Joshua Jarvis - Georgia Realtor's Blog

I got featured today in the Trulia E-mail newsletter and I thought it was pretty cool.  We'll see if anyone is impressed by it but I thought it was certainly pretty cool.  I've not been blogging much on Trulia since the editor is giving me headaches.   Not sure why other than trulia's tech support keeps asking what browser I'm using.  

Thanks for your suppport.

Ok, I made you look.  This isn't a tirade about Trulia Snapshot, no.  I in fact, LOVE, snapshot... so much I hate it.  It makes looking at homes fun.   That's all we need is another method to look at real estate that is fun and entertaining.  I know now where to send ALL of my LONG TERM clients. 
(HINT TO TRULIA STAFF:  (offer a product like Market Snapshot from Top Producer to agents and I'll be in line first).

Snapshot does have that unnerving effect of making you spend time looking at real estate without offerring any real conclusions.  Time will tell if it's going to be an effective tool or not, since there aren't a ton of options.  However, I could very easily see showing this to a buyer and displaying graphically their 10 home choices next to each other.  Add a little bit of functionality (Trulia will have to pay me for this hint) and it could very well replace what I am doing with our MLS altogether.

*** After time passes playing with Snapshot *****

Having finally spent a few hours with it, I would say that although the black map (AWESOME!) is cool, the most functional item is the bars at the bottom.

Something hit me yesterday, kind of like a brick being thrown from the driver of a Toyota Prius with Road Rage... you get the idea, it's like a slap in the face only harder and well bigger. Trulia could very well be my secret weapon. I'm sharing this with you because... well, frankly NO ONE will read my blog so I can could tell you all kinds of secrets and no one would know. OK on with the actual post...

(for those wondering, the pink highlighting is my browser's doing as I have some functions on there, like analyzing no-follow tags... I'm kind of a geek)

I was sitting with a Seller yesterday explaining how we missed the market and his price is just too high evidenced by the lack of showing. I took him down the yellow brick road of marketing to explain that yes indeed his home is on Craigslist, postlets, realtor.com, and yes it's even on Anne Smith website even though she's a competitor. The engineer in me decided to even explain the whole IDX process and I continued to pummel him with details which is my normal process. "Wow, them with an overload of information" is my motto, or if you prefer my Wife's version of what I do, she says "You like to show them how smart you are."

In any case, the Seller was wanting to try it for a little bit longer... then it happened. Either the caffeine kicked in or my sugar levels had gotten right (it was after lunch) and I asked my seller to do test with me. (For our purposes we'll look at Buford, GA Real Estate)

See the purpose of the visit was to present a new CMA (from our MLS data) and to get a price reduction. I never misled this seller, I was blindsided by the market on this particular home as well. It wasn't until I took him to Trulia that he started to believe me...


Here's the steps:

1. Look for your home in a $25,000 price range.
2. Which home(s) stand out?
3. Now look under the "Price Range" button there should be a button the bottom of the next row that says, "RECENTLY SOLD" - Click that box and uncheck the one on top.
4. Mr. Seller what do you see?