Prospectus Summary
PROSPECTUS SUMMARY This summary highlights selected information that is presented in greater detail elsewhere in this prospectus. This summary does not contain all of the information you should consider before investing in our common stock. You should read this entire prospectus carefully, including the sections titled “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and our financial statements and the related notes included elsewhere in this prospectus, before making an investment decision. Unless the context otherwise requires, the terms “Trulia,” “the company,” “we,” “us,” and “our” in this prospectus refer to Trulia, Inc.Overview
Trulia is redefining the home search experience for consumers and changing the way that real estate professionals build their businesses. Our marketplace, delivered through the web and mobile applications, gives consumers powerful tools to research homes and neighborhoods and enables real estate professionals to efficiently market their listings and attract new clients. We believe we deliver the best home search experience by combining our superior user interface with our comprehensive database of real estate properties, local insights, and user-generated content. We offer free and subscription products that provide real estate professionals with access to transaction-ready consumers and help them enhance their online presence. In the six months ended June 30, 2012, we had 22.0 million monthly unique visitors. As of June 30, 2012, we had more than 360,000 active real estate professionals in our marketplace, 21,544 of whom were paying subscribers.
We empower consumers to make more informed housing decisions by delivering the “inside scoop” on homes, neighborhoods, and real estate professionals through an intuitive and engaging user experience. Our large, continually refreshed, and searchable database contains more than 110 million properties, including 4.5 million homes for sale and rent. We supplement listings data with local information on schools, crime, and neighborhood amenities to provide unique insights into each community. In addition, we harness rich, insightful user-generated content from our active community of contributors, which includes consumers, local enthusiasts, and real estate professionals. With more than 5 million unique user contributions, we believe we have the largest collection of user-generated content on homes, neighborhoods, and real estate professionals.
We enable real estate professionals to better promote themselves and their listings and connect with transaction-ready consumers through our online and mobile marketing products. Our free products allow real estate professionals to build their personal brand by creating an online profile, contributing content to our marketplace, leveraging social media for endorsements, and establishing their presence through mobile features such as “check-ins.” Our subscription products enable real estate professionals to increase their visibility, promote their listings in search results, target mobile users, and generate more highly qualified leads from our large audience of transaction-ready consumers. We believe that our audience is highly motivated and ready to purchase homes, as supported by our surveys conducted between November 2011 and May 2012 in which 76% of over 290,000 respondents contacting real estate professionals through our marketplace indicated that they are planning to move in the next six months, and in which almost half of over 210,000 respondents stated that they are pre-qualified for a mortgage. We believe that the combination of our compelling solution with our transaction-ready audience results in a high return on investment for real estate professionals who purchase our subscription products.
We benefit from powerful network effects and a vibrant user community. Consumers contribute content by posting questions, reviewing neighborhoods, and writing agent recommendations. Real estate professionals, seeking to connect with our consumers, engage in our community by sharing local knowledge, answering consumers’ questions, and contributing content to our marketplace. The breadth and quality of user-generated content contributed to our marketplace has helped to build our brand, deepen the engagement of our existing users, and attract more users.
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We are a leading mobile platform for the home search process and mobile devices are increasingly critical to consumers and real estate professionals. We have introduced iPhone, iPad, Android, and Kindle applications that provide tailored mobile experiences, which has led to rapid growth in mobile use of our solution. In the six months ended June 30, 2012, we had over 4.3 million mobile monthly unique visitors, an increase of 176% over the same period in 2011. In addition, our mobile users are more likely than our web users to contact real estate professionals through our marketplace.
Our online marketplace is experiencing rapid growth. Monthly unique visitors to our marketplace increased from 5.0 million in the six months ended June 30, 2009 to 22.0 million in the six months ended June 30, 2012, and our subscribers increased from 2,398 as of June 30, 2009 to 21,544 as of June 30, 2012. We generate revenue primarily from sales of subscription products to real estate professionals. We also generate revenue from display advertising sold to leading real estate and consumer brand advertisers seeking to reach our attractive audience. In the years ended December 31, 2009, 2010, and 2011, and the six months ended June 30, 2012, we generated revenue of $10.3 million, $19.8 million, $38.5 million, and $29.0 million, respectively. During the same period, we had net losses of $7.0 million, $3.8 million, $6.2 million, and $7.6 million, respectively.
