Trulia.com V. Zillow.com: The RE.net Cage Match

Trulia.com announces their new features today and most of you will yawn, roll over, and go back to sleep.  LISTEN TO THIS PODCAST WITH TRULIA'S HEATHER FERNANDEZ

That's a mistake.

If Zillow.com is that hot chick that only dates bikers and Redfin.com is that shallow girl that MUST always be seen with a sugardaddy , Trulia might just be that nice girl you marry.  Their only newsworthy event was when Trulia was dissed by Prudential California some 15 minutes before a tradeshow.  PruCal acted like a bunch of obnoxious Realtors and Trulia acted like a class act. 

Trulia is that quiet company that could be a Realtor's best friend.  They obtained 2 million listings from partnerships with regional and national real estate brokerages.  Trulia.com has over 1.5 million unique visitors to their site each month.  70% of those visitors plan to buy a home within 12 months.  50% of the total unique visitors plan to buy a home within six months.  60% of all users are unrepresented by a Realtor.  That's over 400,000 potential clients floating around for a Realtor to grasp.

Today, Trulia announces three new features on Trulia.com:

1- Trulia Voices is a Q & A  section where anybody can ask or answer questions on a national, regional, local, and hyper-local level.  The answers are rated by the community at-large so that a useful reputation of expertise can be gained by the real estate professional.  They categorize the questions so mortgage originators have an equal opportunity to gain a foothold on this site.  Trulia Voices has a special "alerts" feature by e-mail or RSS feed so the interested Realtor or Originator can find out if there is an important question in real time.  It reminded me a lot of LinkedIn Q&A.

2- Trulia Profiles allows a Realtor or originator to build a webpage with SEO capabilities.   Trulia carries a 6 or 7 Google rating so the ambitious online real estate marketer would be wise to build a robust profile on Trulia.com.  Zillow doesn't share their Google Juice with the Realtor or Originator.

3- HousingWidgets.com is a cute directory of all the "bling" for your blog.  It allows the community to upload, comment, and rank all the real estate related widgets out there.  Trulia Widgets offers four unique widgets that offer consumer-centric tools without redirecting them from your website.

I'll be posting some good ideas about how Realtors and Originators might benefit from Trulia.com's new features.  Trulia might have been a month behind the curve but their offering seems far more useful to the Realtor and Originator looking to build an online presence.

I love the opportunity Zillow offers but wonder if they are the biker chick who will take off to Mexico leaving us broken-hearted. I know Redfin will ride this sugardaddy until he's broke than move onto the next sucker.  Trulia might just be the gal you marry. Let's see how this plays out.

MORE NEWS:  Greg Swann at Bloodhound Blog covers Trulia's new features here:

Is Trulia.com the UnZillow?  Realty.bot emerges from beta with a new Q&A feature and robust, system-wide automated alerts