Sellsius real estate marketing blog

Trulia announced two enhancements this week: Nationwide Heat Maps and Trend Reports.

The Heat Maps drill down to the zip code level for 3,100 counties across the country. The zoomable (is that a word?) color coded maps provide average list prices for each zip code or neighborhood. I tested it for Staten Island, New York, where I grew up. I used it to locate lower average list price areas bordered by much higher ones—and I found one. Charleston, with average list prices at $501,000 (6 homes), is bordered by Tottenville, with average prices of $817,000 (19 homes) and Princes Bay, at a whopping $923,000 (13 homes). All other things being equal, I might want to look in Charleston for a home that has appreciation value by virtue of the expansion of the surrounding areas.

Note: Check the sampling number that make up the average (the more homes the better). It would be helpful to also look at average sale prices in those areas to see if they are in line with the current average list prices.

The Trulia Trend Reports are useful because, unlike Zillow’s Zindex Housing Reports whose data includes unsold estimated homes, the data here is ACTUAL user search data at trulia.

The January Trulia Trend Report shows:

• Median Sales Prices (taken from county assessor records)
• Average List Prices
• Most Popular Cities Searched (NY (Manhattan) Los Angeles and San Francisco)
• Typical Search (2.4 beds, 1.7 baths, $883K, 1775 sq. ft.)
• Most Viewed Properties (Dreams & Deals—most are searching for deals)
• Consumer Search Behavior in designated cities (most searched property type, neighborhood & more)

What I found interesting is that in Manhattan and San Francisco, most searchers were loooking for deals—below $535K in Manhattan and below $300K in San Fran. Good luck with that.

If you’re trying to map your marketing strategy, consider that in Boston, most Trulia searchers are looking for condos, in Manhattan it’s co-ops, and in LA, single family.

Note on search/traffic statistic methodology: While stats are taken from all trulia searches, I could not find any indication of how searches & traffic are tallied. Are they only counting unique URLS? Many people revisit the site for repeated searching & hit the same listings (sometimes they are followed by their spouse, a broker and certainly the in-laws). If any hit to a listing is tallied then each return from the same visitor would count as a separate search. Certainly, it would be impossible to know how many searches were from the same interest group. Perhaps trulia could, if it does not already, exclude repeat url visits to the same listing from the statistics.