Three foreclosure tips to put your home buying fears at rest

Make inspections mandatory

Minimize hidden costs by planning a professional inspection. Don’t be afraid to get a second opinion. Think you’ve got hidden costs? Check out this buyer’s problem.

Q: Test for Meth? Found a bank-owned [house] in a good neighborhood that needs some work… it seems to make sense to make purchase subject to clean inspection for meth. How can you test? Asked by Kendra, Home Buyer in Phoenix A: Great thinking to test for Meth. Besides checking police records, and doing a search of the prior resident. The property will only be a hazard if… see more

Avoid pre-stage

The pre-foreclosure/short sales stage is typically not the most profitable. You could wait weeks or even months for an answer from the lender. Find out what one buyer learns about foreclosure prices.

Q: How do I get more info on a pre-foreclosure home? Is the price you see on the website the price you pay? Asked by Daniel Craig, Home Buyer in Northern Ireland A: I would encourage you to go directly to the source to get first hand and current information. Contact the agent and request… see more

Talk to experts

Make an appointment with an experienced foreclosure agent. Don’t be afraid to ask a lot of questions. Especially if you are a first time home buyer like this house hunter.

Q: I’ve been told that foreclosures are the best value for me as a first time home buyer. T or F? Asked by Betsey, Just Looking in Renton A: It is a common myth that Foreclosures are always a great deal and buyers should only look for those… see more

Want more foreclosure tips? Stay tuned for part two of the Trulia foreclosure tips special edition.

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As you might already be aware, we are obsessed with real estate information at Trulia. And today we launched a new way for you to visualize real estate from your desktop.

Trulia Snapshot is therapy for home buyers, real estate enthusiasts, college-age dreamers, ready-to-upgrade home owners, your mom, my mom and everyone from the interested to real-estate-obsessed. It satisfies our universal need to gander real estate photos, prices and locations online.

Of course we are here to help you dream big, but whether it’s pure gawkery that you are after, or if you are longing for a new way to visualize what’s on the market in your area, Trulia Snapshot is here to fulfill your needs (well…at least these needs).

So how does it work?

It’s pretty simple: search for any city in the U.S., can click around the map, scroll the slider through the most expensive/least expensive homes in your neighborhood, or just hit the big play button on the left to sit back and let your dream home find you.

TruliaSnapshot Demo from Trulia.com on Vimeo.

This is one of many data visualizations that we’ve launched. For Trulia Snapshot we worked with the very cool Stamen Design, the same firm that helped us bring Trulia Hindsight and Trulia SearchPaths to life. And of course we recently launched the ability to walk the streets from your couch with our Google Street View integration!

So what are you waiting for? Start clicking to get started…

Chicago, IL; Austin, TX; Los Angeles, CA; and Miami, FL.

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Yes, it’s true. We have another community member adding video comments on Trulia Voices. A couple of months ago, Patrick Mahony was the first real estate agent to post a video comment to Trulia Voices. On Monday, Judy, a home buyer from South Dakota, asked a foreclosure question on Voices about a property located at 2525 Marie St in Simi Valley, California. Ted Mackel, a real estate agent from Simi Valley, answered via a video comment. He became the second real estate agent ever to do so on Voices.

Yesterday, he added a second follow up video comment, with even more detail, on the same question. How great is that?

Are video comments the wave of the future? Well, that may be pushing it a bit. But they sure do add another level of interaction between home buyers, home sellers and agents. In fact, it’s another way for an agent to differentiate themselves from their peers. Sometimes it’s not what you say but how you say it that matters. Text has a funny way of getting misinterpreted. However, in addition to showcasing your local knowledge, video has the potential to show your personality to someone thousands of miles away. For some people, it can be the difference between choosing agent A versus agent B.

Will we ever get home buyers and home sellers asking us their real estate questions on video? Hmmmm? Now that would be really interesting……

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According to Dictionary.com, a meme is a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes. For our purposes, a blog meme is sort of like a chain letter that lets people learn more about you. You create a set of questions and answer them in detail. Usually, these are quirky and unusual things others might not have known about you. It’s a give and take situation. After you share your story with others, you are then required to select a number of people to forward the questions too. The hope is that they will reciprocate and answer the same questions and then pass it along to their sphere of influence as well. And so the meme grows and mutates into a almost never ending chain of touches that allows us to connect and learn about each other in a transparent and fun way.

