) pay for access to MLS. Without paying a dime, Trulia then screenscrapes sites that we pay for out of our IDX hosting fees and MLS dues, while meantime garnering the witless adulation of the anti-Realtor(r) community.

Prudential is a company of fellow professionals, and they kicked them out. Good for them.

Let me know if they do it again. I'll send them a handwritten thank you.

This is an interesting blog! I can honestly say, as someone who has been along the path for many years, the statement that other brokers are pulling away from Trulia simply isn't true. Just before the REALOGY announcment with Trulia, Keller Williams Realty International (4th largest real estate company in North America) announced it's support and partnership with Trulia. If you're wondering about "critical mass" of listings, visit www.alexa.com and compare web traffic of Trulia with some of the other "players" in the online real estate listing game. A quick check of Trulia.com vs. Homes.com shows that last July Trulia surpassed this competitor in daily traffic.

As for Pru's decision, shame on them for allowing Trulia to get to their convention and then asking them to leave. You can't tell me they hadn't made the decision to not allow Trulia as a vendor until that very moment!

I agree with Stephen A. Trulia is truly a player when someone like Pru decides they can't exhibit at their trade show!

Keep up the great work Sami and co.!

Wonderfully childish.

Good to know us real estate 'professionals' are continuing to do everything we can to remain in the public consciousness as second only to lawyer scum on the food chain!

http://www.condometropolis.com/blog/2007/03/07/...

Great coverage, guys! There's certainly more to this than we now know.
I sure wouldn't put it past the realogy folks to buy trulia for the technology. Maybe pru got the word?
Where's the love? What's the fear?

Roberta, why do you have to spend so much money on search marketing in the first place? Those click fees keep going up on Google. We stopped months ago as it wasn't effective. As for non-affiliated, who the heck isn't affiliated these days? Don't you have a good word of mouth referral base? Instead of blogging here, shouldn't you be out pounding the pavement?

Our company was an exhibtor at the Pru convention. I thought it odd that, when I went in search of both the Trulia and Zillow booths (both were on the list of exhibitors), I could find neither.

I have no opinion on Prudential's decision to toss Trulia out. However, I do have an opinion on Freeman's decision (the tradeshow exhibit management company) to force us to use union labor to set up our booth, costing us potentially hundreds of dollars more than the already exhorbitant amount we had to pay for booth space and other associated fees (internet access, materials handling, etc.)

Of all the shows we've ever done, Pru was to date the most expensive. Of course, if you ask me, the whole thing is a racket anyway!

I would be interested to know if Trulia was reimbursed for any expenses associated with rental of their booth space.

Alcatraz (aka?): I did not mention how much we spend on search marketing. What is "so much" to you could be a small part of our operating budget. It is all relative--and the financial return works for us.

You are right about the prevalence of real estate affiliations. In our practice, we negotiate every step of the way on behalf of our clients and want the freedom to move services if the providers do not perform (or overcharge). I have difficulty with commission "bonuses" being paid for use of affiliated services. It muddies the water.

I am confused as to why you would assume we don't have a strong referral base. We do. And many of those clients came to us years ago when we were advertising on goto.com for pennies per click.

Finally, pounding the pavement and hiding behind an alias has never been my style.

Roberta my dear, how many houses have you shown today? How many new clients have you prospected? You still sitting at your computer reading this blog? Pick your Final 4 Bracket? Buy any stocks today? Bid on an eBay auction? Downloaded a song from iTunes? Come on, toss down the coffee and start buying some enhanced listings on Trulia!

If I was Trulia...

I would start my own estate conference, and invite all the cool brokerages, then when Prudential tried to get in, I'd be like, "Sure Pru, come on in" Then shut the main doors on them, and yell, "You've been pwned by Trulia!"

LMAO, if I was Trulia. :)

seriously, it's just a knee jerk reaction on Pru's part, you know they will have to access Trulia at some point.

Hi Sami,

Thanks for jumping in! Congrats on the NY deal - that's a whole 'nother can of worms, yikes!

Back to your Prudential mess... Yes, while Trulia has a handful of individual Prudential and RE/MAX brokers on board, it has recently become very clear how the big brands are lining up online and with respect to Trulia. The bets have been placed:

Realogy - Trulia.
Prudential - Yahoo drives traffic to prudential national IDX.
RE/MAX - remax.com national IDX.

There is a big problem with Realogy's strategy with Trulia, IMO, and Prudential seems to have found the crack in Realogy's armor. Trulia has less than half the listings nationally, while Prudential and RE/MAX are nearing 100%.

Serious home shoppers quickly notice Trulia doesn't have half the listings. When they want to know what the house they saw driving around is selling for and can't find it on Trulia they won't return.

Prudential and RE/MAX currently have a serious online advantage over the Realogy/Truila combo. They would be crazy to give Trulia their listings now that that Realogy placed their bets on Trulia. Why give up this advantage now that they have a several year head start over Realogy on a national IDX strategy?

My prediction: Realogy buys Trulia in the next 6-12 months and Trulia never gets much more than half the listings nationally. Just a hunch.

All the best,
Afthird

I think everybody is kind of missing the point here. Trulia is not in competition with Yahoo. In fact, they go hand in hand together. For instance, when you go to Google or Yahoo and do searches, does Prudential come up organically? No! So when I drive by a Prudential yard sign and see a YAHOO sign rider, I might go to Yahoo and perform a search vs. going to the real estate section sponsored by Prudential with their logo on it. Anyways, the point being is that when I perform a search on Yahoo and I went there because I saw the sign rider telling me to go to Yahoo from Prudential, everybody that comes up on page 1 of Yahoo benifits, except Prudential!, ie. Homes.com for sure and maybe Trulia.

About the whole IDX thing and companies like Homes.com and Trulia NOT Having all the listings, is the whole point. Look, the fact that the entire MLS is not on there is more of a Reason to VISIT THE AGENTS SITE that DOES have that IDX feed. The whole point of having an agent level personal site is to drive consumers to it to perform IDX searches, so if you do not have an IDX feed you are totally missing out because THEN you rely on other companies to have the entire inventory, and then they are not on your site.

If I was Trulia...

I would start my own estate conference, and invite all the cool brokerages, then when Prudential tried to get in