Trulia has announced that they will launch nationwide on Monday, adding properties for sale in 25 new states, detailed neighborhood data and property comparison tools.

Some of the new tools they’re offering are heatmaps that show a comparison of neighborhoods, the geographical boundaries of each, a comparison tool and a “Neighborhood Spotlight” which would include schools and crime stats. The coolest thing will be a graph that I think will show “interest”, I guess by showing how many inquiries a certain neighborhood receives. Matt Marshall in Venture Beat discusses these new features in depth in “Home site Trulia taps into “intentions” to provide real-time info”.

Liz Gannes on GigaOM Trulia expands, gets local” makes an interesting point with understated elegance:

“Opening access to real estate information is not a solved problem; large blocks of listings are not available online from independent services due to legacy relationships and barriers. However, Trulia is smartly realizing that building a near-comprehensive listing database wouldn’t make it stand out for long.”

Continue on at 360 Digest. . .

This is a great article….a must read!

Source: 360 Digest