If you read this blog post, my question is this: what about realtor.com?
I tend to agree with the author of this article, but I'm curious as to why Realtor.com isn't mentioned one time in the article. That is odd. They mention a potential solution for searching for listings instead of Zillow and Trulia - local brokerage websites, or, get your realtor license and join the MLS. But how would this author categorize/compare realtor.com to Zillow and Trulia? How would you?
I, obviously, can't speak to the author's intentions, but I'll give you my perspective (and, for what it's worth, I'm an ex-Trulia employee from the early days)...
The short version is because realtor.com started out as a network for members of NAR ... nearly every MLS in the country provides it with a direct feed of their listings - this gives them 100% listing coverage for each of those markets with the most up-to-date information.
When Trulia and Zillow launched, no MLS would work with them. They had to build relationships directly with agents, brokers and franchises in order to get the listing info. This meant they rarely had even 80% listing coverage in any of the major markets and the data was being pulled from secondary systems that agents would forget to update, so the data wasn't always accurate. Fast-forward to today, though, and things have greatly changed and improved for them.