In the backdrop of real estate markets witnessing some hopes of revival the online real estate listings firm Trulia Inc. has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) to raise $ 75 million.
The website has registered with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, but the number of shares to be offered has not been listed.
J.P. Morgan Securities and Deutsche Bank Securities are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering. RBC Capital Markets, LLC, Needham & Company and William Blair are acting as co-manager, a press release stated.
Trulia is a nationwide residential property search engine and it helps users access local real estate data such as sales prices, schools and most popular neighborhoods. The HeatMaps tool in the website helps users compare popularity by neighborhood, city, county, or state.
Interestingly, Trulia has been building an IPO-management team since last year by welcoming several executives aboard. Pete Flint, CEO and co-founder, in a press statement last year, said that with a strengthened management team, the company was positioned to grow rapidly, be more innovative and scale faster than ever before.
And the figures reflect Trulia’s growth story. In January 2011, more than 11 million unique visitors counted for more than 20 million visits to Trulia with the website averaging almost 100,000 property views per minute. The year-over-year growth figures show that 2011 saw a 71 percent increase in total unique visitors, among which a majority were real estate professionals, the press release stated.
The first six months of 2012 saw it revenue at close to $ 29 million from last year’s $1 million, according to the report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company’s revenue generation is through subscriptions from real estate professionals accounting for 68 percent of revenue in the first six months of 2012.
Meanwhile, another real estate website that went public last year, Zillow.com, saw a surge in its value soon after it went public, The Los Angeles Times reported. According to the paper Zillow’s shares jumped 79% on their first day of trading.
