With several prominent New York brokerages and developers on board as advertisers, the Wall Street Journal will launch a new weekly stand-alone section Friday covering the global luxury real estate market.
The new real estate section, "Mansion," will provide property-focused coverage with industry statistics and a focus on high-end financing, produced by an editorial staff of 12, Capital New York reports. Coverage will also include iconic buildings and renovations, investments associated with those projects, and distinctive neighborhoods and properties around the world, the Journal’s publishers said in announcing the new section.
Launch advertisers include Coldwell Banker, Luxury Portfolio International, Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate, Related Companies, Sheldon Good & Company, Sotheby’s International Realty Affiliates LLC, Extell Development Company and LandVest.
Select content from Mansion will appear each week in the Journal’s Europe and Asia editions, and relevant content will also be presented across WSJ.com’s Chinese-, Japanese- and German-language editions, the Journal’s publishers said.
"We know our audience is already well-versed and interested in the high-end real estate market, and Mansion provides advertisers the opportunity to speak directly to that audience with a proven affinity for real estate and the subjects and trends surrounding it," said Michael Rooney, The Wall Street Journal’s chief revenue officer, in a statement.
The New York Observer wasted no time in poking fun at the name of the Journal’s new luxury section, suggesting a number of possible alternatives including "Jealous?" and "Bubbles Weekly."
Perhaps anticipating such sniping, Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief of Dow Jones & Co. and managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, said in a statement, "We all like to think of our home as a mansion, even if it is a humble abode, and we all have the license to aspire, so we have created Mansion to be the home of both aspiration and real estate realization."
The Journal’s portal for property coverage, WSJ.com/RealEstate, will feature a dedicated page for Mansion, with "House of the Day" and other slide shows, as well as videos and articles exploring the world of high-end homes. WSJ Live will also offer a daily segment focused on real estate as part of its Lunch Break show.
Wall Street Journal real estate reporter Lauren Schuker Blum will host a chat in conjunction with launch at 1:30 p.m. EST Friday on WSJ.com to discuss how the luxury home market is being redefined.