How this site makes money

1. Every revenue line

There are two, and this is the complete list.

• Disclosed flat-fee advertising slots, bought by brokerages and mortgage brokers, labelled as advertising wherever they appear.
• A buyer enquiry form whose submissions may be passed to a single named advertising partner, disclosed on the form itself before anything is sent.

There is no subscription and no paywalled data. There is no sponsored article and no affiliate link on the site today. Reader information is not sold, rented or brokered, which is a rule rather than a description of the current position: it is in what is refused below.

This page is the register of how this site is paid for. If a revenue line is added it is added here, and a material change to the commercial arrangements is logged on the corrections page so the history stays visible.

2. The newsletter

There is a signup on this site for a short note sent when the City's files are refreshed and the site is rebuilt. It is worth stating what it is in the same place as the revenue lines, because a mailing list is the asset most publications quietly monetise.

• The list is held by a commercial newsletter platform on this site's behalf. Addresses are not sold, rented or brokered, and are not passed to an advertising partner.
• The note carries no advertising today. If a labelled flat-fee placement is ever carried in it, it is subject to every rule on this page, including the prohibition on any payment that varies with a transaction.
• Every issue carries an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing removes the address.

3. Flat fee only, and why

Every commercial arrangement on this site is a fixed fee for a fixed period, agreed in advance and unrelated to whether anything is bought or sold. Never a percentage of a commission. Never a fee per transaction. Never a payment when a deal closes. Never a fee per lead delivered.

Two separate reasons, both of which stand on their own.

The legal one. The federal Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act prohibits giving or accepting a fee, kickback or thing of value for the referral of business incident to a real estate settlement service, and New York State licenses those who are compensated for bringing buyers and sellers together. A publisher taking a cut of a commission, or a payment per closed transaction, walks straight into both. A flat advertising fee, disclosed and unrelated to any transaction, does not.

The editorial one, which matters more. A publication paid per transaction has a financial interest in transactions happening. That interest bends everything: which buildings get attention, how a price is described, whether a page is written to reassure. A flat fee cannot bend anything, because it pays the same whether the reader buys, walks away, or never contacts anyone at all.

4. Advertising slots

Slots are sold to real estate brokerages and to mortgage brokers and lenders, priced per month per area, and they are governed by these terms.

• Labelled. Anything paid for carries the word advertising in plain sight, in the same size type as the surrounding text.
• Never a recommendation. This site does not vouch for any brokerage, agent or lender, does not rank them, and does not describe any of them as recommended, preferred, vetted or approved. Payment is not a quality signal and is never presented as one.
• Outside the record. A slot sits in its own bordered block. It never appears inside a table of recorded transfers, never inside the building specification, and never in a position that could be mistaken for part of the record.
• No area is filled by default. Where nobody has bought a slot, no slot appears. An empty space is preferable to an invented one.

5. The buyer enquiry form

A reader can send a question about a building. What happens to it is stated on the form before anything is submitted.

• An enquiry goes to one advertising partner for that area, if there is one, and to no one else. It is never put out to a pool of bidders and never sold.
• The partner is named on the form at the moment of sending, not afterwards, and the fact that they are a paying advertiser is stated in the same sentence.
• The fee for receiving enquiries is included in the flat monthly slot fee. Nothing is paid per enquiry, per appointment or per completed sale.
• If there is no partner for that area, the enquiry reaches the publisher only and the form says so.

6. What money cannot buy

This is the operative section and it is deliberately short.

• Removal or alteration of a record. If the City recorded it, it appears here. Where the City's file is wrong, the fix is a filing with the agency and this site will publish the corrected record as soon as the source carries it.
• Position in any table. Every list on this site is ordered by a stated measured value.
• Which buildings get pages. The threshold is published on the methodology page and applied without exception.
• How a figure is described. A recorded consideration is printed as filed whether or not anybody nearby is paying for a slot.
• A valuation, an endorsement, or an opinion of any kind. They are not for sale because they are not published at all.
• Reader contact details. Not sold, not rented, not brokered, at any price. The only places an address goes are the service provider that delivers the message or holds the mailing list, and, for a building enquiry, the single named partner that enquiry was addressed to.

7. What is refused

Named so that this site can be held to it.

• Any percentage of a commission, on any transaction, in any form.
• Any fee triggered by a closing, a contract, an accepted offer or an appointment.
• Any per-lead pricing, including the auction models the lead generation industry runs on.
• The ordinary insurance affiliate arrangement. A buyer needs homeowner or co-op insurance, and the standard offer in that market is a payment per policy sold. New York does not allow it here. The Department of Financial Services, in Office of General Counsel opinion 07-06-16, permits paying an unlicensed person for a referral only where the referrer does not discuss the specific terms and conditions of a policy and the compensation is not based on the purchase of insurance. A per-policy commission is compensation based on the purchase of insurance, so it is not available to a publisher without an insurance producer licence. A flat fee for a labelled placement, paid whether or not anybody buys a policy, is a different thing and is the only version of this that could ever appear here.
• Sponsored content, native advertising or an article written to a buyer's brief.
• Payment to remove, soften or delay a record.
• Payment to describe an advertiser as recommended, preferred or vetted.
• Any arrangement that would make this site an intermediary in a transaction rather than a publisher about it.

8. Current commercial status

As of the review date at the top of this page, no advertising slot has been sold and no advertising partner is contracted. Enquiries sent through the form reach the publisher and nobody else. This is the paragraph that records the commercial position, and a material change to it is logged on the corrections page so the history stays visible.

9. Ownership

This site is independently owned and operated, and shares hosting and email infrastructure with other properties under the same ownership, at cost. It has no ownership interest in any brokerage, lender, title company or listings service, and none of those has any interest in it. Commercial enquiries go through the contact form.