One of New Zealand’s most iconic real estate publications, Property Press, is closing after 45 years.
The distinctive masthead - its bins of magazines have been a common sight on New Zealand streets since the first edition was published in Hamilton in 1978 - will cease from this week.
“This is extremely sad but it’s symptomatic of the very challenging marketplace that exists,” said a senior executive of Blue Star, owner of the title. “The real estate market is challenging and the economy is challenging.”
So much of the house-sales advertising market was now online, the executive said, with a competitive digital marketplace including TradeMe, OneRoof, and realestate.co.nz, as well as real estate companies’ own websites. OneRoof is owned by NZME, publisher of the Herald.
“It’s iconic and it’s a very sad day, particularly for the people who are affected,” said the Blue Star executive.
They said seven roles were impacted, including managers, salespeople and administrators.
One of those who are impacted is Property Press general manager Jason Hussey who said he was still processing the news and referred comment to Blue Star.
Property Press has eight editions published either weekly or fortnightly across New Zealand - Auckland Central, North Shore, Auckland Eastern/Southern, Franklin, Taupo, Taranaki, Lakes District and Otago.
Its latest Auckland Central edition has 24 pages; its North Shore edition just eight pages. This week’s Lakes District edition has 40 pages.
The Blue Star executive said they could not comment on any attempts to try to sell the titles.
Property Press was founded by rich-lister and former NBR owner Barry Colman in 1978 - a year after he started Liberty Publishing in Hamilton.
The latest edition of Property Press.
“Initially designed to service the Hamilton housing market, it quickly gained traction as something with nationwide appeal. This meager beginning was just the start of what would become Colman’s publication empire,” Stop Press reported in 2018.
“It was a stepping-stone for Colman, who in 1991 famously purchased the heavily indebted National Business Review off Fairfax for $1 and immediately changed it to his preferred format as a weekly title. He remained the publisher of NBR until selling for an undisclosed sum in 2012.”
Colman said he had launched the title after having trouble selling real estate ads in a community newspaper he owned in Hamilton at the time. He launched Property Press as a standalone title - back then, just eight pages and in black and white. It wasn’t distributed - the red bins were used in suburbs and neighbourhoods.
Asked about the highs and lows of owning the magazine, Colman said most of the clients were on fixed contracts, so “they didn’t bounce up and down week to week”.
He said even with the proliferation of online real estate portals, Property Press was still popular through the early 2000s - he believed people enjoyed the tactile experience of turning pages and seeing photos of homes in print. The digital competition - including TradeMe which started in 1999 - was “never a factor for us - we were up against digital all the time”.
He remembered publishing one million copies a week, with around a dozen different regional editions at its peak.
Stop Press said Property Press was the “first of its kind in this country: a pictorial real estate publication”.
“From its first Hamilton edition, it quickly increased the number of editions to its current line-up of 11 weekly and three fortnightly editions. In 2001, Colman sold Property Press to Kerry Packer’s ACP Media.”
Colman told the Herald the magazine had been incredibly successful during both his tenure and under ACP’s ownership. In fact, he said, Packer could not believe how good the figures looked when he bought it in 2002 and withheld $3 million of the sale price until he was assured the financial books and data were accurate.
Property Press became a division of Bauer Media after the German media company purchased ACP in 2012. After Covid hit, its ownership was taken over by Blue Star - and parent company Mercury Capital, which also owns Are Media, the company that took over many of Bauer’s titles.
* Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor and has a small shareholding in NZME.
