Following on from zillow.com’s move into rental listings at the end of 2009, US real estate search engine trulia.com has now made good on its promise to provide a search for rentals as well as properties for sale.
Word of the addition of rental listings at trulia.com first surfaced at the start of this year, when the New York Times reported that the website’s rental search would debut with approximately 4.5 million listings. At the time, trulia.com head of communications Ken Shuman estimated that “30 percent of users that visit trulia.com are considering renting as well as buying”.
Today’s statement from trulia.com says its rental listings number in the “millions”, and outlines a number of new tools consumers can use to help them find the best property.
These tools include a “rent vs buy” calculator, advice articles on renting, local information from greatschools.net and yelp.com, and the ability to share listings via Facebook.
“We saw the opportunity to take our world-class interface, advanced search, rich maps and local neighborhood information and make trulia.com available for renters, as well as home buyers,” says trulia.com co-founder and CEO Pete Flint. “This is an exciting new market for us and we’ll continue to innovate to make it the best experience on the web.”
Along with the rentals search, user-generated ratings on location traits including cleanliness, safety, public transport, and weather are also being added to trulia.com. venturebeat.com explains that this data will be displayed at building, block, and neighborhood levels.
In the techcrunch.com video below, Flint goes into more detail about the release of the real estate search and the addition of local ratings:
