Trulia in Co-Brand Deal with WashPo

This morning Trulia is announcing that it will become a partner with the WashingtonPost.com, bringing its search and listings, as well as other content, to the real estate section of the newspaper site. The deal won’t be implemented until April however, presumably the end of the contract with current partner HomeFinder (owned by Classified Ventures).

This latest deal is part of Trulia’s Publishing Platform program that brings Trulia content and functionality to third party sites. Also using the platform are:

• St. Petersburg Times
• The Bakersfield Californian
• Press of Atlantic City
• The Charleston Gazette
• The Sun Chronicle
• The Citizen Tribune
• US News
• Kiplinger
• Belo TV sites

However the WashPo deal is the highest profile one to date for Trulia.

I spoke briefly yesterday with CEO Pete Flint about the state of Trulia and the specifics of the deal. He said that Trulia had seen its best month ever in terms of traffic in January. Flint told me that revenue growth has been good — especially in a down economy where the bursting of the real estate bubble was the trigger for the collapse.

Trulia also expects to be profitable in the near term, which is another remarkable thing for a “startup” in a bad economy.

Trulia has dramatically evolved since its launch. In the beginning the site was conceived as a crawler that would bypass traditional real estate listings sources. Later it began taking feeds directly from brokers. Now the site is also working with MLSs. Flint said that this was to make coverage more comprehensive.

Most “Web 2.0” sites are now largely toast, although the features of Web 2.0 live on (e.g., user-generated content). Many people may take issue with this statement but my view is that Trulia is one of the few “Web 2.0” sites to succeed. Trulia competitor Zillow (which has raised much more money than Trulia) is also in that camp and succeessful in terms of visibility and traffic — though probably farther from profitability.