Word leaked that #1 Real Estate Blog Curbed.com is getting into the listings game a couple of weeks ago. As of today, the new service is live in Manhattan.
Curbed’s new Marketplace lets Realtors and brokers list their properties inside a traditional classifieds-type environment. For 99 bucks you’ll be able to reach out to some of Curbed’s 300,000 loyal readers.
The price is right, but it remains to be seen whether those readers will take the leap and move beyond their RSS readers to dig for listings inside the Marketplace.
More interesting however, is what Curbed is calling its QuickListings – which are advertorial-type property listings that are inserted into Curbed’s blow flow. Call them Sponsored Posts, but since Curbed generally treats listings as content anyway, this approach does not seem so incongruous.
The more I think about it, I like this approach a lot. As a broker or agent, your listing gets top billing and placement rather than being buried in the back pages. As the publisher, Curbed has already warmed its readers to receiving information they may be interested in. Readers will appreciate the clear deliniation between the editorial and advertising but may also appreciate the relevance of the content.
Newspapers, especially those who still have local real estate sections, would be wise to watch was Curbed is doing. It’s to these sorts of ideas that those fleeing advertising dollars will be going.
The only question I would have as a marketer is what sort of analytics are baked into the Marketplace and QuickListings – can I get reports how many times my item was viewed, what the CTR (click-thru rates) were? Even a geographic breakdowns of who was viewing my listing from where? Having that sort of information would make this product a home-run.
Coincidentally, Trulia launched a blogging platform last week, which makes for the very odd situation where you have a real estate blog is getting in to the property listings game and a propety listings portal getting into the real estate blogging game. Worlds are starting to collide here.
Will we soon be seeing featured listings inside Trulia Voices too?
