KNOWING what your neighbor paid for his apartment is a juicy morsel of gossip, and in New York, gossiping about real estate is an obsession. It is so captivating that an entire niche of blogs was created to cover it.

In the past four years, sites like Curbed.com, Brownstoner.com, UrbanDigs.com, TrueGotham.com and The Matrix have been scrutinizing the housing boom with pithy observation and, in some cases, snide commentary.

For readers, it was fun to pillory the design flaws of new offerings and to read about how one broker had trashed another in an overheard conversation in an elevator.

But with the recession in full swing and the housing market waning, what will these blogs write about now? It’s not entertaining to skewer a market where property values are falling and scores of people are losing their homes to foreclosure.

The guiding lights behind these blogs say that they are evolving, becoming more serious and focusing on the nuts-and-bolts details of the market. True Gotham, for instance, is writing about how long transactions are taking. Others are becoming more general sites for neighborhood news. Curbed’s tip line once passed on information from a reader who said that there was a truck in the neighborhood giving out free meat.

For some blogs, the real estate slowdown has led to a leveling off in readership. But all of the bloggers say they are confident their services are not only in demand, but will be increasingly valuable as the market gets trickier.

The reader community that formed as a result of these blogs is a fundamental part of their success. “These sites are fulfilling the needs of people to connect with each other and stay on top of the ever-changing market,” said Sarah Rotman Epps, a media analyst for Forrester Research. “Real estate is a topic ripe for discussion — it is competitive, emotionally charged and fast changing.”

Nevertheless, the blogs’ founders worry about declines in page views and advertising, and like the owners of other forms of media, they are trying to find strategies to deal with the recession.

Jonathan Butler, the founder and owner of Brownstoner, said he laid off his sole employee in December and had gone back to writing the entire site himself. Profits have not gone down, he said, but he fears that with the economic downturn, they might. “It is somewhat pre-emptive,” he said. “But I’d rather be safe than sorry — I have two kids.”

Curbed, the most popular of the New York City real estate blogs, with two million page views a month, has not had an increase in page views since September.

“Traffic on Curbed has been flat,” said Lockhart Steele, the president of the Curbed.com media company, speaking from a coffee shop in the East Village. “I think we are seeing a little of the ‘401(k) syndrome,’ ” Mr. Steele said, referring to people who are ignoring recent financial statements because they know they will present bad news. “There are probably people who are thinking, ‘I am not going to look at that for a few months.’”

Although not radically so, the blogs are also becoming more tasteful. Curbed has a feature called Price Chopper that before the downturn was illustrated with a bloody ax. Now that some sellers are taking a bath, the ax has been axed.

In the spring of 2004, when Mr. Steele started Curbed.com, many of his posts picked up information about new buildings and commercial real estate from other publications, with links to their articles at the bottom. But as the site grew in popularity, Mr. Steele started to receive news tips from his readers and posted those.

“The thing that happened is the readers took over,” said Mr. Steele, 35. “I think what makes the site vital is the fact that we cannot be everywhere, but readers are everywhere, and people love to participate.”

Mr. Steele said reader involvement had not declined even with the faltering market. He continues to get tips from readers; these are followed up by two full-time editors.

Mr. Butler, who used to work in marketing for a hedge fund, is also optimistic about the future of Brownstoner and other blogs. “I think real estate is the topic in New York,” said Mr. Butler, 39, speaking from an architecture firm in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn where he rents cubicle space. “You have plenty of people who couldn’t tell you what the S.&P. 500 is, but they can talk about real estate values.”

Brownstoner, which gets 1.2 million page views a month, was started in 2004. Initially, Mr. Butler wrote about brownstone homes on the market in Brooklyn, and linked to resources about renovating them. This was mainly because he was renovating a brownstone that he had bought six months earlier.

The posts were so well received that he started a forum specifically to discuss renovation of historic homes.

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By SAMANTHA STOREY

Source: New York Times – U.S.A.