Trulia Launches Self-Service Premium Listings for Agents

RISMEDIA, Nov. 12, 2007-Trulia.com, a real estate Web site, announced the launch of Trulia Agent Featured Listings, a premium advertising service that delivers greater exposure to property listings and enables real estate professionals to attach contact information, including e-mail and phone, to their listings on Trulia.com.

Agents whose listings appear on Trulia can choose to highlight up to 10 individual listings with preferred placement on the site. When consumers search for homes for sale on Trulia.com, featured listings that match their search criteria will appear in the top three search results. Consumers can click on an expanded property detail page to view a listing agent’s photo, phone number and send an e-mail directly to the agent who represents the properties they’re most interested in viewing.

“Trulia Agent Featured Listings is one of many steps we’re taking to deliver marketing value to real estate agents by connecting them with more of Trulia’s serious home buyers — 81 percent of whom are looking to purchase a home in the next 12 months,” said Sami Inkinen, co-founder and COO of Trulia.com.

“We have heard from many agents in our community that they would like to increasingly localize and customize their Trulia listings and we are continually innovating to support those requests,” added Mr. Inkinen. “Agent Featured Listings is the first of several enhancements we will be making to our agent-subscription and self-service advertising features.”

According to the company, agents who participated in beta testing of the Agent Featured Listing service received four times more traffic, on average, to featured property listings than to non-featured listings. As part of the service, agents also receive weekly traffic reports including the number of times a listing is viewed on the site, and visitors sent to their Web site from Trulia.com.

“At a time when so much online traffic turns out to be clutter, Trulia is focused on delivering serious home searchers to real estate professionals. The new Agent Featured Listings service promises to deliver even more,” said Adam Toups, a senior sales associate with Vanguard Properties’ Climb Real Estate Group. “In the first week of testing Agent Featured Listings, I received a solid lead through the new e-mail contact feature.”

Agents must already have listings on Trulia.com through a broker feed or by having their Web site indexed. An intuitive wizard-style sign-up path helps real estate pros locate their listings on Trulia, upload a photo and contact information, and initiate secure monthly billing. Properties can be added or subtracted with one click via an agent’s My Trulia account.

For more information, visit http://www.trulia.com/agents/feature.