Real estate search engine Trulia has raised a $10 million Series C round of funding from Sequoia Capital and previous backers Accel Partners and Fayez Sarofim & Co, bringing it to a total of $17.7 million raised.
Trulia’s information-rich site recently came out of beta. We haven’t heard anything about the company approaching profitability, though. Its site currently has 1.5 million monthly visitors and 60 million homes.
Why the investment? Trulia’s Heather Mirjahangir Fernandez theorizes over email that her company has been able to “navigat[e] the minefields” of bringing new web tools to the real estate business., “Given all the drama in the Web 2.0 space (Redfin getting fined, Zillow getting sued [correction: complained about and ordered to cease and desist]), there is a lot of attention on us.” For once playing nice pays off.
7 comments so far
7:05 AM PT
With millions raised, they could have at least purchased faster server(s). Their website loads slow.
8:26 AM PT
Big mistake in this post. Trulia does not have anywhere near 60 Million homes…not even close to 6 million homes. It is more like 1.5 - 2M.
8:47 AM PT
The site is kinda slow, and really doesn’t distinguish homes versus parking spots (which is a big thing in my neighborhood).
8:59 AM PT
One quick clarification…
Dave G - it’s accurate that we have 60 million total homes on Trulia. This includes property records, recently sold homes and homes for sale (see the different tabs on the search results page). We’ve been very public that our listings database includes 2 million homes for sale.
As for the speed of the site, we know how important this is and we continue to work on it!
10:09 AM PT
Heather,
I hate to split hairs with you…but come on, 60 million homes is a misleading statement. 2 Million homes “plus” 58 million property records would be “more” accurate.
Anyway, congratulations on the big round…and thanks for stopping by our little blog.
1:17 PM PT
Sorry, but I started a site in College called “Electic Tech” (google it) and it did 1.5 million unique visitors a month and over 3.5 million impressions a month. I closed it when I was in college cause it got so popular, I could barely make the hosting bills. It was down to, should I eat or pay the bills. It seems the bar in 2007 for funding such sites has gotten quite low.
This is another case of another startup that is just like 10 other startups:( While the site is good, it just seems like a crowded space. I am very interested to know how they plan to turn a profit in this housing climate and with such low traffic.
Raj
5:43 AM PT
Hi,
It would really be interesting to know how they turn this venture or this funded money into profits. We also have a startup for Indian and middle east Real estate market (www.mapofi.com). With providing information that helps in decision making we are more focused on streamlining it. Mapofi has achieved reduction in commission that buyer or seller has to pay when they transact through mapofi.
It started with a cause and to make it worthwhile for endusers, one require funding and it would be interesting lesson to know how these players turn up.