Source: YouTube

Produce the Note! It’s a rather simple, yet shockingly effective strategy used to fight foreclosure: make your lender show proof that they do in fact own your home.

It’s so straightforward that many homeowners in trouble might have overlooked this approach and would be surprised to learn that it does have merit. In this CNN video reporter Greg Hunter explains that nearly half the time lenders don’t have the proper paperwork to prove they are the rightful owners of the property in question.

The Consumer Warning Network explains that many lenders were in such a hurry to flip or sell mortgages during the boom that they failed to maintain the paperwork indicating that they own the note and mortgage. They’ve also reported that this ‘Produce the Note’ strategy has been met with some real success for those seeking to get back on track with their payments.

Check out this podcast in which Rhode Island Attorney George Babcock explains how he has used this tactic to slow the foreclosure process long enough to get banks to consider reasonable solutions that are a win for all parties involved. In his own words, Babcock explains that he’s looking for “a reasonable accommodation where whomever the investor is in [the] loan gets paid and the homeowner gets to stay in his home and pay a reasonable price for the property.”

For more information about using this strategy, visit The Consumer Warning Network.

Introducing Trulia’s Advanced Search - Search your way!

Everyone has there own preference when it comes to searching for real estate. Some like to search for homes by address while others prefer to search for homes by Zip code. Whatever the case may be, we heard you loud and clear. So go to the Trulia home page or directly to the Trulia Advanced Search page and search for homes for sale your way. And please, do keep your great suggestions coming!

1. Search Homes by City within a 10 mile Radius


2. Search Homes by Zip or Neighborhood within a 10 mile Radius

3. Search Real Estate by Street Address


4. Search Homes by County within a 10 mile Radius


5. Search Homes by MLS ID

Try our new Advanced Home Search today

As the country feels the weight of the current economic crisis, President Obama worked tonight to inspire hope and instill confidence that we can turn the economy around.  In case you missed it, here is the full text of Obama’s speech.

As the speech began, it was covered by many so I won’t rehash the basics, but I did find a few points particularly interesting in Obama’s address to Congress:

• Little on Obama housing plan or mortgage relief plan specifics (I suppose we heard enough about these in the past week), but instead an emphasis on helping “responsible families” make their mortgage payments
• No rewards for flippers, liar loans or that neighbor that you can’t stand who stretched too far — clearly an effort to avoid the Rick Santelli syndrome.
• No mention of restoring the American Dream, despite that being a consistent theme of the campaign.  I wonder if he thinks it’s no longer the dream?
• We won’t see recovery until we clean up the credit crisis and a heavy emphasis on getting banks lending again.

We know that there is a lot of frustration,  finger pointing and blame about the state of the housing market, and apprehension about the government’s role and and ability to turn it around.  Today was another step in a long campaign to convince Americans that it can be done, and that it’s our collective responsibility to ensure that it happens.

What did you think about Obama’s Address to Congress tonight?  Let us know.

Home prices plunged at record rates in December and consumer confidence is at all time low, according to the S&P/Case Shiller home price index released today.  The question is will today’s falling house prices, the recent mortgage relief plan and the $8,000 tax credit for first time home buyers be enough to jump start worried consumers?

The Case Shiller 20 city index of home prices dropped 18.5 percent from December 2007 prices and 19.2 percent for the 10 city index for the same period.   But perhaps the source of most concern is the rate at which single-family home prices are dropping - the biggest drop since Case Shiller began 21 years ago.

While national prices are dropping, what will this mean for your local area? Understanding local price and sales trends is the first step to answering this question.  Here are five cities we thought were worth highlighting.

• Philadelphia, PA
  
• Miami, FL
• San Francisco, CA
• Brooklyn, NY
• Detroit, MI

You can also enter your city on any of these pages and select “More Market Trends” to get a detailed breakdown of sales and listing price trends for the past 5 years.

How do you think your area will fare?

There are SO many ways real estate professionals can use Trulia to market their listings and services online - but there are (at least) five we think are a must!  Trulia can help you not only more effectively market your clients’ properties online, but also generate new business as your current listings sell.  We want to make sure you’re doing all you can with our free tools, which is why we’re offering a free online class this Thursday.

This 45 minute session can have a major impact on your marketing success.  Register for this Thursday’s free webinar: 5 Tips to make the most of Trulia.  The online class will be at 3pm EST/noon PST.  Click here to register.

Can’t attend this Thursday’s session?  Keep an eye on the Trulia events page for future sessions.

This week we’re featuring Karen Wenzel who is a real estate agent with Realty Executives-Integrity in Milwaukee, WI.  Karen is a Trulia Pro member and a big fan of Trulia Voices.