Industry and Challenges
The residential real estate industry, which we estimate accounts for more than a trillion dollars in annual spending in the United States, is undergoing a profound transformation. Technology is changing the way that consumers search for homes and the way in which real estate professionals attract clients and build their businesses. In addition, the recent unprecedented downturn in the housing market is causing real estate professionals to seek more effective ways to market themselves and achieve a greater return on their marketing investment. These trends present significant opportunities to capitalize on shifts in behavior.
Historically, consumers lacked readily available access to detailed and comprehensive information essential to making housing decisions, relying instead on disparate sources of information such as real estate professionals, local newspapers, and word of mouth. Over time, more information has become available online and, as a result, the Internet has become a primary source of research for housing decisions. According to a November 2011 survey by the National Association of Realtors, a trade organization for real estate professionals, 88% of home buyers used the Internet to research homes. Additionally, the use of mobile devices for home searches has become more prevalent. According to a 2012 survey by The Real Estate Book, a real estate website, 52% of respondents reported using a mobile device to look for homes, with 85% of non-users stating that they would consider using a mobile device for their next search.
As consumers increasingly research homes online, real estate professionals are shifting their marketing expenditures online to reach prospective clients. While initially these real estate professionals focused their spending on email, search, and creating websites with listings, now these professionals are increasingly using online real estate marketplaces to generate leads.
With technology driving the home search process online, consumers, real estate professionals, and advertisers face distinct challenges. Consumers are challenged to effectively compile and use fragmented information, gain local insights, and obtain information on the go. Real estate professionals are challenged to reach today’s online consumers, target the right leads, manage their businesses while on the go, and optimize their marketing spend. Advertisers are challenged to efficiently reach the right consumers while maximizing the effectiveness of their advertising.
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Market Opportunity
We believe that there are significant opportunities to address the challenges faced by consumers, real estate professionals, and advertisers. Borrell Associates, Inc., an advertising research and consulting firm, estimated in an August 2012 industry paper that $23.7 billion would be spent in 2012 on real estate-related marketing in the United States. According to a November 2011 survey by the National Association of Realtors, 88% of home buyers used the Internet to research homes. However, according to the Borrell Associates report, only 55% of the real estate marketing dollars in the United States were projected to be spent online in 2012. We believe that there is a disconnect between where marketing dollars are spent and where consumers research homes. Therefore, we expect that real estate-related marketing spend will continue to migrate online from traditional channels.
The Trulia Marketplace
Our marketplace provides the following key benefits for consumers, real estate professionals, and advertisers:
Key benefits for consumers
Key benefits for real estate professionals
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Key benefits for advertisers
Our Strengths
We believe that our competitive advantage reflects the following strengths:
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Our Strategy
Our goal is to build the leading online real estate marketplace. We intend to focus on the following key strategies in pursuit of our goal:
Risks Associated with Our Business
Investing in our common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the risks and uncertainties described below, together with all of the other information in this prospectus, before making a decision to invest in our common stock. Some of these risks are:
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Corporate Information
Trulia, Inc. was incorporated in Delaware in June 2005. Our principal executive offices are located at 116 New Montgomery Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California 94105, and our telephone number is (415) 648-4358. Our website address is www.trulia.com. In addition, we maintain a Facebook page at www.facebook.com/trulia and a twitter feed at www.twitter.com/trulia. Information contained on, or that can be accessed through, our website, Facebook page or twitter feed does not constitute part of this prospectus and inclusions of our website address, Facebook page address and twitter feed address in this prospectus are inactive textual references only.
“Trulia” is our registered trademark in the United States and in certain other jurisdictions. Other trademarks and trade names referred to in this prospectus are the property of their respective owners.
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