Trulia launched a BIG feature called Trulia Voices this morning and a redesign of their website. This is a full blown web application now too – no more beta tag. I’ve always been a fan of using Trulia to find available properties for sale, so it’s great to see them release some really interactive and social connectivity features.

I was able to get an early peak at what was coming out, so here it is:

Old Look vs New Look
Home Page:
VS

Search Results:
VS

Trulia Voices

• A community feature that helps users get a better understanding of an area, and helps highlight real estate professionals who really know their neigborhoods
• A national property search feature that will let you keep an eye on any home and alert you when it comes on the market, is sold or has a price drop
• The ability for real estate agents to create profiles that link back to their own websites

These types of features allow connectivity between real estate agents and potential clients, which is a winning situation for all parties.

Smart Filters
Trulia has applied filters to their neighborhood search. They know that most people who search for a certain type of neighborhood in a city also search for similar type neighborhoods in that same area. Those other choices will show up automatically for viewers to scan through.

HousingWidgets.com
They’ve created a non-branded widget review site at HousingWidgets.com. Anyone who has a good widget, that is useful for real estate professionals, can upload it to the site. It makes a one-stop-shop for people in the industry to go, instead of having to peruse through countless blogs and review sites for widgets that would work for them. Not a bad idea at all, we’ll have to get our eppraisal.com widget up there!

There’s a neat site I was just made aware of that showcases inspirational blogs and sites around the real estate industry called Posh’d (www.poshd.com). So, Realty Thoughts just got Posh’d! I consider that to be a real honor, since it’s up there with the likes of BlueRoof.com, which I still consider the best designed real estate site on the internet.

Posh’d is a project of Shaun McClane, another Orlando resident who is also a Realtor and has a great site at Every Kid Deserves a Yard (www.ekday.com).

I really find that they’re doing some interesting things with new technology on their website and blog. In fact, the plugins and widgets in their sidebar are all very helpful. Shortly after seeing our site up there, I started chatting with him directly through their website’s chat widget. It worked great!

EKDAY is a good model for Realtors looking to use new media tools to reach a different demographic.

From a comment on an earlier blog post, I was put on to Florida-based US Condo Exchange. By the way, the term “US” in their name is a misnomer, it appears that they are global. I’m really not that familiar with the condo market, but was so impressed with their newly launched redesign that I called them to ask a few questions.

I was able to talk to Rich Swerdlow (CEO) to follow up on a few questions I had regarding why they went the direction of marrying up a social network with condo data. Rich realized the oversupply within the condo market early on and created US Condo Exchange, so he already has a history of thinking ahead. He did the same thing here by realizing the power social networks can have within certain verticals. This works for them since they already have credibility and history within the online condo vertical.

Some of the features that I find outstanding:

• Specific property pages – Large images, intuitive neighborhood mapping and the ability to comment.
• Advertising – this is what I was originally put onto. You can place your listing and distribute it to websites, cable tv stations and newspapers, globally, representing over 15 million viewers a month, for something like $99/month.
• Community – This functionality is still filling out, since it’s so new. However, I can see how buyers, renters and sellers could use this as a great networking tool for condo transactions. We’ll have to wait and see on this one though.
• Buying/Selling/Renting – With over 300,000 properties in their inventory, it makes sense to check out US Condo Exchange if you’re going to be doing something in this space.

Basic free listings – Anyone can list a condo for free. In this day and age online, you’ve almost got to have this type of business model. Upsells from there make sense, but you’ve got to get people in the door first.

Here’s a property page, take a look.

Besides creating a profile and testing out their website, I haven’t actually used the site for a transaction. I’d be interested to hear user feedback on someone who has transacted a deal through US Condo Exchange. How has that worked out for you? Is there good ROI? That type of thing.

Aspiring home decorators and designers have a social application all of their own. MyDesignIn.com is a bookmarking tool for products and design ideas. Web savvy home decorating aficionados will probably enjoy using it quite a bit – so I thought.

I decided to test that out by putting my non-tech savvy mom onto it. She’s a home decorator and is always surfing the web for “just the right” thing for clients. She loves it. It turns out that it’s just the type of things she was looking for, instead of having 500 bookmarks all across the web, she has a visual bookmarking tool in MyDesignIn.

So, what can you do with it? From their website:

• Collect: Use bookmarking tools to clip home improvement products from any Website. Capture a visual bookmark complete with a product image, name, an abbreviated description, sizing information and price.
• Create: Draw an interactive, floor plan with just a few clicks. Drag and drop bookmarked products into the blueprint for visualization of a complete design.
• Collaborate: Share your designs with friends, family, design professionals and other community members before making final design and purchasing decisions. Leverage the work of the works of the community to get your product research and remodeling project designs done quickly and easily.

Will MyDesignIn catch on with the home decorators and designers of the world? I don’t know enough about the industry to make a call on that. I think what could really make it work though is a partnership (or buyout) by one of the large home improvement companies (idea via CenterNetworks).

It’s easy to become jaded when you work in the real estate industry, especially when you work in the web application development side and things all start to look the same. Well, I’m pleased to announce that I had an “Oh ____!” moment today. (now, I know many of you might have known about them before, but I didn’t)

BlueRoof.com is a real estate tool for people located in the Salt Lake City, Nevada area. Users can find property via the MLS or FSBO listings, they can sell a home through BlueRoof, or they can get a mortgage. You can search for homes and timeshares on their integrated Google Map, find a contractor, rate your neighborhood and there is a wealth of content on each listing. That’s not the exciting part – it’s kind of expected.

Exciting point #1 – Buyers/Sellers making money

Taking a page out of Redfins book, BlueRoof offers their customers a way to make money:

“Say you listed with another agent asking for 6% and your home sells for $300,000. You would then owe the agent about $18,000 in agent fees. With BlueRoof, you only need to pay 1%, which if your home sold for that same $300,000, you would only need to pay out $3000. Then if you offered an agent only 2%, your total agent fees would only come to $6000. That’s a $9000 savings in working with BlueRoof than with another agent!”

Exciting point #2 – Their design is INCREDIBLE

I’m not usually a fan of flash, but BlueRoof has really done a great job of integrating a great deal of it into their site without it getting in the way of functionality. The site has a fresh feel, is easy to read, navigates well and makes the user experience a real “BlueRoof experience”.

Since I’ve never been to Salt Lake City, I can’t really say how big BlueRoof is there. If nothing else, they’ve shown a great deal of initiative online, and they deserve credit for the phenomenal product that they’ve put out.

Here are a couple screenshots:

NOTE: It’s worth noting that the reason I ever found BlueRoof was due to their blog, and the fact that they made a comment on my blog. If you’re really interested in marketing your product, you better learn how to blog and jump on the bandwagon.

A quote from BlueRoof’s blog:

“We have been Realtors for over 13 years and those clients bought a home from us last last year. The website and company, BlueRoof, launched a few weeks ago, but this is one the things that makes BlueRoof different from many of the other new broker models- we are not tech guys who are getting into real estate- we are Realtors using technology to empower the consumer.”