Best Vertical Market Business Content Solution - 2006 CODiE Award
"The Software & Information Industry Association named RealEstateJournal.com the Best Vertical Market Business Content Solution in its 21st Annual CODiE Awards. This award recognizes the online service that best serves a specific vertical or niche market and included categories such as architecture, automotive, food production, graphics, healthcare, retail, and others in addition to real estate. 'This 21st Annual CODiE Awards continues our tradition of celebrating the best products in the software and information industry,' said Ken Wasch, President of SIIA. 'Being a winner among so many fine nominees is a solid achievement.' "
-- Software & Information Industry Association
Best Real Estate Web Site 2006, 2005, 2004
"This Dow Jones product provides constantly updated commercial and residential real estate news. The site is user friendly with great navigational and interactive elements. It is by far the easiest to navigate of all of the entries in this category, but what particularly sets it apart—it is as rare as it is important with web copy—is crisp editing and careful story selection. It shows real enterprise reporting and geographic diversity."
-- The National Association of Real Estate Editors (NAREE) 2006, 2005, 2004 Journalism Awards
| >> What others say about RealEstateJournal -- Commercial |
Finalist 2005
"RealEstateJournal.com was a finalist for the prestigious Webby Award, presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, as the best real-estate site on the Internet."
"RealEstateJournal.com was a finalist for a 2005 Codie Award from the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) in the content category."
Best Real Estate Website 2004
RealEstateJournal.com won a best-of-industry honor as "Best Real Estate Site" in the annual WebAward Competition sponsored by the Web Marketing Association. According to the judges, the site is "loaded with info, almost to overload." This is the third year in a row RealEstateJournal.com has won a WebAward.
Classified Best Practices 2007
"The Wall Street Journal site has "verticalized" its content in a compelling way. For instance, the Home & Garden area really stands out. It also has an excellent split of residential and commercial sections that we didn't see on other sites.... It also has well-placed search boxes, and it effectively uses various Web 2.0 tools, including e-mail, RSS and a rate calculator."
-- The Kelsey Group in judging sites powered by Adicio
"The family of five sites [in The Wall Street Journal Online Network] operates as one, presenting great examples of ease of navigation and consistency.... [T]he cyber-essence of The Wall Street Journal sites is the ease with which the reader can move from item to item, and from site to site.
For example, let's say you are on one of the sites, CollegeJournal.com, considering whether you want to take an MBA. There is an in-depth knowledge about the subject here: if you get the urge to see what careers most value MBA's, you might hit the link and glide over to CareerJournal.com. If what you read makes you feel like taking a risk, you might want to shoot over to StartupJournal.com and answer for yourself whatever questions you might have about what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur. If thoughts turn to what you might do with all the money you come by, there's always RealEstateJournal.com, only a click away.
All of these sites are fast, well-designed and full of more information about the subjects they treat than could ever be done justice with as few words as these."
-- Pennsylvania Newspaper Association Foundation, 2006 and 2005 Newspaper Excellence in Cyberspace Award. Winning category: Consistency (2006 and 2005) and Ease of Navigation (2005)
"RealEstateJournal.com, from The Wall Street Journal, is one of our top recommended web sites."
--The Journal of Financial Planning, 2004
"Several sites have endeavored to become users' one stop source for real-estate information on the Internet. Few have enjoyed the immediate brand recognition held by RealEstateJournal.com, from The Wall Street Journal. RealEstateJournal.com's creators have lived up to this promise, leveraging content from The Wall Street Journal and WSJ.com to create an expansive guide to real estate buying, selling, management and investing that practitioners will want to bookmark on their Internet browsers.
The writing is the real star of RealEstateJournal. Although the site contains several toolkits to help users compute things such as mortgage payments and provides links to relocation tools, the equivalent can be found on other sites. In general, these articles carry an analytical focus. They concentrate more on placing current trends in context than real-estate news sites. For example, on RealEstateJournal, you are more likely to see a feature dissecting REITs' resilience in a cooling real estate market, instead of a simple summary of recent REIT stock prices. Similarly, the site's residential coverage focuses on trends such as how gaps between buyer and seller expectations for luxury home prices are driving the sector's rental market.
The residential section seems largely geared toward consumers, with pages devoted to home improvement, house and garden, and relocating. Still, the "Buying and Selling" section will probably prove interesting to practitioners for its coverage of residential market trends. The "City Profiles" is another standout feature. It not only contains the typical information you would expect from a city profile, such as population and cost of living, but details on everything from average commuting times to the average citizen's political bent.
RealEstateJournal.com stands as an impressive debut and has immediately elbowed its way into a position as a top real estate web option."
--Realtor Magazine
"Through RealEstateJournal.com, we've received not only a tremendous amount of traffic, but also highly qualified leads. It's obvious Quechee Lakes homebuyers are Wall Street Journal readers."
-- Michael Maynard
Quechee, Vt.
"RealEstateJournal.com has proven to be one of our best web sites in 2005. Due in part to the easy navigation of the site and how quickly you can find everything you're looking for, RealEstateJournal.com has brought in more web traffic for our company with the listings we have posted. When it comes to quality, informative websites, this one certainly takes the cake!"
-- Angela Caron, Classified Coordinator
Redstone Properties
Williamstown, Mass.
