Omaha Newspaper Launches Curbwise.com
Posted: 9/9/2011 | By: Heidi Kulicke
The Omaha World-Herald had a long-term vision in mind when it launched local real estate website Curbwise.com. Rather than pageviews, the focus is on growing a sustained audience over time. Launched in late May, the site uses public data to give homeowners in the Omaha area the property values on homes in specific neighborhoods. And by providing custom reports, the World-Herald has created a way to monetize the site.
Curbwise makes sense from a newspaper point of view. For reporters who have covered tax disputes or the changing tides of property assessments, they would no longer need to write a story on every new property tax and valuation change. Instead, the World-Herald simply directs readers to Curbwise to find the answers they’re looking for on their own.
Matt Wynn, a developer/reporter for the World-Herald, is optimistic that other smaller newspapers can follow suit and create something similar for each respective community. The project took three staffers a few weeks to create the separate website from its former home in the real estate section of the newspaper’s website, Omaha.com.
Wynn told Nieman Labs the data includes 21 years of home sales, 11 years of assessments from the county assessor’s office, and census information. Armed with all that information, the team broke down metro Omaha into roughly 90 neighborhoods, allowing users to gather information on their own homes and other homes in the neighborhood within a quarter-mile radius.
The information could come in handy if a customer wishes to challenge property valuations, and that’s where the custom reports come in. For $19.95, the report compares similar properties and other data in the particular neighborhood’s market — which makes the price well worth it for customers if they’re able to save some money on their property tax bill.
Curbwise makes sense from a newspaper point of view. For reporters who have covered tax disputes or the changing tides of property assessments, they would no longer need to write a story on every new property tax and valuation change. Instead, the World-Herald simply directs readers to Curbwise to find the answers they’re looking for on their own.
Matt Wynn, a developer/reporter for the World-Herald, is optimistic that other smaller newspapers can follow suit and create something similar for each respective community. The project took three staffers a few weeks to create the separate website from its former home in the real estate section of the newspaper’s website, Omaha.com.
Wynn told Nieman Labs the data includes 21 years of home sales, 11 years of assessments from the county assessor’s office, and census information. Armed with all that information, the team broke down metro Omaha into roughly 90 neighborhoods, allowing users to gather information on their own homes and other homes in the neighborhood within a quarter-mile radius.
The information could come in handy if a customer wishes to challenge property valuations, and that’s where the custom reports come in. For $19.95, the report compares similar properties and other data in the particular neighborhood’s market — which makes the price well worth it for customers if they’re able to save some money on their property tax bill.