I sent the following email to Emily and a few others at Trulia:
Dear Trulia Team,
This Realty Trac Problem persists why has it not been solved?
You have known about this problem for months, perhaps years, It is degrading the site, and could easily be fixed. You do not have to expel Realty Trac from Trulia, I am sure they give you bags of money.
However, you need to fix this. You have waited too long already. Rather than rolling out some new ga-ga widget, put a software engineer onto fixing the Realty Trac feed and display so that it's information is not so frau--- er, misleading.
I am posting this letter to the following thread:
http://www.trulia.com/voices/Home_Buying/Realty_Trac_Listing
These Realty Trac listings are damaging the Trulia brand.
Listing fake prices creates distrust amongst consumers and will ultimately drive them away.
Realty Trac provides important ad revenue for Trulia, and so do the Trulia Pros.
The later group is beginning to get offended that Realty Trac postings continue to be displayed as if they are listings for sale. Consumers are misled. Read through the many complaints about Realty Trac listings.
http://www.trulia.com/voices/q_Realty+Trac+lists/
http://www.trulia.com/voices/best/q_Realty+Trac+bogus+listings/
The simplest solution would be for the "list price" to be displayed as "unknown" and for the defaulted amount to be clearly identified as to what it really is... Get a software engineer on this problem. PLEASE!
Also Realty Trac postings should not have per square foot and other analytics derived off of its fake list price, since, duh, it is not a list price nor a bonafide sale price.
--
Jim Walker
Trulia MVP, Trulia Pro, Trulia Rockstar
Realtor
1st American Realty
Jim's DRE#00881401
- Mon Nov 23 2009, 22:30