Here’s her testimonial:

“I started on Trulia Voices in December 2007.  I have learned so much from reading other agents and professional’s posts.  But in addition I have been able to track 4 sales this summer directly to my activity on Trulia.  I signed up for Trulia Pro in December 2008.  Looking forward to continuing my networking via Trulia.”

Congrats Karen! And thanks for sharing your testimonial with us.  It’s always great hearing success stories from our Trulia Voices real estate community members.

BTW - We love your new personalized Trulia Profile Vanity URL

http://www.trulia.com/profile/KarenGoPackerUp/

Last night, our CEO, Pete Flint was interviewed by CBS 5 News at our San Francisco Trulia home base for their evening report - Mortgage Help for Bay Area May be Small.  He talked about how homeowners can compare active and sold properties in their neighborhood on Trulia with our new property comparison tool - CompareIt!.

Thanks for the interview CBS 5 News!

Compare Real Estate Side-by Side

CompareIt! is our brand new way for you to compare properties side-by-side. It’s a super user friendly way to do a quick comparison of properties that interest you. Scan all the key attributes of each listing, eliminate the ones you don’t like and save the ones you do for easy future reference.

Here’s how CompareIt! works:

1. Start your search by by entering a Zip Code or City and State and other search criteria

2. Select up to 5 properties to compare by selecting the check box next to each property

3. Click this Check box

4. As you add the properties, you will see them organized like this

5. When ready to compare real estate, click CompareIt!

6. Here you’ll find a side-by-side comparison of each properties key attributes to compare

7. Click “Save” to save the properties you like

8. Your saved properties will appear in your “My Saved Homes” section of your Trulia Profile for easy reference

Try CompareIt! today to compare real estate properties and let us know what you think. Happy searching…..

Thanks to Katherine Boehret for reviewing Trulia on the Wall Street Journal’s Mossberg Solution - A Go-To Web Site for Buyers. By listening to the wants and needs of consumers and real estate agents, the entire team at Trulia works extremely hard to incorporate their feedback into the site. It’s all about creating the best user experience possible. Something that we are very happy to see paying off.

Some of the features that Katherine got a lot out of included:

• Neighborhood Maps - A granular look at neighborhoods
• Asking questions on Trulia Voices - Questions were answered within 20 minutes
• Trulia’s iPhone app for Open House Search - GPS enabled mobile real estate search
• Trulia Newsfeed  - Your real estate property and information RSS feed
• Email Alerts - Get Property, Open Houses, Trulia Voices Q&A and Search alerts at your convenience
• CompareIt! - A brand New Trulia feature where you can compare up to 5 properties side-by-side - Blog post coming later today.

Katherine said:

Another big plus to Trulia is Newsfeed, a list that shows up on the home page with content that’s automatically generated and personalized according to your past search locations. It is updated every day and spits out stats like the number of price reductions, open houses and new listings in an area. It shows an area’s average listing price, median sales price, number of foreclosures and average price per square foot, among other things. These data are a boon for people who don’t have the time or inclination to look this stuff up, and it aggregates the data into one intelligible, quick snapshot.

Although not a typical buyer, she tested many of Trulia’s features for a week from the perspective of someone who was just looking and provided some good feedback. We’re not perfect at Trulia, yet, and Katherine found some areas that we’re looking to improve upon such as listing freshness [we corrected the status of a sold listing she found], iPhone save functionality to your Trulia profile [this would be cool] and getting our comps module working in DC [working as of yesterday 2/18/09]. All in all, these are things that were already being worked on. Every little piece of feedback is valuable to us as it it helps us to better fine tune the site while we add more new user friendly tools and  functionality. More great things to come……

Source

Have you ever wanted to add your Trulia Profile URL on your business card? How about in your email signature? On a t-shirt? Did you find the url to be too long? If so, I think you’ll be happy because today we announce the new Trulia Vanity Url. Now you can customize your Trulia Profile any way you like. You can add your first name, full name, company, title or even a slogan. The choice is yours. We listened to your feedback and made your wish a reality.

1. Login to your Trulia Profile

2. Click edit personal info

3. Create your unique and personalized Trulia Voices Url in the Public Profile section

4. Click Save

To be different, I used my title - Social Media Guru

Before, my Trulia Url looked like this - http://www.trulia.com/voices/profile/Real_Estate_Pro-12345-123456/

Now, it looks like this - so pretty - http://www.trulia.com/profile/social_media_guru/

Our CEO Pete Flint used his first name = short and memorable

http://www.trulia.com/profile/pete/

So, how will you personalize your Trulia Profile Url? Please let us know by leaving a link here to your new profile and/or write a blog post announcing your new Vanity Url on your Trulia Blog and leave that link here.