Categories: OLD Media Moves

Downturn in real estate ads could spell trouble

A decline in real estate ads –Â which primarily run in the business section and sections that daily business sections put together — could spell trouble for many newspapers, writes Bloomberg’s Tim Mullaney.

Mullaney wrote, “A 14 percent decline in spending on real estate ads in the first quarter accelerated in the second period, estimated media consultants Borrell Associates in Norfolk, Virginia. Sales will drop by more than one-third by 2011, Borrell predicted.

“The collapse is especially significant because home-sale ads propped up newspapers last year, after automotive and employment spending declined. Real estate accounted for $5.16 billion, or 30 percent of all classified spending at newspapers, where overall advertising totaled $46.6 billion in 2006, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

“‘Two billion dollars a year is going to come out of newspapers,’ said analyst Matt Booth at Kelsey Group in Pasadena, California. ‘It’s going to be tough to make that up.'”

Read more here.Â

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.