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Update: Belo Interactive Media Gave Brokerages Heads Up Last Week

Posted on June 29th, 2009 6:21pm by Josh Hixson
Filed under DMN Real Estate

A representative from Belo Interactive Media (a company owned by A.H. Belo Corporation) visited some of The Dallas Morning News’ biggest residential real estate advertisers last week to break the news about their new online real estate venture, according to a source at one of Dallas’ local real estate brokerages. A.H. Belo is expected to send out a press release tomorrow Wednesday outlining the new online real estate partnership involving DMN and Sawbuck Realty. The source added that the Belo rep was especially concerned about confidentiality and made sure to retrieve all promotional materials before leaving the brokerage.

Updated: Tuesday 9:58 a.m.

3 Comments to “Update: Belo Interactive Media Gave Brokerages Heads Up Last Week”

Kerry Thornhill @ June 30th, 2009 at 12:15 pm

When you can’t sell newspapers, you gotta do something!
R Karotkin @ June 30th, 2009 at 1:18 pm

Getting into business against your clients/advertisers is not appropriate.
It is definitely not appreciated!!!!!!!
History Repeats Itself @ June 30th, 2009 at 3:57 pm

Can someone please explain to me how Belo or Sawbuck have any claim to a commission??? If I’m not mistaken, in the great State of Texas, in order to receive a commission from the funding of a real estate closing, one MUST possess an active Texas Real Estate License. Not even attorneys are allowed a commission; they are allowed to represent themselves but they are not allowed a commission. (unless they possess an active texas real estate license)

Now that that’s been said:

This is not the first time that the Dallas Morning News has tried to get real estate brokerages and realtors to do extra business with them in addition to their super-sized sunday contracts. Several years ago when the Dallas Morning News revamped the real estate section of their website, the opportunity to be able to claim neighborhoods was presented to brokerages and realtors. They even came to our office and made a presentation.

The new website and the idea of owning a neighborhood was interesting. For instance, if the general public were on the DMN website and they chose to look for homes in “Highland Park” if you “owned” that neighborhood you would get the leads from the website…but someone had already purchased “Highland Park” so I couldn’t even if I wanted to. They also have “featured agent” icons where people can pay money to have their name, logo, and contact phone number on the “Home” section of the website.

When I asked the current salesperson if they had better luck than Realtor.com, the whole meeting crashed and burned beyond recognition or salvage when he said, “No one goes to Realtor.com anymore.”

With that said, it just seems as though it is another gimmick to get the Dallas Morning News more money. I don’t think that unrepresented and qualified leads are randomly scrolling through websites…but I guess Belo and Sawbuck have research that disproves my theory.