Trulia Breadcrumbs That Delight & Amaze
Follow me on a click-through journey
(and trust me, you will want to read to the very end)…
So I get this email…
…titled “Three Steals Under 100k” and I see a listing in my very own state (albeit a 2.5 hour drive away) and out of curiosity, I click the word “Houston” to take me to this Trulia listing:
And then…
And I want to see more info, so I click the “See More Photos and Details” button which takes me here:
And then…
And I don’t find any specific information or available units from this condo site, so I click “View Website” in hopes I’d be sent to a builder site where I could see current inventory, and it takes me here:
And then…
I see that the starting price is as Trulia.com noted (under $100k) but still see no inventory no matter how hard I look, so I click “Enclave Homes by Royce” to get to the builder site so I can see inventory, but it takes me here:
And then…
So I’ve gotten nowhere, so I head here:
And then…
There are many results, so I click on the first one which looks like the actual builder website which takes me here:
And now…
I know I didn’t put any earnest money down, but I feel like Trulia owes me some sort of refund for my time, just sayin’… since Royce has earnestmoneyrefund@gmail.com do you think that I should see if something similar is offered and give moneyrefund@trulia.com a shot?
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This article published on Thursday, December 4th, 2008 at 4:49 pm | Contact the editor
Topics: Social Media
About this Columnist (Full Profile)
AGBeat Editor-in-Chief: Lani, named one of Real Estate’s 100 Most Influential, as well as 12 Most Influential Women in Real Estate, is a business writer hailing from the great state of Texas in the city of Austin. As a digital native, Lani is immersed not only in advanced technologies and new media, but is also a stats nerd often burried in piles of reports. Lani is a proven leader, thoughtful speaker, and vested partner at AGBeat.
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Comments (19)
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- sheilabragg:
Trulia Breadcrumbs That Delight & Amaze: Get out of your feed reader and comment on this post- we PRO.. http://tinyurl.com/5saav3
- Jonathan Washburn:
http://agentgenius.com/?p=7864 pretty funny (real estate marketing)
- Dan Daugherty:
agent genius – the trulia click through journey – http://agentgenius.com/?p=7864
- Charleston Real Estate Blog : The problem with advertising based search portals:
[...] there are listings in a reasonably easy to search format. But not all the listings are accurate as Lani found out when she clicked through the email and found nothing more than a dead end.So if it looks too good to be true … it usually is.For the best map based Charleston real estate [...]
- Twitter Tweets about real estate as of December 15, 2008 | Bay Area REO:
[...] Edition) http://tinyurl.com/54wcdl 2008-12-04 23:37:17 · Reply · View JonWashburn: http://agentgenius.com/?p=7864 pretty funny (real estate marketing) 2008-12-04 23:37:10 · Reply · View [...]
Benn Rosales
Conal Campbell
Elijah May
Lani Rosales
Tara Steele
Marti Trewe
Charlene Jimenez
I received the same email and deleted it. I sensed it was a three-ring circus. Thanks for the confirmation!
Wow. Read like a fly in the ointment until the the bottom fell out at the end.
I wonder if iNest and NCO get a refunds on that click through?
Thanks for doing this! On the one hand it’s nice to see some aggressive home marketing. On the other, it’s a very shoddy piece of work by Trulia, which is normally better than that.
Huh?
I got the same email but didn’t bother to take the bait. Thanks for saving me the time.
OMG! So glad I wasn’t the only dork who did this. I was sincerely curious as to whether or not they were actually advertising homes in my area for under $100k. Silly me. Although typical internet geek, when the first click didn’t immediately take me to the $100k listings I got mad and quit.
Our MLS has people who do nothing but make sure that the integrity of the data in the system is beyond reproach. There are checks and balances and fines for entering false or misleading information. On sites like Trulia anything can be entered. Same with Zillow and others.
I got the email and was going read it after my daily visit to Genius Land. Thanks for saving me the time Lani.
I’m laughing right NOW! Somebody got had…
I have to say though…. this is why we get the calls from clients, “I saw where you could buy a 6,000 SF, Brand New house, in the diamond of neighborhoods on 30 acres for $100,000. Can you help me find that?”
urgh.
I agree, Kim – a client calls and says, “hey, I saw this on the interenet”, so it must be true, right? Then,when we can’t find it, who looks bad?
Some great detectve work there, Lani!
Good detective work Lani!
Teresa you make a good point. That’s one of the reasons why we don’t except manually uploaded listings to Cyberhomes. Instead we partner with Brokers and MLS’s to get listing data–verified from its original source.
This is why companies like Trulia (and Zillow… have you ever read the story on their website about how they got started? An insult to our industry!) shouldn’t be supported by the industry. They have very little expertise in our industry and don’t get how it works. We have very little relevance with our tools. NAR needs to get with it…