Arenda.nn.ru is a Nizhny Novgorod address under which, in the 2000s and early 2010s, sites about real estate rental in Nizhny Novgorod operated. Early archived snapshots present it as a page of the "Commercial Real Estate Center of N. Novgorod"[2], later ones as the "NN.ARENDA" section of the Nizhny Novgorod NN.RU portal[3]. The first snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated April 22, 2003[1], the last — July 2, 2014[4].

Commercial Real Estate Center

Of the early appearance of the site, essentially only a single page title has survived in the archive: "Commercial Real Estate Center of N.Novgorod, tel. 281-699, 138-777, 134-022" — a snapshot from December 7, 2003[2]. There is no section text, office address, or staff names in the archived text: all that remains of this office is the name, its tie to Nizhny Novgorod, and three city phone numbers carried right in the browser window title[2].

There are no snapshots between 2003 and 2014 in our material, so the archive does not allow reconstructing when or how the address passed from the "Commercial Real Estate Center" to the NN.RU portal, or whether there was any continuity between them.

NN.ARENDA: a section of the NN.RU portal

By 2014 the page was titled "Rental in Nizhny Novgorod: apartments, rooms — NN.NEDVIZHIMOST" and was part of the NN.RU portal[3]. The section presented itself as "the most complete database of listings for renting apartments and rooms" in Nizhny Novgorod — so said the home page itself; it also stated that both listings without agents and agency offers were published, and that a homeowner could post a listing for free[3]. The page's meta description listed photo catalogs, expert consultations, ratings, interviews, news, analytics, and a forum[3].

The size of the database can be seen from the counter on the page itself: in April 2014 the "For Rent" section listed more than 400 rooms and apartments[3], and in July of the same year — more than 1,100[4].

The real estate section's navigation consisted of the items "Residential", "New buildings", "Commercial", "Land", "Cottages, houses", "Dachas", "Garages", "Rental", "Demand", and "Forum"[3]. Search was detailed to the point of fastidiousness: eight city districts — Avtozavodsky, Kanavinsky, Leninsky, Moskovsky, Nizhegorodsky, Prioksky, Sovetsky, Sormovsky — followed by a list of towns of the region running to several hundred lines, from Ababkovo and Arzamas to Shakhunya[3]. Apartment type was chosen from the local housing-stock vocabulary: Stalin-era ("stalinka"), Khrushchev-era ("khrushchevka"), Brezhnev-era ("brezhnevka"), "gostinka" (dormitory-style studio), "malosemeyka" (small-family flat), "pentagon", Leningrad-style, series 90, and old housing stock[3]. The rental term was set in hours, days, or months[3], and the special-offers block featured a one-room apartment for 23,000 rubles a month[3].

The page was topped by the shared NN.RU header listing the portal's services: forums, news, cars, jobs, real estate, classifieds, a city map with traffic, Weather in Nizhny Novgorod, movie and theater listings, TV schedule, a company directory, banks, press releases, tenders, Group Purchase, online stores, a website builder, a site rating, a site directory, domain registration, "Buy NN.RUbles", and a "Forum Gift Shop"[3]. There too were the advertising department's phone number (831) 419-77-99 and a link to dzerzhinsk.ru[3]. The counters in this header show how the portal itself grew over three months: the company directory from 48,672 to 49,673 entries, the site directory from 9,976 to 10,069, while the forums held at "1800+"[3][4]. In the July snapshot, a dating service marked as new appeared in the menu[4].

The section was Nizhny Novgorod in content but not in engine: in the city switcher next to Nizhny Novgorod stood Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Omsk, Barnaul, Kemerovo, Tomsk, Irkutsk, Yekaterinburg, Krasnodar, Sochi, Samara, Rostov-on-Don, and Perm — the same real estate platform served several regions[3].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod Internet

Arenda.nn.ru made it into our sample not through a counter, but through the nn.ru site directory (the /rub/ section), where it was listed under the name "Commercial Real Estate Center"; this address is absent from the surviving tops of Counter.nn.ru analyzed in the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating. It is also absent from the results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day 2004 voting[5]. In other words, the site had no visibility measurable by awards or ranking positions: in the Nizhny Novgorod Internet it existed as a utilitarian address — first for an office trading in commercial space, then for a section of a large city portal.

How it closed

The last snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated July 2, 2014[4]. In our liveness check the domain is marked as dead: no live page returned a title, and there is no information about a move to another address. What is now hosted at arenda.nn.ru is not recorded in the collected materials.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (first snapshot) (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2014 (April) (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2014 (July) (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day voting, 2004 (archive)