Speaking of desperate Times, more bad news may be coming for the struggling Seattle-area newspaper as longtime advertiser Windermere Real Estate mulls pulling out of the Sunday Times, and taking its four pages a week of advertising with it. And if Windermere goes, could other realtors be far behind?
In recent meetings, Windermere managers have advised agents of the possible end to the weekly, multi-page advertising buy, which has been a fixture in the Times’ real estate section for… well… forever. Agents were told that with 87-percent of clients now coming to Windermere via the Internet, management is exploring whether newspaper ads still provide a sufficient return on investment to justify their cost.
Managers also cited what they saw as relentless and overly gloom-and-doomish coverage of the local real estate market on the Times’ front page, complaining that compared to the rest of the nation the local market is actually much healthier than the Times reports. I guess the thinking is, why spend money advertising in a paper that’s actually hurting your business?
But whatever the reason, chalk up yet another formerly steady revenue source on which the dailies can no longer rely.
Goldy,
If you hustled, maybe you could glom some of that business. Pound the pavement, beat the breaks, burn the phones – just get out of the HA Happy Hoolihovel and sell…sell…sell!
Then you wouldn’t have to beg…beg…beg for dough to fund your dubious ventures.
Free enterprise – it’s a good thing.
The Piper
Well, there goes my idea of actually subscribing for awhile so I could actually look at the real estate section. I guess I’ll stick to redfin after all!
@1 Finally thinking about buying a house after all these years?
Minnesota Update
Al Franken is ahead by 282 votes, according to a news story that tried to downplay the magnitude of his lead in a local newspaper on the precipice of becoming defunct.
The Fourth Estate is more important to our country than Wall Street or Detroit. I say bail them out. No string attached.
@3…RR…
Actually, on the cusp of selling one – then looking for a condo or townhome in Olympia, if you must know.
BTW…have you apologized to the Haditha Marines yet? For your rush-to-judgment condemnation of the now exonerated Leathernecks?
Just checking…
The Piper
“Managers also cited what they saw as relentless and overly gloom-and-doomish coverage of the local real estate market on the Times’ front page”
I read this is “how can we cut expenses and not look bad to our contract agents?…..oh I know, let’s blame the newspaper….”
WEAK……
“complaining that compared to the rest of the nation the local market is actually much healthier than the Times reports.”
Yeah, this market is just sucks, which is much better than TOTAL SUCK…..
I bet those folks who three years ago competed for a house, and have now had their home on the market for 180+days, find this market quit healthy….
NOTE TO WINDEMERE MANAGERS
Uh, many of you folk were part of the problem with the housing bubble….Get back to basics….It’s not ever going to be like “the good old days” again.
@5…Trol…
Great…have the government then control the press. What a revolting development that would be.
Why not let the marketplace handle it? Let new journalistic outlets take over from what is no longer a viable business model.
Now, this includes bloggers like Goldy, but before he can really capitalize on it, he has to understand that it is a business, and businesses need to be operated along the lines of a solid business plan and business principles.
In other words: Goldy – put on your capitalist shoes and market the golly-bob blog – become a salesman!
Not like this is exactly rocket science…
Back to Dr. No…
The Piper
@8
Here’s what I’m saying. First off, I’m against bailouts. Any bailouts. (I’m against the Detroit and Wall Street bailouts). But if anyone has to be bailed out, newspapers should be first on the list. I would hate to see an America where our only news source are partisan bloggers.
OK, folks…here’s what’s happening. The management of the largest (by far!) residential realty company in the Northwest (if not the entire planet) has elected to spank the management of the Seattle Times for their decision to stop lying about the local housing market. Whether or not you think Frank Blethen is a shithead, this is about as despicable as Governor Blag-what’s-his-name trying to coerce the Chicago Tribune into only publishing nicey-nicey stories about his corrupt ass.
At the same time, Windermere is buggering their own agents, by putting even more of the ball in their court to do their own advertising. What they’re not saying about the “sales coming from the Internet” is that a lot of Windermere agents now maintain their own Web sites, along with posting their own open house signs, sending out their own calendars, running their own mailing lists, baking their own cookies, and so on. The only thing the Mother Company appears to be providing is a well-recognized logo, for which they skim a nice chunk off of all the agents’ commissions.
Can you say, “Glengary Glen Ross”? I knew you could!
Actually, I was utterly surprised that anyone looks in the paper for real estate, any more. Any of the major real estate companies (including Windermere) have a search feature on their web site which lets you sort out your homes by size, features, price, location, etc. Looking at a newspaper is just inefficient.
When we bought our current house in early 1996, our real estate agent was rather behind the times, and didn’t understand why we kept asking about specific properties we found on the web. But now, twelve years later, it should be obvious.
@6 Exonerated? No, I don’t think so, piper. The fact military prosecutors let them off the hook doesn’t make them innocent. It appears no one will go to jail for this, but it was a war crime nevertheless, and there’s absolutely no doubt about who committed it. And yes, I still think U.S. Marines deserve to be criticized when they behave like the Nazis at Lidice.
@6 I’m sure glad piper, apologist for war criminals and baby killers, isn’t a lawyer anymore. He’d be an embarrassment to the bar association.
While perusing my local neighborhood paper, the QA News, I noticed that they are starting to get real ads. Real estate ads seem to be migrating from the big boys into the local weekly. Used to be pages of Legal Notices, this week they’re down to only half a page.
So a special thank you to EK Real Estate and QA Real Estate for supporting your local weekly.
How cute. Piper likes to respond here as if anyone cares what he thinks. There’s a reason that the GOP lost the Governor’s race here in Washington. Piper and his pals had ideas that nobody supported. Piper and his pals told lies that nobody believed. Piper and his pals proved they were irrelevant, wrong, worthless and utterly stupid. Accordingly, we bent Piper and his pals over and fucked him and them in the ass and TOOK the election away from that idiot Rossi. And there is not one thing, not one motherfucking thing that the fool Piper and his foolish pals can do about it except live with it, and bend over to get ready for more.
WBOGOP-
word.
@9: Poor troll – he supports bailing out a failed business model (newspapers) that is falling apart due to lack of adverstising revenue and competition from the web. I am dumping my Seattle Times subscription – not because there is less advertising – but because there is less substance.
The editorial page is almost non-existant now. The Times has always been short on real news and their own reporters, but now they look like a third-rate Tukwila daily. There is no “there” there. A big metropolitan city like Seattel deserves more than the provincial piece of crap that we are now getting. Maybe should subscribe to the PI – at least THAT paper doesn’t base everything on the estate tax – not that there will be anything left of the Times to give to the Blethen hords anyways.
The reason people still look at the newspaper for real estate ads is that it still is the only comprehensive place to view Sunday Open House ads. If you look only on the net, then you have to go to each individual real estate website, and there are 100’s of local ones. Too time-consuming.