Trulia

Trulia is an American online real estate marketplace which is a subsidiary of Zillow. It facilitates buyers and renters to find homes and neighborhoods across the United States through recommendations, local insights, and map overlays that offer details on commute, schools, churches and nearby businesses.[1]

Founded in 2005, Trulia is based in San Francisco, California, and it is owned and operated by Zillow Group, Inc.[2] Trulia is a registered trademark of Trulia, LLC.[3]

Company history

Founding

Trulia's founders British Pete Flint and Finnish Sami Inkinen met at Stanford Graduate School of Business. In 2004, while looking for off-campus housing amidst studying for his MBA, Flint discovered that the local real estate information available online was often insufficient, out of date or both.[4] Flint and Inkinen took this opportunity to simplify the process of finding a new home through technology.[5] Flint was the CEO and Chairman from inception to acquisition. Trulia was incorporated on the 1st of June 2005.

Growth

In September 2005, Trulia launched its beta product, originally only serving properties in California. Soon after, with growing demand from listing agents wanting to give their listings more visibility nationwide, Trulia rolled out across the US less than a year later.[6]

In July 2012, Trulia filed for an initial public offering and stated they would trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TRLA.[7] In August 2012, Trulia revealed they would plan to raise up to $75 million in the IPO.[8] The IPO was priced at $17 per share, and began trading on September 20, 2012 at an opening price of $22.10.[9]

In May 2013, Trulia announced plans to acquire Market Leader Inc. (based in Kirkland, Washington) for $355 million, expanding its offerings for real estate agents.[10] The acquisition officially closed on August 20, 2013.

Acquisition

On July 28, 2014, Zillow announced a deal to buy Trulia for $3.5 billion.[11] The deal closed February 17, 2015.[12]

As of February 2019, Trulia's offices are at 535 Mission Street in San Francisco.[13]

Products

Trulia offers a variety of real estate and neighborhood products and services for consumers and realtors.[14]

In addition to its Android and iOS For Sale and Rentals apps, Trulia features:

In August 2018, Trulia launched Trulia Neighborhoods to enable home buyers, sellers, and renters to find information about a particular neighborhood.[15] The feature provides original photography, drone footage, reviews from local residents, and facts about each area.[16]

In March 2018, Trulia launched What Locals Say, which allows home buyers, sellers, and renters to find information on what local residents think about the neighborhood they live in through polls and reviews.[17]

In February 2018, Trulia launched a service called Local Legal Protections.[18] It provides information on local nondiscrimination laws for housing, employment, and public accommodations alongside property listings based on data collected by research nonprofit Movement Advancement Project.[19]

  • Trulia Neighborhoods :
  • What Locals Say :
  • Local Legal Protections :

Data

Trulia provides price trend information by using listing and public data which shows how the price of a home has changed over a period of time as well as comparing that house price with other homes in the same ZIP code, city, county, or state.[20]

Trulia previously featured a crime map with data sourced from CrimeReports.com and SpotCrime.com, which aggregate crime data from law enforcement agencies and news reports.[21][22] In 2022, citing "bias in real estate", Trulia removed the crime data.[23]

Information on local schools and amenities is provided for each property listed on Trulia. The school map includes GreatSchools data, such as each school's name, grades taught, and the GreatSchools score. School and district boundaries are provided by Maponics. The amenities map is powered by Yelp data.[24]

Interactive Commuter and Transit maps show the driving or commute times from any given point in the United States.[25] Using data from OpenStreetMap and GTFS feeds, a visual representation of commute times is projected onto a geographical map.[26] This provides the ability to see at a glance how far one can travel from any given property in a given amount of time.

References

  1. Trulia Unveils New Mission To Help Buyers And Renters Discover Homes And Neighborhoods They'll Love prnewswire.com, retrieved 2018-09-10^
  2. Michael De La Merced. Zillow to Buy Trulia for $3.5 Billion in All-Stock Deal The New York Times, 28 July 2014^
  3. TRULIA - Trademark Details Justia.com^
  4. Pete Carey. Mercury News interview: Trulia CEO Peter Flint Mercury News, 12 October 2012, retrieved 14 November 2012^
  5. Meet the Boss: Sami Inkinen, COO, Trulia SFGate, 2010-08-29, retrieved 13 November 2012^
  6. Matt Marshall. A new housing site. Oh, and Dogster may be profitable! Silicon Beat, retrieved 13 November 2012^
  7. Form S-1 Registration Statement SEC.gov, United States Securities and Exchange Commission, August 17, 2012^
  8. Robin Wauters. Online real estate firm Trulia files S-1, plans to raise $75 million in IPO thenextweb.com, August 17, 2012^
  9. Hayley Tsukayama. Trulia IPO pops on debut, keeps climbing The Washington Post, September 20, 2012^
  10. Ari Levy. Trulia to Acquire Market Leader for $355 Million Bloomberg L.P., May 8, 2013^
  11. Zillow to Buy Trulia for $3.5 Billion in All-Stock Deal The New York Times, 28 July 2014^
  12. John Cook. Zillow closes $2.5 billion acquisition of Trulia, plans to cut 350 staffers GeekWire, 17 February 2015^
  13. John King. S.F.'s newest office tower shows poise in a time of flash San Francisco Chronicle, November 14, 2014^
  14. Trulia Now Offering Neighborhood Intel--From Neighbors BuilderOnline.com, March 19, 2018, retrieved March 23, 2022^
  15. Wilson Mark. Trulia is building the Netflix for neighborhoods Fast Company, August 14, 2018, retrieved March 23, 2022^
  16. Wiggers Kyle. Trulia Neighborhoods gives homebuyers a drone's eye view on their new neighborhood VentureBeat.com, August 14, 2018, retrieved March 23, 2022^
  17. Lulu Chang. Trulia's 'What Locals Say' feature gives homebuyers neighborhood insights DigitalTrends.com, March 19, 2018, retrieved March 23, 2022^
  18. Trulia now surfaces data on LGBT protections as you search for houses Fast Company, February 7, 2018, retrieved March 23, 2022^
  19. Taylor Hatmaker. Trulia adds an LGBTQ section with local non-discrimination laws to its home listings TechCrunch.com, Yahoo, February 7, 2018, retrieved March 23, 2022^
  20. Umberger Mary. Testing some of the top home-search sites Los Angeles Times, 2008-06-20, retrieved 13 November 2012^
  21. Gia Liu. Get your next home with the best apartment-finder apps Digital Trends, 14 December 2020^
  22. Henry Grabar. An Encyclopedia of Neighborhoods Slate, 16 August 2018^
  23. Todd Bishop. Trulia to drop neighborhood crime data from home listings, after Redfin speaks out against practice GeekWire, MSN, retrieved 17 July 2022^
  24. Trulia, AddressReport spotlighting local amenities with Yelp integration Inman^
  25. Emma Hutchings. Heat Map Visualizes Your Daily Commute Mashable, 29 June 2012, retrieved 14 November 2012^
  26. Mark Wilson. Trulia's New Maps Show Your Commute Time From Your New House Fast Company, retrieved 14 November 2012^