CityRealty has undergone a redesign.

CityRealty was found back in 1995, before Google and Facebook. Geocities and Yahoo—basically an online directory at the time—were both newly-launched companies. It even predated Ask Jeeves, which didn't make its debut until 1996. CityRealty's earliest incarnation—a sort of glorified real estate classifieds—was cutting edge in the way that anything online back then was cutting edge just by virtue of being online.

"The people who founded the company thought it would be a listings site to compete with the newspapers," general manager Jim Schoenburg told The Observer. "As far as we know, we're the oldest continuously operating real estate website."

Over the years, however, new data-driven websites shouldered CityRealty aside, even though the website evolved into a more comprehensive informational platform with building reviews/write-ups by former Times architectural writer Carter Horsley. StreetEasy, in particular, revolutionized what a real estate website could and should be, transforming the city's historically secretive residential real estate industry into something substantially more transparent. Then came all the others—Brick Underground, Urban Edge, Apartments.com, New Construction Manhattan and launched just last year, The Observer Media Group's own site, Living There.

Now CityRealty is trying to shed its somewhat fusty reputation and reclaim its early prominence with a focus on data-driven building and neighborhood comparisons, building rankings and a list of top 100 "blue chip" Manhattan buildings.

But can CityRealty really hope to supplant existing data powerhouses like StreetEasy and PropertyShark?

"I think we're using the data in a novel way; it's more powerful and effective," Mr. Schoenburg said. He added that he saw CityRealty's new features as more comprehensive and geared towards potential buyers, rather than real estate professionals.

The new website, which goes live today, has  been spiffed up, with some nifty features—like the ability to easily call up graphs showing sales history in a given neighborhood or building, with price per square foot comparisons. But the historical data is somewhat limited in scope given that neighborhood price comparisons are limited to co-op sales, Manhattan, and a handful of upscale Brooklyn neighborhoods like Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights.

"I think that the field has gotten more crowded, certainly some competitors have come into the marketplace and have done fairly well, others come in and fade away," Mr. Schoenburg said. "We try to do what we do fairly well, we’re not trying to be everything to all people."

Many of the site's more interesting features seem designed to help out-of-towners understand and navigate the buildings and neighborhoods of New York. For example, the site includes short videos on buildings that zoom in using GoogleEarth to highlight where on the island a noteworthy building is located and give a similarly brief overview of history and facts. The site, which is funded via ad sales and broker referrals (when users register for the free site, receive a free "consultation" that matches them with a broker), is counting on increased traffic to make such free goodies .

But the site's limited comparative data on historic co-op sales—intra-building data is available but not neighborhood data—and the decision to exclude co-ops from the top 100 building's list may limit its influence in professional real estate circles (740 Park may not be open to the casual house hunter, but who can ignore a $52.5 million sale and some of the city's most influential residents?). After spending some time on the new site, The Observer also wondered if the pared-down and data-heavy format for individual listings (the site pulls data from REBNY rather than broker's sites) might dissuade another huge group of readers known to frequent real estate sites—nosy neighbors.

kvelsey@observer.com

The most expensive places to buy in Manhattan, via Propertyshark.

The rich still love vast lofts and cobblestone streets, but this year Tribeca has failed to reclaim the title of New York's most expensive neighborhood.

The honor goes to Soho, where tourists come to shop, sidewalk vendors clog the streets and the median residential sales price in 2012 was $2.2 million, according to a new report released by PropertyShark.

The numbers. (PropertyShark)

Could Sandy have hurt Tribeca's sales? Perhaps, but Tribeca's popularity with the moneyed crowd has fallen ever so slightly between now and 2008—the median sales price was $2.13 million this year, down slightly from last year's $2.16 million and considerably from 2008's $2.35 million—while Soho's star has continued to rise. In fact, today's prices almost make 2008's $1.9 million median look like a bargain. We guess.

Midtown, despite its lack of either lofts or cobblestones, came in at a distant third, with median sales prices at just over a million dollars ($1.02 million). We anticipate that next year the neighborhood might edge up, however, with One57 sales yanking up the median considerably.

In Brooklyn, Dumbo has also lost its crown. Boerum Hill edged it out the waterfront neighborhood (they are ranked 6 and 10, respectively), with Boerum Hill hovering slightly beneath the million dollar mark—median price $950,000. We'd attribute the shift to the appetite for Brooklyn townhouses; after all, if you're paying Manhattan prices for a loft in an old factory building, why not live in Manhattan? (We know, we know, all the cool kids live in Brooklyn these days, making artisanal pickles and whipping eggs into gourmet mayonnaise to sell to the financiers who live in Dumbo.)

The Upper East Side, meanwhile, ranks just above Dumbo with a median of $910,000. Demonstrating, all sloppy Forbes data crunching to the contrary, the Upper East Side is definitely not the most expensive neighborhood in the city.

If you were looking to get rid of a wad of cash burning a whole in your pocket (as many of you no doubt are) and wanted to pinpoint the area where it would buy the least, you'd do a better job of house hunting on the once blue collar streets of the Upper West Side, Chelsea, the Flatiron or the West Village. By contrast, we hear, you can actually get a pretty good deal on an Upper East Side rental. At least, it's cheaper than Williamsburg.

kvelsey@observer.com