The end of the housing boom is taking one more victim with it: the newspaper industry’s classified real estate advertising.

Long considered a source of uninterrupted growth since the mid-1990s for newspaper publishers, real estate ad sales didn’t even slow down over the past two years even as the real estate boom began to cool. Instead, as houses stayed on the market longer, realtors and homeowners required more ads. In fact, real estate ads increased to $4.6 billion — about 8 percent of newspaper revenue, from $2.6 billion just a decade earlier.

But evidence that the tide was turning started showing up in January. Major publishers like Tribune Co., McClatchy Co. and Lee Enterprises posted real estate ad declines in the high single digits, and with economists predicting steep fall-offs in new housing starts and sales, the likelihood of further ad declines is all but inevitable.

One source argued that newspapers’ real estate problems are cyclical and annual growth will return once the comparisons are free of yearly totals inflated by speculative buying and heavily promoted developer closeouts.

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But other experts argue that by the time the real estate market is revived, print classified advertising could be dominated by online players.

According to research, nearly 80 percent of home sellers start their searches online, not in the newspaper.

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