"I really enjoy all that I learn from RealEstateJournal.com. As a military spouse and having grown up a military brat, I have picked up a lot of information on housing in my life, but it is still comforting to read your articles. Often REJ.com reinforces the decision-making process my husband and I go through. And there are numerous times I forward information to my husband because it helps us remain focused on the things we have discussed as priorities. Thanks!"
-- Jody Wardell, Enon, Ohio
"You can get information on choosing a real estate professional, purchasing a vacation home, typical closing costs and everything in-between at The Wall Street Journal's special site about homes, RealEstateJournal.com."
--Starkville (Miss.) Daily News, Aug. 2003
"RealEstateJournal.com has introduced new interactive advertising and searching capabilities for real estate firms, home sellers and home buyers looking for or offering distinctive properties and estates. New search capabilities have made it easier for buyers to locate the properties they're looking for. And new content on includes an entirely new section devoted to covering tax and insurance considerations. RealEstateJournal.com delivers a high demographic and qualified national traffic of almost 200,000 unique visitors each month."
--Chicago Weekend, Aug. 2003
"The Wall Street Journal has figured out a way to capitalize on real estate with a vertical-specific site called RealEstateJournal.com.
RealEstateJournal.com, says its site, 'is a complete online guide to buying, selling and maintaining a home. Content comes from the powerful editorial resources of The Wall Street Journal, WSJ.com, both published by Dow Jones & Co. Inc., and alliances with top real-estate information providers. This combination brings accurate, trustworthy information to your desktop, all of it completely free. Whether you're moving up, relocating, seeking a new neighborhood or merely curious about your current home's market value, you'll find answers at RealEstateJournal.'
Realtor.com listings can be found on the left side of the RealEstateJournal.com site by accessing the 'Other Journal Sites' button on WSJ.com and then clicking on 'Properties for sale.' Consumers can go to either the Journal's classified advertisers under 'Distinctive Properties and Estates,' or Realtor.com. This isn't the only place that consumers can access listings. Back on the RealEstateJournal.com front page, consumers can go to the right side and access the 'Market Center,' where HomeGain has the position under the 'View Homes For Sale' link. There are few other real estate distribution vehicles out there. Yahoo! is out of the picture because it has referral fee agreements with VOW brokers. Lycos has shut its real estate vertical down. Homes.com is maintaining but not pushing its consumer portal, preferring to build its agent Website business first. HomeSeekers has become Realigent, showing it is doing the same as Homes.com. Realestate.com has been embroiled in a copyright lawsuit brought by The Real Estate Book for improper use of its listings which has left distribution partner MSN in the lurch. eBay is still trying to figure out why the real estate business is so much harder than the beanie baby business. Google sells search words, not listings.
There are other examples, but realistically speaking, what other traffic partners are left?
-- RealtyTimes, June 18, 2003
"RealEstateJournal.com, The
Wall Street Journal's Guide to Property, has launched a new database of
distinctive properties and estates. The new section allows upscale home buyers
to search for luxury home listings by state, keyword, price, home size and
criteria. The database is composed of listings from The Wall Street Journal, as
well as from the nation's top real estate specialists and developers. The site
also provides negotiating tips, sales trends and relocation tools for people who
are moving up, seeking a new neighborhood, considering a job offer out of the
area or looking to determine their home's market value."
--Arlington Heights (Ill.) Daily Herald
"Your tools and articles about home buying are terrific! It's a one-stop location for everything real estate."
--Sandra Levin, New York, N.Y.
Best Financing Tips: RealEstateJournal.com
"For most home buyers, financing is the trickiest part of the process. Do
you want an adjustable-rate loan? Is it time to refinance? Beats us--but not
the ace reporters and analysts at RealEstateJournal.com, a Wall Street
Journal site. Learn about prepayment penalties, float-down options on loans,
condominium ownership, and why raiding your IRA to finance a home might not
be prudent. The best part: Unlike WSJ.com's main site, content here is
free--leaving you with more bucks for that down payment."
--Yahoo! Internet Life, March 2002
Best City Profiles: RealEstateJournal.com
"Here's another ubiquitous toll: the city profile. But no other home-buying
site provides this level of market detail. You'll find statistics on local
sales, such as the median home-resale price, and what a single-family,
four-bedroom home typically costs in various parts of the region. You get
all sorts of tidbits about the city, too, such as the number of golf courses
and zoos. Heck, money's not the only consideration."
--Yahoo! Internet Life, March 2002
Best Real Estate Website 2003
RealEstateJournal.com, The Wall Street Journal's Guide to Property, was named Outstanding Web site in the Real Estate category in the 2003 WebAward Competition. The competition for Web site excellence, now in its seventh year, judges Web site development against an ever-increasing Internet standard and against peer sites within the industry. Entries were ranked based on design, navigation, innovation and usefulness to target audience.
Best Real Estate Website 2002
"I have little knowledge of the real estate or
property markets, but after spending 30 minutes on RealEstateJournal.com, I
have a much better appreciation for what you have built. For everything that
I could think to look up relating to home purchasing, this site had content
to assist me. A well thought out design and navigation makes it that much
better. So much data and so many sections, but you have delivered it
wonderfully. Your partnerships seem to be with the leaders in the industry
and make it a true "one stop" website. Great site."
--WebAward Competition