Prospering Amidst the Real Estate Meltdown: Trulia CEO Pete Flint (Part 7)

SM: Are you seeing a lot of transactions in very inexpensive real estate?

PF: The annualized transaction rate is 5 million units right now. That compares to 7 million at the peak. It is a fairly steady pace. In certain regions 80% of all transactions are distressed, meaning they are either short sales or foreclosures. It is crazy, but at some point it is going to pick up.

SM: This cleanup needed to happen. It was not sustainable.

PF: It is like the aftermath of a forest fire. The forest has been decimated, but I am starting to see greener shoots all around. While the fire is not totally out yet, I do think there will be a lot of green shoots later on this year.

SM: What are you going to do with this money you have raised?

PF: We are really not going to spend a lot of money. We are going to hire engineers and build the team up. We have 85 people right now, and we will have 100 by the end of the year.

SM: What is the distribution of your workforce?

PF: It is around 50% product and engineering.

SM: How do you handle your ad sales?

PF: We do them internally.

SM: What is your growth strategy?

PF: Our growth strategy is threefold. First, our goal is to build a phenomenal product. That is fundamental. Managing all of the pieces is increasingly complex. We have community, search, listings and data, and all of those have a long way to go.

The second piece is getting the word out. We have had a lot of very good publicity and PR. We are not going to buy advertising; we never have. We are going to get the word out through press releases or other data we present to consumers. It is just staggering, the amount of people interested in real estate right now. It is very topical and will remain so for many months.

SM: The data you have is valuable. You can provide some systematic release of what is happening in the mortgage market, what the transaction volume is, what the median price is, and other similar data points. That would provide a good pulse on what is happening in the industry.

PF: There are huge amounts of data. We have only scratched the surface of it. A lot of what you see about Web 2.0 companies hinges on data as the fundamental asset. The metadata and insights you can build around it are hugely interesting. We have not invested a lot around that, but there are many interesting things we believe we can do.

The third piece of our growth strategy is partnerships. Service relationships like that with the Washington Post is part of our plan. We think it is a unique time to partner with local or national media. It will help provide information, revenue and content streams.

SM: This has been a good story. Good luck with your future.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Prospering Amidst the Real Estate Meltdown: Trulia CEO Pete Flint
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