After overhauling its offerings for brokers and agents and beefing up its industry relations team, real estate search company Trulia has recruited Matt Dollinger from innovative Chicago brokerage @properties to head up the whole shebang.
As Trulia’s head of industry relations, Dollinger will oversee sales and business development for Trulia’s industry team. The team recently added Todd Carpenter, formerly director of digital engagement for the National Association of Realtors, as senior manager of industry engagement, and boasts former Realtor.com, Yahoo! and Housevalues executives.
Earlier this month, responding to concerns of brokers and agents about the accuracy of listings data and ads for rival agents alongside of their listings, Trulia announced it will launch a series of updates in coming weeks to improve broker marketing tools and address accuracy and advertising concerns.
A few brokerages have publicized decisions to stop providing listings to third-party sites not affiliated with a multiple listing service or Realtor association.
Trulia said it will identify the listing broker and agent on every listing, at the top of the page and in listing data; remove display ads for competing agents and brokers on "featured" (paid) listings, and more clearly identify ads as such on non-paid listings; and improve management of listings and the process by which they are "claimed" by agents.
In January, Trulia announced a data pledge for listing syndication and display, detailing how the company handles and displays listing data. Last year Trulia introduced a quality assurance system, Trulia Direct Reference, allowing MLSs, brokers and agents to identify discrepancies between real estate listings from MLSs and listings on third-party syndication sites.
"I’ve been really impressed by some of the changes Trulia has made in the last year to improve their data quality and provide a higher level of service to brokers," Dollinger said in a statement. "I’m excited to work with the team to expand what’s already been built and provide an unparalleled level of service, understanding and support to Trulia’s industry partners."
Matt Dollinger
Dollinger, who was vice president of strategic development with @properties, has more than eight years of real estate brokerage experience.
The Trulia industry relations team includes Director of Broker Sales Allison Williams; Head of Industry Marketing Ginger Wilcox; Manager of Strategic Partnerships (East) Ninve Adams; Manager of Strategic Partnerships (West) Charis Moreno; Director of Business Development Mark Weiss; and Director of Industry Business Development Lloyd Graves.
Williams has held leadership positions with The Dallas Morning News and homebuilder NVR Inc.; Wilcox has worked for eight real estate companies in a 15-year real estate career. Adams and Moreno both have management experience in sales with Realtor.com. Weiss worked in sales and business development for Federated Media Publishing, Yahoo, and HotJobs.com. Graves’ prior experience includes positions with Northwest Multiple Listing Service and Housevalues.
Trulia has been gearing up for an initial public offering in recent months, a move undertaken by rival Zillow in July.
Zillow has also moved to address concerns among brokers and agents that provide the site with listings over listing accuracy and advertisements. This week Zillow announced a program to improve the accuracy of listing data an dgive brokers and MLSs more control over how lisings are displayed.
This year, Zillow has hired former Arizona MLS CEO Bob Bemis and Phoenix-based broker and blogger Jay Thompson to improve relations with brokers and MLSs.
