Open Thread

“The What would spice things up”

DH, did you ever meet The What?

only if THL has an OT thingie on her blog, I wouldnt mind hanging out there

So Jon is now expanding to include ads and the price he gets for those ads is driven by ………US. Yes, us complusive refreshers on the OT.”

I’m not so sure about that, dona. I’m sure we contribute quite a bit, but not sure how much is “US”.

Slopie,

A couple of things are happening to affect this site. To state the obvious, the market collapsed in 2008 and has recovered but not in any serious way. The “idea” of embracing Brooklyn as a ‘hip and fabulous’ place to live (please note italics) is pretty much accepted and not some revolutionary concept.

There is simply nowhere the volume of real estate transactions which fueled the traffic of the site at its inception. Not that many people are trolling around trying to buy a place and coming here to discuss the market; not that many people have as much disposeable income to be doing wholesale renovations (remember THOSE?) and to discuss them. The real estate market and readership here I think is dominated mostly by people who have bought and are sitting tight.

So Jon is now expanding to include ads and the price he gets for those ads is driven by ………US. Yes, us complusive refreshers on the OT.

I believe that the OT is the key to is his ad revenue, which is measured by “undifferentiated” clicks and ironically most of us don’t care that much about what he does now to make his money.

I think that we are more concerned with other issues which relate more to living in our brownstones and maintaining them (and dare I say coping with some of the negative aspects of the urban frontier).

Also re real estate ads, I really don’t think that brownstoner is the place to go to see houses or apartments. Really. There is a universe of broker websites, MLS is covering some brooklyn real estate, the NY Times, Craigs List, Trulia, and all the individual broker websites, etc. etc. etc.

CGar, at the risk of getting banned with you, I’ve thought Mr. B’s been phoning it in for a while. But the problem may also be that the market and the territory Mr. B covers is a lot less interesting than it used to be. A few observations:

1. 15 comments on a HOTD flipper reno with a weird sink used to be a lot in 2006, now it is a drop in the bucket. Mr. B’s business plan assumes regular threads with traffic on a bike lane or Norah Jones scale.

2. HOTD is only interesting when the house is interesting or it says something about the market. So, enough already with $2.4 mil brick houses in Boerum Hill. Show us something we haven’t seen before. The problem is that that is getting harder to do — Mr. B isn’t working in undiscovered territory anymore.

3. Criticism is not directed at Montrose. Great columns as always. But they kind of don’t connect to the tone or content of the rest of the blog, in part, because “do you think they’ll get that price” is just not a Montrosian question. It was fun when we spent more time on kitchens, baths, exteriors, and less on price and market trends. Unless we’re talking a bit about style, taste, construction and history on the other threads, MM is in a room of her own, here, unfortunately. Philly site felt more like the brownstoner that initially drew me in in 2006. That site had two good columnists covering the Philly equivalent of MM’s territory, btw.