Everybody loves news feeds, even real estate sites like Trulia

Trulia, the site for real estate listings backed by Sequoia and Accel, just it made a little easier to take the pulse of your local real estate market. It now offers local news feeds, publishing items like new listings, recent sales and changes to the median sales price.

I’ve complained before that it’s a bit hard to tell Trulia apart from better-financed competitor Zillow, which also calculates the value of your home and includes mortgage listings. The news feeds may not sound terribly groundbreaking, but they’re a smart addition to Trulia’s site. Feeds make it easier to gauge the general marketplace, and since you can subscribe via RSS, you can track local real estate news without having to visit the Trulia site. Then, when the market seems to be moving in the right direction, or you see a listing that you’re particularly excited about, Trulia will be your first stop. This seems especially useful if you’re just casually looking for homes over an extended period of time.

Zillow also offers news feeds, but they’re aimed at real estate agents, not casual visitors and homebuyers.

Trulia has also announced mobile versions of its site, included an iPhone app with GPS capability. Again, this is a smart feature, and will, for example, allow people to see if there are any homes for sale nearby when they’re driving around a new neighborhood. Zillow also has an iphone app, but it was built by a third-party developer, rather than Zillow itself.

Leave a Reply