Trulia.com, America's residential real estate search engine, announced today that it has secured a $10 million Series C round of funding led by Sequoia Capital, which also includes previous venture investors Accel Partners and Fayez Sarofim & Co. The investment will fund Trulia's general operations and enable the company to expand its team of real estate and search technology experts, deepen marketing and sales efforts and develop new products and services aimed at helping consumers make smarter decisions about buying and selling homes.
"We're thrilled to have the support of Sequoia Capital and our existing investors to help us to fully realize our vision to deliver a great online real estate experience," said Pete Flint, co-founder and CEO of Trulia. "Trulia has become the fastest-growing Internet real estate site, with double-digit month-over-month growth and approximately 1.5 million unique monthly visitors. We're really excited to build on our progress to date and our potential as a media and technology company in the real estate industry to empower consumers and real estate professionals."
Launched in September 2005 by Pete Flint and Sami Inkinen, Trulia helps consumers find homes for sale that meet their specific criteria and make smarter real estate decisions. Trulia's interactive tools are available in all 50 US states and include National Heat Maps, Real Estate Guides, user generated real estate questions and answers in Trulia Voices and data on comparable and recently sold properties. Trulia has raised a total of $17.7m to date.
"Trulia has demonstrated the ability to work effectively within a complex industry, helping consumers with their home-buying decisions and giving real estate professionals a tangible way to make next generation web services work for them," said Sequoia Capital Partner, Sameer Gandhi.
Advertising spend in the real estate industry will be $11 billion in 2007 according to Borrell Associates, a media research firm that tracks local advertising spend. With over 80% of consumers using the Internet as part of their home buying research and advertising spend rapidly transitioning from offline media to online media, Trulia is positioned to capitalize on a huge opportunity in the rapidly evolving online real estate industry.
Source: Trulia
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