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Technology | | Auspicious Debut
Content is King at WSJ
Quality analysis distinguishes a new Wall Street Journal.real estate website
BY CHRIS LEPORINI
Several sites have endeavored to become users’ one stop source for real-estate information on the Internet. Few have enjoyed the immediate brand recognition held by RealEstateJournal.com, a new addition to the Wall Street Journal network, which consists of other specialty sites, such as CareerJournal, CollegeJournal, and WSJbooks, as well as the Wall Street Journal online. Realestatejournal.com's creators have lived up to this promise, leveraging content from the Wall Street Journal and wsj.com to create an expansive guide to real estate buying, selling, management, and investing that practitioners will want to bookmark on their Internet browsers.
One feature that immediately sets the site apart from other real estate portals is its’ combination of a powerful real estate database and clear, concise market analysis in a single site. RealEstateJournal.com’s says that its database, which is powered by Realtor.com, contains over 1.5 million active home listings nationwide. Users can select fields including geographic area, price range, and type of house to narrow their search.
Although this feature is impressive, in many ways, the writing is the real star of RealEstateJournal. Although the site contains several toolkits to help users compute things such as mortgage payments and provides links to relocation tools, the equivalent can be found on other sites. In general, these articles carry an analytical focus. They concentrate more on placing current trends in context than news sites such as Inman News. For example, on RealEstateJournal, you are more likely to see a feature dissecting REITs’ resilience in a cooling real estate market instead of a simple summary of recent REIT stock prices. Similarly, the site’s residential coverage focuses on trends such as how gaps between buyer and seller expectations for luxury home prices are driving the sector’s rental market.
The residential section seems largely geared toward consumer, with pages devoted to home improvement, house and garden, and relocating. Still, the “Buying and Selling” page will probably prove interesting to practitioners for its coverage of residential market trends. The “City of the Week” is another standout feature, located within the residential section. It not only contains the typical information you would expect from a city profile, such as population and cost of living, but details on everything from average commuting times to the average citizen’s political bent.
The site covers both residential and commercial issues. Many residential real estate professionals will still find the commercial section useful; it deals with areas, such as property management and real estate investment, that they may pursue in addition to their regular business. The section contains information on specific topics including "Property Reports," which deals with property management issues; and "REITs," which covers the ebb and flow of real estate investment trusts; as well as regional news.
RealEstateJournal is not without its flaws—the lack of breaking news and best-practices information keep the site from truly being a one-stop resource. Nevertheless, the site stands as an impressive debut and has immediate elbowed its way into a position as a top real estate web option.
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Suggest a Site For Review
Every week, REALTOR® Magazine Online's Web review editor surfs the Internet to find sites useful to your business and off-hours lives. Have a favorite real estate Web site that you would like to see reviewed? Send your suggestions to Chris Leporini at mediatech@realtors.org. All decisions on which sites will be reviewed are completely at the discretion of REALTOR® Magazine Online's editorial staff. Please note: this column does not review individual practitioner or brokerage sites.
The column's focus includes free sites, as well as sites that charge for goods and services, but which still offer a free component of practical, sustained value to real estate practitioners, such as a free newsletter or regular news information.
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REALTOR® Magazine Online's "Web Review" summarizes the content of Web sites that may be of interest to members. NAR and REALTOR® Magazine Online are not responsible for, and nothing in the Web site profile shall constitute NAR's or REALTOR® Magazine Online's endorsement of, the web site, its content, products and services, or its provider. NAR and REALTOR® Magazine Online believe the information contained in this profile was correct and accurate as of the time it was prepared, but do not warrant or guarantee the accuracy or completeness of that information and are not responsible for changes in the Web site. Members should conduct their own independent review of the Web site prior to any use of Web site, its content, products, or services to determine their suitability for the member's intended purpose. | |
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