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.