Fairfax accedes to the power of the developer dollar in SMH Domain revamp

It was the revamped Domain property section in Saturday’s SMH that was the weekend’s major talking point, especially as auctions were in their holding pattern – 56% in Sydney and 58% in Melbourne.

The Sydney Morning Herald Domain relaunch was acceding to the power of the developer dollar.

Previously houses had their own distinct section, as did apartments – an unusual arrangement that had some merit.

The paper didn’t explain to its readers any rationale, although agency franchise bosses were advised that Fairfax thinks home buyers are increasingly ambivalent about whether they want to buy a house or apartment these days.

So the A-Z by suburb, separated into antiquated regions, will henceforth include houses and apartment alongside each other, which also has merit.

But in between there will seemingly be towers of developer ads.

It was clear from Saturday’s edition the change was to the detriment of the section's editorial coverage and at the expense of their mum-and-dad house advertising. There were seven whole-page developer ads in the first 21 pages of the Domain section.

No enticing editorial until page four, with the dominance of developer advertising pushing editorial further back – and the vital auction results were well hidden at the rear of the 80-page supplement.

 The Age Domain had 112 pages, with its editorial starting on page two, and no whole-page developer ads at all. 

The SMH's editorial over-emphasis on new apartments kicked off on the front cover with a Bondi block that won’t be officially for sale for another three to four months.

The Title Deeds column appeared on page eight – the furthest back in its 24-year history, having been on the front cover during its heyday.

Veteran industry leaders like Max Raine often credited the Title Deeds column as being the conduit for bringing extra readers to Domain who weren’t necessarily intent on perusing the property ads.

These readers stayed and grazed on the property ads and became accidental buyers. These are the same potential buyers who casually flick through their midweek glossy property pages and then turn up at Saturday opens.

The biggest losers of the revamp were the mums and dads whose vendor advertising faced being overwhelmed by pages of huge developer ads.

It won’t upset the individual apartment vendor, as they had almost all migrated from Saturday Domain to online, and the locals, so the merger will more potentially more likely hinder the house seller in finding buyers.

“The mums and dads vendors of homes will all get lost in the wash,” one agent suggests.

The biggest losers are the Mosman sellers, who were pushed from page 12 last week to page 32 this week, well behind Avalon which came forward under the revamp.

So watch Murdoch’s Mosman Daily seek to lure the vendor advertising away from Fairfax.

“Saturday Domain is increasinly irrelevant now as a sales forum,” another agent says, noting more and more advertising is migrating to online and or the mid-week local papers.

He suggests eventually like car sales there won’t be many individual sellers with Saturday print ads.

Just developers and possibly a return to the old days of big estate agency franchise whole-page ads, which makes Fairfax’s uncompromising response to request for Saturday position rotations among the big franchises all the more surprising.

Fairfax is also still stuck with an antiquated regional carve-up that doesn't acknowledge there's a burgeoning Hills district. It still treat the region like it's the sticks.

Of course under Fairfax’s belt tightening it recently ceased publishing Domain in regional editions for much of the NSW.

It followed the earlier removal of Domain from airlifted interstate delivery.

Fairfax advised its country readers to go to the Domain app on their smartphones and iPads.

The shift to digital has certainly seen an increased emphasis on video.

On Saturday its property video even outrated the Kony video on the smh.com.au website, proving property content when done well is lapped up by the Sydney audience.

The video talent of interior designer Thomas Hamel enhanced the peek inside John and Patti David’s $9 million Observatory Tower penthouse.

The SMH video is, however, hit and miss, as the previous week’s was a little-watched $600,000 Stanmore flat.

Apparently its writing staff have been encouraged to take acting classes to improve their appearances.