Rudy Bachraty’s Real Estate Blog

We'd love to see what you guys are dressing up as on Halloween. Please add your photos to your Trulia blogs and leave the link in the comment section below or add them to our Trulia Facebook fan page. And if you're not a fan already, please join, we'd love to have ya!

Have a happy and safe time trick or treating all.

In today’s economy and specifically at this time of the year, many companies are battening down the hatches, especially in terms of hiring. Today, we welcomed 6 new Trulians, a.k.a. newlians to the team. As a start-up, Trulia does it’s best to stay lean, nimble and innovative. So when the opportunity arises to add key pieces to our starting line up, we take advantage of it. Today is such a day.

At Trulia, we believe in BOFFI, so everybody’s voice counts. Each team member is encouraged to be  a DIY self-starter by sharing their thoughts and ideas for the betterment of the company. In the spirit of DIY, today’s newlians were presented with the challenge of putting together their own chairs. They did not disappoint. With passion and enthusiasm, they accomplished their first tasks at Trulia.

So a big welcome to everyone. Together, we can continue to bring our users the very best online real estate experience.

P.S. Trulia is still hiring so please visit our jobs page.

The unique Miami Beach home known as the North Bay Road Castle located at 4462 North Bay Road in Miami, Beach Florida burned down today. The 10 bedroom, 7 1/2 bath, 9,935 sf castle is listed for sale on Trulia for $6,900,000 by Rafael Arias of Sotheby’s International Realty.

According to the Miami Herald,

” Firefighters battled a blaze Friday morning at an abandoned mansion in Miami Beach once owned by the Windjammer Barefoot Cruises family. Dispatch received a call at 8:09 a.m. about the fire at 4462 N. Bay Rd., north of Mount Sinai Hospital.

The house was once owned by the owners of Windjammer Barefoot Cruises, a longtime family business born after a night of drinking in 1947. Michael Burke woke up the next morning and found himself the owner of a $600 sailboat he named the Hangover. Capt. Mike Burke’s six children were later involved in the business. ”

Source: AP - Youtube

Trulia Real Estate Blogger Ross Milroy blogged about Capt. Burke’s Miami Beach castle last October

In related Miami Beach Waterfront news:

According to Realtor® Kevin Tomlinson of the South Beach Real Estate Blog, Waterfront home sales are down 50% year over year.

Ok, who would seriously go fo this?

Trying to Find a Real Estate Pro?

Are you a home buyer or home seller looking for a local real estate agent to help you buy or sell a home? Maybe you’re looking for a mortgage broker to help you get Pre-qualified for a mortgage. Today we announce some new Find a Pro functionality that will make finding a real estate professional on Trulia much easier.

Currently, we have over 350,000 real estate agents in our directory. We also have numerous other professionals such as brokers, lenders, appraisers, stagers, and more. These are the early stages of the directory and we look forward to seeing it grow in the months ahead.

Step 1. Visit the Trulia Voices Home Page and Click “Members”

Step 2. Click "Find a Real Estate Pro"

Step 3. You’ll See our new Real Estate Professional Search Directory

Step 3. You can enter your Location such as “New York, NY”, leave everything else default, click search and see all the pro’s we have in New York, NY

Or, for example, you can fine tune your search and Select only members who have classified themselves as “Brokers”

And get these New York, NY Broker results:

Looking for a Real Estate Agents in New York, NY who have experience with Co-op’s? Just enter the information as seen below and then click “Search”

To make sure we match you with the best person, you are able to sort the results by:

1. Best match: Prioritizes professionals with complete profiles, and high quality contributions on Trulia Voices

2. Most activity: Prioritizes the Trulia Voices enthousiasts who spend days and nights spreading their knowledge and offering advice to consumers in need (available on march 19th)

3. Featured: Prioritizes the professionals who are Trulia Pro subscribers and among other benefits they have ‘special’ promotion on their listings

Search by Type and Most Popular City

We’ve also prominently highlighted the both the Types of real estate professionals we have and the Most Popular Cities where are professionals are located.

But wait, there’s more. We’ve also highlighted the Top Contributors of the Week to give home buyers and home sellers a better idea of who has been the most active on Trulia. Additionally, we wanted to showcase our great community members prominently and thank them for their participation in the community. It’s great way for both consumers and for our professional members to meet.

Want to see which community members have been the Most Active of All Time on Trulia?

Here’s a sneak peek at the Top 5:

We at Trulia love seeing consumers and professionals connect. Consumers are not only looking for a home and information about real estate but in many instances, a real estate professional who can help them every step of the way. Home buyers and sellers ask questions on Trulia because they want a direct answer. From feedback we received, it’s pretty clear that consumers are looking for a local neighborhood expert who they Trust.

Consumers are Reading Your Trulia Real Estate Resume

When a real estate agent or other real estate professional creates their profile on Trulia, they’re essentially creating their Real Estate Resume. It’s so important to all the pro’s reading this to make sure that you complete all the fields of your profile as you wouldn’t go into a job interview with a piece of paper that only had your name and contact information on it. That just wouldn’t help you land that dream job you’ve been searching for. The same holds true for your Trulia profile - please give consumers all the pertinent information about yourself as you can so they can make better informed decisions when picking their next real estate pro to work with.

Cool new Feature: We highlight your contributions within search - It’s an easy way for a consumer to see who’s been active in a variety of ways on Trulia. See Arn Cenedella’s Trulia Real Estate Resume

Tip: Get Proactive - Every question you ask and answer and blog post you write on Trulia Voices appears on your profile. This creates a central repository of information and highlights your knowledge in one central location. Beleive me, consumers do read your questions, answers and blogs. So make sure to join the conversation within the community.

Find a Pro Your Way

As you can see, there are a wide variety of ways you can search for a real estate professional on Trulia.  The goal of the directory is to help you more easily find a real estate professional based on your wants and needs. So try different searches for the qualities you are looking for in your next real estate agent or mortgage broker.

Good luck to all!

Have you created your Trulia Real Estate Resume Yet?

Start yours here today

Maytag Refrigerator Recall

If you have purchased a Maytag Refrigerator between January 2001 and January 2004 within the $350-$1,600 price range, your refrigerator may be one of the 1.6 million on the recall list.

Video Link

According to CNN Money:

Maytag, which was bought by Whirlpool Corp. (WHR) in 2007, said the recall affected Maytag, Jenn-Air, Amana, Admiral, Magic Chef, Performa and Crosley brand side-by-side and top-freezer refrigerators. Refrigerators with freezers on the bottom aren’t included in the recall.

The company said an electrical failure in the units’ relay, the component that turns on the refrigerator’s compressor, can cause overheating and a fire hazard. It said it has received 41 reports of relay ignitions, including 16 reports of property damage, including smoke damage.

Today on MSNBC reports the model and serial numbers in the recall list:

On side-by-side refrigerators, serial numbers ending in AA, AC, AE, AG, AJ, AL, AN, AP, AR, AT, AV, AX, CA, CC, CE, CG, CJ, CL, ZB, ZD, ZF, ZH, ZK, ZM, ZQ, ZS, ZU, ZW, ZY and ZZ, and model numbers beginning with ARS, CS, JC, JS, MS, MZ and PS.

On top-freezer refrigerators, serial numbers ending in AA, AC, AE, AG, AJ, AL, AN, AP, AR, AT, AV, AX, ZK, ZM, ZQ, ZS, ZU, ZW, ZY and ZZ, and model numbers beginning with AT, CT, MT and PT.

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……