In one of those ironic twists of fate, I noticed today that one of the renovated houses I was critical of in an earlier post is now appearing for sale in an ad on my blog. 168 Main Street appears frequently in rotation with other Google ads in the right hand column of this blog. Google places these ads – with my permission* – and tries to match them to the content on the page. So, it’s not entirely surprising, given that I write exclusively about Sag Harbor and the Hamptons, that real estate ads for Hamptons brokerages appear regularly on these pages.
But it was a bit disconcerting, none-the-less, to find an ad for a house I complained about. My complaint was, and is, that the owners chose to turn it back into a single-family dwelling, after its having been used as an apartment house for many years. I just don’t think it is helpful to this community to be removing much needed apartments from the market. Apartments being one of the few options for people looking for (something close to) affordable housing in this area.
That said, I don’t choose the ads and, as far as I know, the advertisers don’t choose the sites on which their ads appear. I wonder if the owners of 168 Main would have decided to run their ad here if they had the choice. In any case, they appear to have done a spectacular renovation. The house looks great on their website, and since there’s no hope that it will be turned back into apartments any time soon, I wish the owners luck selling it in the current down-market.
*Complete disclosure: I requested that Google place ads on my blog, and I get paid a small fee whenever someone clicks on one of them. I also get a small fee if you download Firefox with the Google toolbar from the link on this site, or if you click on an ad in the search results, after using the Google search box on this site.
