The slowdown in the real estate market couldn’t come at a worse time. Sales of existing homes fell 8.4% between February and March, and that’s the steepest month-to-month drop in 18 years. As a result, newspaper real-estate classified revenue slipped 2.26% in Q207. Just two quarters ago, the growth rate was 10.5%.

Economists aren’t predicting things will turn around soon, which means that one of newspapers’ few advertising strongholds - real estate classifieds - is under assault for the foreseeable future. Recruitment and services advertising is already moving online in a big way. Where will newspapers find the markets that justify their traditionally huge margins? Real estate ads apparently aren’t the answer.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 at 9:24 pm and is filed under Advertising, Classifieds, Newspapers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.