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New York Times Online Real Estate Section to Become Extinct?

Published by Rudy Bachraty March 23rd, 2007 in Real Estate Listings. Comments

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Trulia has been selected by REBNY to build an online consumer facing real estate listings portal for New York City. If the deal includes all residential sales and rental listings, then the New York Times may have lost its mega income stream. Gulp!

Let’s start from the beginning. First of all, New York City has never really had a traditional MLS. Shocked? What New York City brokers and agents do have is REBNY. The Real Estate Board of New York is a trade association. Real estate companies join and share their listings. That’s great, but consumers have never had access to REBNY’S listings platform to search for real estate as it was for not designed for the general public’s use. So how did consumers find listings in New York City? How did brokers and agents market their clients’ properties? Each brokerage had their own site where they placed their clients’ exclusive listings. Consumers would then have to go on each site, input their specific search criteria and search for listings. This has always been truli-a daunting task.

So what did brokers and agents do to find buyers? They listed their exclusives in The New York Times online and print editions. The New York Times has always been considered the go-to place for listings. In fact, they may be the number one consumer source for real estate listings in Manhattan. Online ads used to cost $99 per listing for 2 weeks. Now they are $125 per listings for 2 weeks. Print ads, as you can imagine, were considerably more. This, folks, is a huge revenue stream for the conglomerate. It’s where buyers went to find the listings. Every Sunday, between 11-4pm, you would see buyers roaming the streets of New York City with The New York Times Real Estate Section in hand. Usually, they would have listings highlighted or circled. Buyers ran from open house to open house in hopes of finding a deal on that hot new listing that just came on the market. It was like a treasure hunt to find their new home and the newspaper was the map.

Then along came a spider and sat down beside her and said, “Hey, where’s the open house bud?” (A play on Andrew Dice Clay’s nursery rhyme) Consumer facing spiders like Property Rover, Natefind, Streeteasy, and Trulia aggregated the listings, whether by feed or scraping, and created a new way for consumers to search for Manhattan real estate listings online. Cool ha? But wait, there’s more. The spiders did not have all the listings nor where they always fresh and accurate.

The $1,000,000 question is………….If all the sale and rental listings in Manhattan, New York City will now be available on the new REBULIA real estate listings portal, what will happen to the New York Times online, other listings sites like Craigslist and the other spiders?

On a side note, here are some more questions to ponder:

  • How will this new portal be different than what Trulia already offers for New York?
  • Is Trulia now in the website building business for MLS’s and other trade associations?
  • What’s the real deal? Was it a Pay for hire, affiliate deal, revenue sharing model, ad revenue sharing model? A Deep Throat tells us that it is a revenue sharing model.
  • What does the New York Times think of this?
  • Does the New York Times have a contingency plan?
  • What do Brokers/Agents think of this?
  • Will FSBO and FRBO listings be included? (For Sale By Owner and For Rent By Owner)
  • Will consumers love it? Well, I guess we all the answer to this one – HECK YEAH!
  • This past week, Trulia was kicked out of the Prudential Conference in California. Taken in good stride I might add. But how will New York’s very popular Prudential Douglas Elliman fit into this puzzle?

Gosh, I love real estate!

Great Follow Up Posts to this Story:

Trulia to Build New York MLS by FOREM

MLS Is More Than Technology by FBS Blog

Hamptons-Manhattan-MLS-REBNY-HANFRA-MBOR-LIBOR by Hamptons Real Estate Blog

Trulia….Takes a Bite of New York City by Property Crossroads

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  • AND, what will this mean for Hamptons real estate, where HREO is the queen of the public portals and MLS is making strong inroads to the market by securing many of the smaller brokerages and the non-Hamptons offices of the larger brokerages here on the East End? Sound complicated? This is trulia getting interesting! md
  • WOW!

    Rudy I remembered you telling me about how RE worked in NY.

    This is interesting
  • My head is spinning trying to figure out where all of this is headed. It's a fight to stay relevant! I see trulia all the time when I check out rankings for search phrases. Do I have any hope of competing with them or is it a matter of time before they take over my best ranking slots....
  • I think Trulia will build a real estate portal exclusively for New York city market. Buyers and sellers will now have wide choices. Something to worry about for The New York Times.

    http://www.overseaspropertymall.com
  • Great questions? This opens a whole new dynamic when thinking about Trulia and their model. It also opens up a whole new group of companies Trulia may eventually be acquired by.
  • Very interesting, it is all going so fast now. As a Realtor, I have always liked Trulia, alot, all the mash ups are great and just keep getting better, it will be an interesting year, finally an MLS for NYC-
    fantastic!
  • Being a REALTOR in Atlanta Georgia and knowing how efficient it is to have listings online and available on my website, I find it amazing that the primary way for buyers in New York City to find property for sale is the newspaper. Welcome to the Real Estate Information Age.
  • hey,it is interesting article regarding real estate business .in this aspect the brokers and agents have to find buyers in order to develop there business.online business info.... online business
  • Jared
    This is probably a smart REBNY because Trulia provides a real web 2.0 site. I still think NY Times Brand is super strong, but they will be subject to price pressure or possibly a completely new model. I could also see them getting into commercial a bit more, but this would require more data/information such as what propertyshark.com provides.
  • The only thing that I see being a problem with Trulia right now is that Trulia feeds from brokers websites and not MLS (for queens anyways) so alot of the listings that they have on Trulia could be outdated and possibly sold. (If the brokers do not update the sites then Trulia's info is also outdated).
  • geesh! lots of great comments guys. where do i begin?

    hi christine!

    you are correct. outdated information is something the spiders do face.
    maybe trulia can clarify this for us?
  • Local Broker
    I think your analysis leaves out one important factor. Most important is the sellers who pays my commission and where they will expect to see their property marketed.
  • local broker - you are correct. ideally, the more places you can display your clients listings the better. as a seller, you should always ask your broker/agent where and how often they will market your property. as the broker/agent, you should be proactive and prepare your marketing plan to the seller. to avoid confusion, maybe the brokers/agents marketing plan details should be included in the exclusive right to sell agreement. this way, everybody is on the same page from the beginning. it's also important to receive feedback from your agent on their marketing efforts. communication is vital.

    exposure is the key. you never know where a potential buyer will look - print, online, postcards, billboards, buses etc......
  • OK. Which of you came up with this line?

    "This has always been truli-a daunting task."

    My guess is Joe.

    I'd like to see who is writing what around here, as in Joe or Rudy.
  • hi ardell!

    i did = rudy
  • Local Broker, your seller deserves full exposure. That includes AAAALLLL of the resources that have been at your disposal for the past 50 years or so (mls, anyone?). Your sellers in the east end of Long Island have been mistreated for way too long- don't worry- they'll enjoy more showings and potentially higher prices gained as a result. The biggest obstacle to sellers in the east end of Long Island has been the broker contingent, don't you think?
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