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Are Newspapers Dead?

 Chris Iverson, Realtor

May 17th, 2007 · 9 Comments

I wanted to have a compelling title for a little experiment I recently did with my listing at 206 Palmita Place in Downtown Mountain View. It’s a newer construction home and I thought the location and price would appeal to couples or small families. Based on that demographic, I assumed more people would be searching for homes online, so I built a custom website for the house, and posted links to it on a number of real estate websites in addition to the ones like mlslistings.com that link to data on the MLS.

I also followed conventional wisdom and ran ads in the Palo Alto Weekly and Mountain View Voice newspapers, and an entry in the Open Homes Section of the San Jose Mercury News.

I then did some informal polling at the various open houses, asking visitors where they found out about the open house, leaving it as an open ended question. I also tracked hits to the website and looked at who the referring domains were. I found the results interesting and surprising.

Where did they come from?

Over the course of 4 days of open houses (Thurs and Fri evenings, Sat and Sun afternoons) we had 135 groups of visitors through. Of these, only 2 said they came based on the ad in the MV Voice, 1 from the Palo Alto Weekly and 1 from the SJ Merc. Another 11 groups had seen the open house directional signs (I blanketed the neighborhood) or the For Sale sign in the yard as they were passing by. That’s 14 out of 135 groups, or about 11%. The other 89% of visitors either found the listing online or were referred by their agents.

Online sources

I also tracked where hits to the website came from. There were over 2200 hits to the website, and initially 70% of those came from Movoto which is an online real estate information / referral site. After the first two days, mlslistings.com caught up, and after the first week was the source of about 70% of the hits. The house went under contract after a week, so I stopped tracking then.

While I admit that I am biased, I have had a theory for a while that newspaper ads for listings, especially in Palo Alto and surrounding communities, are more for advertising the agent and getting him or her more clients than getting potential Buyers into your home.

The National Association of Realtors estimates that 74% of home buyers begin their search for a home online, and the estimate for Silicon Valley is 92%. I’m still running an ad for my new listing in Redwood City, but it is only 1/4 page and that is because the sellers believe that potential buyers read the paper. I am also flooding the internet with placements and links, and I’m trying an experiment by posting the home on Zillow as well. It’s another experiment, and I’m partially doing it to get under Kevin’s skin as Zillow is a hot-button for him.

I’m tracking the marketing response on the Redwood City house as well, and I’ll do a post on the results from that when it goes under contract. In the meantime, I welcome your comments and hope for a bit of banter on online vs. print marketing.

Thanks for reading.

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9 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Kevin Boer, Realtor, 3 Oceans Real Estate // May 17, 2007 at 10:21 am

    I’m having a similar experience with my San Francisco listing. The target demographic for this type of house is getting their information online, not from print.

  • 2 Sinster Sock Puppet // May 17, 2007 at 10:29 am

    The higher up the price range you go the more important internet marketing becomes. Newspapers aren’t dead just yet, but certainly on the way out.

  • 3 Ryan Tamm // May 17, 2007 at 1:42 pm

    RIP

    I love newspapers as a source of investigative reporting, but I’d never waste time using them to look for real estate. Way too inefficient!

  • 4 Brian LeBars // May 17, 2007 at 6:37 pm

    You may have left out one new form of advertising. Something that may be of interest to you-

    http://blog.brianlebars.com/2007/04/are-newspaper-property-listings-thing.html

    Comcast is now offering “Property on Demand.” It moves agents away from print media to another form of advertising.

    Are certain markets still drawn to traditional print? I have found my cliental is better served by technology. However, because I work with a variety of agents, I still see the need for print. There are certainly consumers who still enjoy picking up the paper with a cup of JOE and planning a weekend of home shopping.

  • 5 Angela Loy // May 18, 2007 at 6:18 am

    Hi Kevin! I work in the Tampa Market and represent the local websites of local radio stations. Have you ever given any consideration to contacting a radio station website in the Palo Alto area to get in front of local real estate buyers? We’ve had quite a bit of success with developers, both single and multi family…and with rental communities. I’d be curious to hear what you think about radio sites vs. newspaper sites - Angela Loy, Senior Interactive Account Manager - Cox Tampa Bay

  • 6 Angela Loy // May 18, 2007 at 6:18 am

    Hi Kevin! I work in the Tampa Market and represent the local websites of local radio stations. Have you ever given any consideration to contacting a radio station website in the Palo Alto area to get in front of local real estate buyers? We’ve had quite a bit of success with developers, both single and multi family…and with rental communities. I’d be curious to hear what you think about radio sites vs. newspaper sites - Angela Loy, Senior Interactive Account Manager - Cox Tampa Bay

  • 7 Ed Mixon // May 23, 2007 at 4:19 pm

    I think you are correct. I did a walk through my neighborhood early one morning, looking for newspapers in the driveway. About 1/2 did not get the paper. Of the two papers in our area, Orange County Register, and L. A. Times, they were also split about 50/50.

    When I ask clients from all types of homes where they saw the listing, the very large majority say on the internet. Surprisingly, not mostly from Realtor.com!

  • 8 Are Newspapers Dead? Part 2 - Another data point | 3 Oceans -- The San Francisco Bay Area Real Estate Blog // May 30, 2007 at 11:18 am

    [...] In an attempt to be provocative, on May 17th I recently did a post entitiled “Are Newspapers Dead?“, discussing that the vast majority of visitors to my recent listing in Mountain View found it from online sources, with only about 0.7% coming from the ads I ran in area newspapers. The home is in the downtown area, with a large amount of foot traffic, so I had 11 groups (8%) drop in from seeing the 14 Open House signs I had placed around the neighborhood. [...]

  • 9 DONT TELL ME SHOW ME // Jun 10, 2007 at 8:08 am

    GREAT article and GREAT WEBSITE!…WHO DID YOUR WEBSITE? :)

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