The Trouble With YOU, Sighs Trulia . . .

“The trouble with YOU,” sighed my Trulia rep Charis, “is you want to make our website work according to Elizabeth Weintraub.” That accusation, which is certainly true enough and made me laugh, came about because I made mention of the fact that Trulia “was broken.” It’s broken because the website won’t do what I expect it to do, and no matter how much this poor woman (who doesn’t even work at Trulia anymore) had to say in its defense, it just doesn’t change that fact.

As a result, I have had to figure out how to manipulate the data in Trulia and make it work the way that I need it to work. It means that some of it needs to be tweaked on a weekly basis. If I sob and plead enough I can get my homes in Sacramento featured. The reps have been very kind to apply patches to my listings. My point is if Trulia wasn’t broken, though, they wouldn’t need to apply a patch.

Also, if Trulia wants to grab our listings and put our information on its website to generate content and assist to monetize Trulia, the listings should work and appear correctly. In my mind, Trulia probably ought to conform to its content generator’s needs and to assist real estate agents, not the other way around, because we are mavericks, an unruly bunch. But I suspect we are all willing to give an inch if Trulia will. Of course, if I were Trulia brass, I might be tempted to view agents as that buzzing sound we used to hear generated by honeybees, before they were all dying off due to climate change. I know how agents are viewed. Let’s not go down that rabbit hole.

Instead, you know what I really love about Trulia? I like the fact that when I’m searching for oceanfront property in California, I can go to the map and navigate all along the coast, for as far as I can drag and still retain the strength in my right finger to click the darn mouse, from the Oregon border all the way to Baja. This way I can click on every listing I can find on the ocean and drool. Other people might surf porn or shift through pages of Jimmy Choo shoes, but someday I will move to the ocean and I like to dream about oceanfront homes.

The thing with this type of searching is I am not serious at this point. If I was serious about buying a home on the ocean, I would not look on Trulia. Because Trulia doesn’t have every listing, it takes too long to upload new listings so I could miss an opportunity, and many of the available listings are actually sold. I would search in the MLS that only agents can access (our mothership) and hire agents in other cities. But I might start my search on Trulia to determine trends and find top agents.

See, Trulia, I have developed patience; after all, for 8 long years I negotiated and sold hundreds of short sales — which sprang up outta nowhere and hung around way too long. If that doesn’t teach patience, I’m not sure what does. So, I waited 2 days for my listing to show up in Trulia in order to claim it. Two days. It never appeared. We have an open house scheduled tomorrow, so I had no choice but to input that listing manually if I want buyers to see it. I realize that’s a rebel’s way to do it, and I’m messing with your system, but like any top Sacramento real estate agent, I do what it takes to give my sellers an edge.

Image:Trulia