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Brownstoner and Blank Slate Launch Real Estate Marketplace
by blankslate / Application Development, News / July 6, 2010Brownstoner and Blank Slate announced today a new real estate listings site called the Brownstoner Marketplace. The new marketplace enables Brownstoner’s customers to advertise their real estate listings directly to the site’s large Brooklyn audience.
From Brownstoner:
For years, we’ve received inquiries from brokers and property owners wanting to be able to advertise real estate listings on Brownstoner but we haven’t had a platform to make such a thing feasible at a widespread scale and at a price that made sense. Now we do.
With the help of software company Blank Slate, today we are announcing a new real estate listings site called the Brownstoner Marketplace. Owners and brokers, now you can create your own sales listing ($25 per month) or rental listing ($10 per month). The Marketplace also incorporates the Directory that we launched last fall. So now you can look for an apartment and find a lawyer to do the closing and a painter to spiff the place up before you move in all in one place.
A big thanks to all the brokers who stepped up pre-launch. Some of the initial listings on the site include this huge loft at 1 Main Street listed by Karen Heyman of Sotheby’s, this one-bedroom at 101 Lafayette Avenue listed by Louis Belisario of Fillmore, and this loft at 1311 Pacific Street listed by Fouad Rahme of Triumph. We’re also really hoping that the Marketplace becomes the go-to spot for For Sale By Owner listings like this one at 60 Oxford Street.
In working with this small group for the launch, what has struck us already is the level at which they are using the web to get the word out. Putting a web site up is one thing, but marketing listings on the web is quite a different thing. It takes know-how and clearly this group has it. So, we think some of the marketing features in the marketplace will be put to good use:
* search engine optimized pages for every listing
* syndication of listings to other sites like Google Base
* performance tracking by adding Google Analytics to listings
* mini-sites that can be used on other sites like Craigslist that accept HTML
* and, of course, social sharing on Twitter, Facebook and across the web
There has been a lot of talk about ‘hyper-local’ on the web these days. One of the things that makes Brownstoner is its Brooklyn focus and organization by neighborhood. With that in mind, the Brownstoner Marketplace includes only Brooklyn listings and organizes them by neighborhood too.
The Brownstoner Marketplace expands the site with a place for real estate sellers to showcase their stuff and for buyers to shop their Brooklyn-obsessed hearts out.