Viewpoint

Of all the things I thought the Internet would change, spending the dawn of my weekend days digging for Open Houses was at the top of the list.  That's not to be, though.

And every week, without fail,  hope in hand I go to SFGate.com and SJMercury.com to see if the "print" versions of Open House Guides have made it to the Web.  Of course, searching and sorting on line would make my mornings that much easier, selfish that I am.  And, imagine, on line I could quickly link maps, directions, neighborhood, school, and community information.   Better info in a fraction of the time, or what's a Web for anyway?   I would win the "Realtor Spouse of the Decade" award for sure.  

A few months ago SFGate (which includes The Chronicle and  Examiner newspapers) put their Open House Classifieds on line, but without any search or sort capabilities.  The only advantage the web publication has over their printed  version is larger type and copy/paste capability.

This weekend was cause for optimism though.  The San Jose Mercury is clearly edging closer towards the chasm.  A new "Open House" search button has been mounted in their "Home Hunter" section.  No content yet, but, hey, what else is new?   They also sported the new Knight Ridder "Real Cities Guide", a tour of which goes a long way towards explaining why the PropertyChannel project of subsidiary MLS System provider, Interealty, was canceled.   For sure, the newspapers of the nation are being dragged kicking and screaming into the age of New Media, the Internet.  And they say Realtors have a hard time giving up control of their content!  Newspapers, especially with "Classifieds", are giving the term foot dragging a whole new meaning.

Old Media vs. New Media,.  "Can't we all just get along?"   Can't I get my Open House Guide On line?  Where's Rodney King anyway when you really need him?

Trying to understand how it is that my Open House Blues continue, even as waves of hungry home shoppers flood the web, I am reminded that in all things puzzling, the thing to do is "follow the money".

So it is that I have come to suspect that the Newspapers are trying to mesh elements of  the Microsoft HomeAdvisor blueprint with their traditional Classified approach.  Led by Knight Ridder, the Newspaper guys would like to copy the HomeAdvisor content presentation strategy  but keep the economics of traditional classifieds in place.   And that means a near future of no Open House Guides worth a click through.

Where Real Cities and HomeAdvisor differ is in the underlying economic model.  Follow the money.   The Newspapers have seemingly decided to extend the traditional Classified financial model to on line publishing.  HomeAdvisor on the other hand, is hell bent on perfecting a cyber version of Cendant's "One Stop Shopping" plan.

In the middle of these two very different models is a no man's land of  "might not ever be" needs, like an On Line Open House Guide.

As with print classifieds, Real Cities charges a fee to agents and brokerages wishing to place their properties with "HomeHunter".  In San Jose, the fees are based on yearly contract plans that run up to $155  per month for an agent and $585 per month for a brokerage.  The different plans include listings, linkage to a directory, banner exposure, a link to a Real Cities Yellow Web Page, and a limited number of something called an "Open House Alert" .  The premium broker plan promises 15 Alerts?

Turns out that an "Open House Alert" is simply the placement of an Open House date and time for a posted listing.  They're not only charging a fee to post the Open House notice, the Newspaper moguls have figured out a way to "limit" the volume of posts any participating Realtor can make.   What?

If the HomeHunter plan was to be as content free as possible, then I think they are succeeding.   They not only figured out a way to make participation expensive, time consuming and difficult, they made it absolutely impossible to reach critical mass with an Open House Guide.   The resulting gaps in their map is an insult to swiss cheese.  And what data there is happens to be so old, HomeHunter could qualify for a grant from the Historical Preservation Society.

What are these guys thinking?  Or is the fair question, what are they smoking?

Meanwhile, over at HomeAdvisor, Microsoft is paying cash for inventory content.  Fellow New Media Barbarians Yahoo!, New Realty and HomeScout will publish everything and anything they can get their hands on and throw in the home page links to boot.  King RealSelect will trade the entire inventory of available properties for a click through banner at any Portal, ISP or Web Destination du jour.

So are the newspaper guys totally clueless or do they know something we don't?  My guess is that they are strongly over playing the value of their cultural content.  Clue number one should be easy:  Consumers want to shop Homes, and that means going to where there is available inventory.  Unless Pucini is putting something extra into the soup recipes, consumers are not likely to shop cultural content, trudge through slash your wrist news coverage, and then suddenly decide to buy a home.   The only reason that model ever worked in the print media world was that it was the only option available.  Nobody likes it, they just didn't have any other choice!

Clue number two is more difficult, but after years of working the very profitable relationship with Realtors, the Newspaper moguls ought to have a better understanding of the very people supplying the content!  Let me try to understand the logic here.  Yahoo! and Microsoft have a godzillion click throughs per minute, whereas Real Cities  ranks just a bit lower on the list of favorite sites than the "www.  I_ don't_ believe_ OJ_ did_ it .com" web page.  Microsoft and RealSelect are paying for content while Yahoo! will swap access to monstrous global traffic flows to get to it.  So, Real Cities responds by charging an arm, a leg, and rights to the first born with a poison pill guarantee that consumers will not get to see an Open House Guide worth the click.

My guess is that they will try to play out the classified model for all it's worth, and then transition to the lead generation model when practitioners finally come to realize that there are no other choices than to share the commission with traffic kings.  The question is, with their current model, will the Old Media Newspapers ever garner enough traffic to make the transition?

Meanwhile, I still have the Open House Blues!

Published: August 12, 1998

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Editor's Note: This article reflects the opinions of Gary Edwards only and not necessarily the views of this or any other publication, organization or Website owner.