SAN FRANCISCO, May 29, 2013 –Trulia (NYSE: TRLA), a leading online marketplace for home buyers, sellers, renters, and real estate professionals, today released interactive map visualizations that show distinct new categories of information for house hunters to provide insight on the best place to live. The first new map is dedicated to rentals and visualizes rental cost-per-bedroom in cities across America, so that renters can easily pinpoint neighborhoods that are within their desired price range. The second set of maps visualizes historical earthquake and flood data to depict the risk of these natural disasters on a block-by-block level.
With today’s launch across Android mobile and web platforms, rental prices and natural disasters join Trulia’s robust suite of interactive visualizations, which already feature home values, crime, school rankings, commute times and local amenities such as banks, gas stations, restaurants and grocery stores.
“At Trulia, we use interactive map visualizations to present large amounts of information in an easy-to-understand format. With our new rental maps, consumers can browse through color-coded neighborhoods and quickly focus their search on neighborhoods that meet their budget,” said Lee Clancy, VP of Consumer Products. “After considerable damage in recent years, many consumers likely feel as if the frequency and severity of natural disasters is increasing across the United States, but up until now the risk of these events has traditionally been hard for home buyers, sellers, and renters to find. Now house hunters can use our maps to see flood zones and understand where earthquakes are more common in order to make informed decisions about where to move.”
Details of the New Trulia Map Visualizations
- Rental Rates: The rental rate visualizations incorporate a year’s worth of data to show the average cost-per-bedroom at the neighborhood level. Deep reds indicate high-cost areas, and yellow and green designate more affordable neighborhoods.
- Earthquakes: The earthquake map layer incorporates USGS and the California Geologic Survey data to show seismic hazard, also known as ground shaking potential. Blues and greens show low shaking potential and reds show high-potential areas.
- Floods: Using FEMA data, Trulia’s flood hazard maps outline a community’s different flood risk areas, determined by topographic surveys and statistical data for river flow, storm tides, and rainfall. High risk areas are identified by dark blue shading and show the areas where there is at least a 1 in 4 chance of flooding during a 30-year mortgage. Light blue designates the lower-risk flood areas.
Trulia’s visualizations are accessible on the web by visiting http://www.trulia.com/local. Select a city and then utilize the menu on the left-hand side to see properties, home values, crimes, schools, commute times, amenities, rental rates and environmental risks of floods and earthquakes. On Android mobile, click on the layer icon in the upper right corner and select heat maps from the menu.
