You heard about Movity.com here first, and today, it was announced that Trulia has acquired the geodata real estate site for an undisclosed amount (although in September, Movity received an unattributed $1.3M and nothing since), adding a new and highly innovative layer to the existing Trulia real estate search. Having launched from the 2010 YCombinator class, Movity aims to show buyers what an area is really like based on criteria such as noise, crime and resident reviews.
Movity launched in San Francisco, founded by Eric Wu (also co-founder of RentWiki.com) and never left private beta. We firmly believe that Movity is one of the only interesting innovations made to the real estate space in nearly two years with their unique approach to visualizing data and never aiming to regurgitate ideas of the other mega real estate search sites. Wu knew that Movity could upset Realtors by answering questions like “how loud is it here?” or “how safe is the neighborhood” or even “what do locals think of the subdivision?”
We’ve spent considerable time over email and on the phone with Eric this year and have first hand knowledge of the product. We learned this summer that part of his motivation was that he wanted to “disrupt” the real estate space (which we were excited to hear, it’s been rather boring). About the acquisition, Wu said, “We are excited to join a leader and innovator in the real estate market and contribute to a world class engineering organization. I’ve been impressed what Trulia has accomplished in the past few years, and together, we want to change the way people discover local information and find a place to live.”
Innovator? We’re not so sure about that… nor was Movity just months ago…
Trulia made a genius move by buying the geodata site Movity to improve their own offering, and got a bargain basement price, as Movity had not reached its full potential as it was envisioned. How disappointing. Earlier this year, Wu told us that the megasites were not innovating and now he is calling Trulia an innovator AND has sold out for so few pennies.
We are not disappointed in Trulia however, this is easily one the coolest acquisitions they’ll ever make and it will garner a lot of attention their direction. Zillow has obviously bailed on the search game, leaning more practically to mortgages, leaving an opportunity open for Trulia to step in and add more real estate layers to their site.
“Finally, Trulia takes steps to come out of it’s shell as the “me too” company. It will be interesting to see what other YCombinator companies Trulia has their eyes on for 2011,” said AgentGenius.com founder, Benn Rosales. “From the consumer perspective, this will separate Trulia from Zillow and Move, Inc’s Realtor.com.”
Today is a sad day for idealists as Movity has sold out. Given the size and history of Trulia, unless they recognize the level of talent that Movity brings to the table and avoids squandering it, Movity will be held back. Trulia has been known for being cheap and inside sources complain to us of squandered talent and staff being forced to wear multiple hats, so we wonder if this is truly the creative environment that the Eric Wus of the world were hoping for.
On the flip side, it is certainly a day worthy of champagne toasts at Trulia, this will be a major improvement and injection of innovation that will set them apart in the consumers’ eyes (but don’t get too excited, the champagne was probably on sale).
