Once upon a time, when Trulia launched their new engaging community platform “Trulia Voices,” I started a discussion. For months I have been getting emails notifying me that someone else has responded to the discussion, “Trulia vs. Zillow.”

Its Trulia’s question and answer platform (very similar to Yahoo Answers) that I’m speaking of. I was very surprised to read all the various opinions that were left behind from realtors, lenders, consumers, and other real estate industry professionals. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Trulia and Zillow, I’ll give a quick breakdown.

Have I ever used Zillow or Trulia? I tracked the results to a “T” over a six month period. Simply put, I received a larger volume of visitors from Trulia, using roughly fifteen listings as bait. I captured few, if any direct leads from these two portals.

The sites have similar characteristics; however they are more easily contrasted. Zillow came out of the box with the “Zestimate” and Trulia was born as a real estate community.

Zillow was able to launch three basic components (with very high hopes). The Make Me Move feature, classified homes database, and a real estate wiki (software that promotes the ability to collaborate, create, edit, and link user generated content) are the milestones that were launched in December 2006.

I’ve been too busy to frequent Zillow, but I decided to take a trip tonight. Remembering when the real estate blogosphere chatter was aiming it’s crosshairs at the Zestimate evaluations (home estimation tool) that swarmed the internet; I can recall that Trulia controlled the upper hand. Now, as I have recently studied the Quarterly Home Value Reports and regretfully trust the Wikipedia Zillow brand ranking, I feel the tides have turned. Is Trulia on Wikipedia yet? Don’t get me wrong, I still would rather stare at Trulia than Zillow. However, I can feel the race and I’d bet before Zillow gets slapped with a class action suit, they will win the race...I wonder if Trulia would sell to Zillow?

When I aggressively sold real estate, I followed Trulia’s efforts religiously. From “Trulia Tini’s” to their developer API platform, I felt Trulia brought a well needed dose of value to the table.

Quick Facts:

I found the below Alexa information to be very interesting. Zillow is proving to be the victor in this example as they have more page views per user (above 6) than Trulia. Zillow’s traffic ranking is also better than Trulia’s. What does Zillow have that Trulia doesn’t?




Zillow has the home evaluations pitch…period. Their new home reporting section is very well thought out and presented, however after cruising to my local on Zillow and viewing my local quarterly home value report, I wasn’t impressed. It seems as though they have finally nailed the entire system of displaying home values to the consumer, but they have yet to fill out a report for the Hampton Roads Real Estate Market.

Site Features:

Trulia
Trulia Heat Maps- Map displaying the hottest markets for real estate.
Trulia Voices- Questions and answers provided by the Trulia community.
Listing Database- Listings submitted by real estate professionals.
Local Statistics- A very detailed statistical approach for many popular locations.
Trulia API- Get on board and develop the next “Trulia Widget.”
Trulia PP- Let Trulia provide your site visitors with a searchable Trulia Database.

Zillow
Zestimate- Zillow’s struggle to index the price of housing in every market.
Listing Feed- Zillow properties displayed directly on your website.
Most Talked About- Listings that have the most in depth conversations get promoted.
Quarterly Home Value Reports- Some reports not completed for last fiscal quarter.
Make Me Move- Feature allows bidding and owners the chance to test the waters.
Advertising- Zillow has a great advertising position for agents to utilize.
Zillow API- Developer center for Zillow fans.