The real estate bust is still dragging down the economy, but some startups are making the best of a bad situation. Real estate search engine Trulia, is still growing by zeroing in on subscription services for real estate agents. CEO Peter Flint tells me the company edged into profitability two months ago—six years after the company was founded. He won’t give specific numbers, but says that revenues are doubling from a year ago and almost half comes from real estate agents who pay for Trulia Local Ads and the premium Trulia Pro service to help market their listings.
Traffic to the site is up more than 50 percent from last year, up to 9 million unique visitors a month, according to Flint. ComScore estimates a smaller number—6 million U.S. visitors in September—but even stronger growth of 155 percent (Zillow grew even faster at a 200 percent annual clip to 7.6 million uniques, so it’s not just Trulia that is doing well here). Trulia’s growth comes from expanding its listings to rentals earlier this year, and in general trying to help people make smarter real estate decisions with all sorts of tools and data.
Demand for Trulia’s private shares on SecondMarket are among the fastest-growing. Flint plans to expand further in 2011 with new products aimed at the real estate market. He still has some catching up to do, however. Zillow, Yahoo Real Estate, and Realtor.com are all still larger sites.
Trulia gives home buyers, sellers, owners and renters the inside scoop on properties, places and real estate professionals. Trulia has unique info on the areas people want to live that can’t be found anywhere else: users can learn about agents, neighborhoods, schools, crime and even ask the local community questions. Real estate professionals use Trulia to connect with millions of transaction-ready buyers and sellers each month via our hyper local advertising services, social recommendations and top-rated mobile apps. Trulia...
Zillow, Inc. founded and operates Zillow.com – a leading online real estate marketplace dedicated to helping homeowners, buyers, sellers, renters, real estate agents, mortgage professionals, landlords, and property managers find and share vital information about homes, real estate, and mortgages. Zilow, Inc. also operates Zillow Mortgage Marketplace and Zillow Mobile. Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink started Zillow in early 2005, and Zillow.com launched in early 2006 with data and information on millions of U.S. homes. Zillow’s goal is to help...
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