Database Partnerships Help Wall Street Journal Expand Coverage
11.11.2005

To offer a Web site that will provide visitors a complete real estate resource, The Wall Street Journal has formed several relationships with other companies as its continues to build its RealEstateJournal.com site. Some of those partnerships include database publishers such as Black's Guide

RealEstateJournal.com (Princeton, N.J.), which launched in 2001, has a residential side and a commercial side. They are geared toward different audiences, but both share editorial content, said publisher Tony Lee. The residential side is designed to help consumers who want to buy, sell or maintain their home. The commercial side is aimed at people who are buying, selling, managing or investing in commercial real estate.

RealEstateJournal.com has had a relationship with Black's Guide since 2001, but just recently the Journal's commercial side visitors were offered complete access to Black's Guide - which contains more than 80,000 commercial properties totaling six billion square feet of space available for lease in 19 U.S. markets. This database complements the Journal's own real estate database, which officially launched in late July. Black's Guide listings include information such as building names and addresses, year constructed as well as average floor and building size.

"we were looking to broaden the information we supply to our readers," said Pat Rodeawald, director of business development for the Wall Street Journal online network. "Because we just launched [our own database], we don't have the quantity [of information], What we intend to do is add listings, so it will be a complete database." When visitors to the commercial side click on "property search", that have the option to search the Wall Street Journal's commercial property database or the Black's Guide database. (On the residential side, visitors can search for home on the WSJ database of Distinctive Properties and Estates or the Realtor.com database)

In addition to working with companies like Black's Guide to bolster RealEstateJournal.com's database capabilities, the Journal also partners with tool providers who can help site visitors with other real estate information needs. "We publish articles, and we don't generally [create] tools; that's why we work with third parties," added Rodeawald.

Two of these partnerships benefit visitors to the residential side of RealEstateJournal.com. One is a home price check tool from Domania, which assists users in finding comparable home sale information across the U.S. Similar data is also available from a Fidelity National Financial tool.

The end goal of these partnerships is to provide visitors with a "one-stop shop" for their real state information needs. For example, "we can help them find out about a neighborhood, and they can read about what mortgage rates are doing," said Rodeawald.

She added that RealEstateJournal.com continues to seek similar relationships. "We're always on the lookout for new partners and new things that can help our readers," Rodeawald told ICR.


Commentary: This is a great deal for Black's Guide, because as an advertising-based publisher, qualified additional distribution is always a good thing. And it doesn't hurt that its sales force can now cite the Wall Street Journal as one of its distribution partners. This is also a good deal for RealEstateJournal.com because as they themselves state, they get access to a large amount of high quality, compelling data quickly and at no cost. The similar deals it has struck with a variety of other data publishers confirm that the business of helping other types of publishers quickly launch well-rounded Web sites remains a hot one.

Real Estate Jounral.com
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