Pete Flint
Pete Flint

SAN FRANCISCO–Trulia CEO Pete Flint sees a bright future for tools built for real estate agents.

Speaking at the Real Estate Connect conference in San Francisco today, Flint said it’s time for more innovation in the world of agent-facing tools.

“I see the next ten years as using technology to transform the agent and broker experience,” he said.

He made it clear that his company would continue to innovate in the realm of consumer-facing products, but the majority of his presentation to the room full of real estate insiders focused on what he sees as a bright future for tools serving their professional needs.

Flint pointed to the success of other firms, including LinkedIn and Salesforce.com, who have made big businesses out of creating products that appeal to professionals. Trulia took a big step into the realm of professional services for agents last year when it acquired Bellevue-based Market Leader.

In particular, Flint is interested in professional tools to agents’ smartphones as a way to improve their performance. After surveying agents using Trulia’s premium tools, he found that one of the keys to success was responding quickly to the inquiries of prospective homebuyers.

“If they respond within 3 minutes to the inquiry coming in, they get double the conversion rate, compared to after 3 minutes,” Flint said.

In his view, tech companies can improve that process by creating mobile apps that make it easy to perform those sorts of tasks when agents are away from their computers. If people are waiting to get back to their email on a desktop computer, it’s a lot harder for them to respond quickly to inquiries.

While he didn’t provide concrete comments on where Trulia is going in the future, it seems like a safe bet that it is going to bring new apps to the market for real estate pros.

In a last comment to attendees, he said that agents should ride the rising tide of services pushing for transparency in the real estate industry, or risk getting passed by.

“In a general sense, I think transparency is a given, and if you’re not embracing transparency consumers are going to go elsewhere to someone that does,” Flint said.

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