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I spent 3 days in Phoenix, Arizona attending the Bloodhound Unchained real estate marketing conference and I must say I’m fried But in a good way of course. Whenever you get a chance to meet your fellow real estate bloggers, agents and technologists in person it’s a treat. Considering it doesn’t happen that often, taking advantage of education and networking opportunities can pay huge dividends - in business and in life. There’s just something about meeting face to face that can never be replicated online. In fact, online communication is just the introduction, real world interaction is where the real magic happens. I call it the power of love.

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Trulia just unveiled some new - and FREE! - real estate agent marketing tools. Brand Your Listings will help you build your brand and connect directly with the serious home buyers and sellers on Trulia!

Here’s what you get:

• Increased online visibility: Your photo and contact info on all of your listings.
• Connections with serious consumers: Emails from active home buyers & sellers sent directly to you
• Stats to share with sellers: Tell your clients how many people view their listings every week
• Open house advertising: Market your open house to thousands of local buyers

Great features to introduce yourself to the over 5 million users on Trulia each month, over 70% of whom plan to buy or sell in the next year and 70% of whom don’t yet have an agent. And the price is right – FREE!

In addition to these benefits, when you Brand Your Listings, you’ll pump up the SEO benefits that you already enjoy from your Trulia Voices profile. But more on that later, so stay tuned…

Check out the Brand Your Listings release here.

(ps – Did I mention it’s all FREE?)

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One of the most popular questions these days. Everybody is thinking about it, buyers, sellers, real estate agents; everyone, no matter where they come from in the country. Unfortunately, unless you have special powers (do you think Spider-man would know?), you will not be able to answer this question with certainty. However, everyone can talk about it and everyone can have and share their opinion.

Ryan from Chicago posted this question on Trulia Voices over a month ago: ‘Why should someone buy in this market’ and I am still stunned with this thread. Close to 1K answers and members are still contributing, trying to collectively come to a conclusion.

And that is the real value of the community. Is not always about getting an answer, it is about interacting, sharing ideas, solutions, knowledge and hopefully coming to a conclusion which makes sense to you. What’s your question? Maybe it’s time to ask…

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I’ve been attending the Bloodhound Unchained Real estate Marketing conference in Phoenix, Arizona since yesterday. Greg and Brian have been the most gracious of hosts. Thanks guys! Thus far they have put together a great group of presenters ranging from Mary McKnight from RSS Pieces, Laurie Manny from Long Beach Real Estate Home, Russell Shaw - nuff said, Andy Kaufman from My East Bay Agent, Brad Coy - Mr. Twitter and Kaye Thomas.

In today’s ever changing market, real estate agents are looking for new ways to enhance their business. I remember when agents would cringe at the thought of going to class and some still do. So when you think about it, it’s quite inspiring to see agents take the time to attend real estate educational events. It says a lot about the direction of our industry. When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Ok. Off to dinner with the crew…..

Blog on.

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This is a fairly random post, so bear with me.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t really get into the concept of living a virtual life - especially not one where I’ve gotta pay for virtual stuff that I can’t pick up and throw at someone if I feel so inclined.

I first read about the popularity in South Korea of buying virtual clothes and accessories for one’s avatar and how one company had created a $30 million/year business from selling these “items” to people. Then I read this fascinating (but sad, as in pathetically sad) article in the WSJ about some guy who has a real wife, but often “cheats” on her with his Second Life “wife” - I’m amazed that his real-life wife doesn’t put both him and his computer in the trash compactor.

I still just don’t get it. But maybe I’m just old-fashioned - turns out that even our friendly Swedish furniture giant IKEA has jumped into the virtual world.

It turns out that IKEA has partnered with Electronic Arts to furnish its stylish and affordable furniture to players in The Sims 2 virtual world. Read all about it here.

I just hope that one can hire virtual workers to put the stuff together because I hate it when I over-tighten the virtual screws and strip the virtual sawdust fiberboard panels during assembly.

Happy Friday!

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Whether you define ROI as Return on Investment or Realtor on Internet, Trulia’s business was built on the premise of helping agents and brokers improve their ROI. “You do this out of the goodness of your heart?” You might ask. The answer: We have good hearts, but the bottom line is that if we can’t prove our ROI to you, we don’t have a business.

What’s the news here? Well, there really isn’t anything new; we’ve been doing the same thing since we started Trulia three years ago. But in the past few days I’ve had the opportunity to pick up the phone and chat with some agent and broker partners to talk about Trulia’s search strategy, business model and the changing dynamics of real estate marketing. My calls reinforced that we are proving our ROI and on the right track. I thought it would be good on our blog to take a moment to explain the fundamentals of our business model and why we do things the way we do.

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