Tag Archives: Trulia

Days after getting the nod from the Federal Trade Commission, Zillow has finally completed its $2.5 billion acquisition of Trulia, the companies announced jointly Tuesday afternoon.

Zillow announced Friday afternoon that it expects to close the acquisition of San Francisco-based online real estate site Trulia by February 17, following the announcement of the conclusion of a Federal Trade Commission investigation.

Trulia reported Tuesday that asking prices for on-sale homes climbed a seasonally adjusted 0.5 percent month-over-month nationwide in January, marking the smallest monthly gain since August. Trulia Chief Economist Jed Kolko says the slowdown reflects a change in the factors influencing price growth.

Trulia's latest look at the U.S. housing market shows homebuyer interest in January and February is up 2 percent from the annual average since 2011, a trend that has paved the way for robust March-to-July buying interest.

The recent hot spots for flipping include California and parts of the South, according to Trulia. Six of the top 10 metro areas where flips represented the highest share of home sales were located in California, two were in Tennessee (Nashville and Knoxville), and Florida (Fort Lauderdale) and Massachusetts (Cambridge-Newton-Framingham) had one each in the top 10.

Three of the five indicators in Trulia's quarterly housing barometer—existing-home sales, excluding distressed sales; home price level; and delinquency plus foreclosure rate—are all more than three-quarters of the way "back to normal" as of the end of 2014, according to the company.

Based on fundamentals, including prices-to-income, prices-to-rents, and historical data, Trulia Chief Economist Jed Kolko estimated in a post on Wednesday that home prices at the national level were still 2 percent undervalued in the fourth quarter of 2014.

In a report released Thursday, Trluia's Jed Kolko warned that falling oil prices—which have since July dropped by half from $100 a barrel—threaten worldwide oil-producing economies. At home, this drop could foretell a drop in home sale prices in the country's most oil-producing states, chiefly Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana.

Asking prices on for-sale homes jumped 1.5 percent month-over-month in November, outpacing a pre-revised increase of 1.0 percent in October, according to property data firm Trulia. Examining local market data, Trulia found increases were largely split along age lines, with asking prices rising faster in metros predominantly populated by Gen X, baby boomers, and senior Americans compared to those occupied by more millennials.

The level of optimism for the housing market in the United States is at its highest point as it has been at any point during the recovery, according to a recent survey conducted by Trulia. Of those surveyed, 74 percent said that homeownership was part of the American Dream, tying its post-recession high set in Q4 2013.