What Became of the Blogathon?

It fizzled for awhile, and then rose Phoenix-like from the ashes.  I hope Phoenixes can fly, because it then flew (yes, I’m sticking with flew) to the east, to become the Amador and El Dorado County Blogathon for Hunger.  If you want to sign up for this one, please get the flier.

Denver Blog

While searching for link partners recently I happened across Krystal Kraft’s Denver Real Estate and Relocation Blog. More and more, I’m seeing “Read My Blog” links popping up on Realtor® web sites, but unlike many of the blogs one finds, Krystal’s has actually been updated a few times since the Chiffons sang “He’s so fine”. Krystal has also caught on to that one listing / one website craze that’s sweeping the country by storm, just like Pet Rocks did a few years back.

It must be getting late.

Congratulations to Summer Mari Bachraty

… on the occasion of being born. Gosh, what a cutie. Her dad is the author of the Selsius Real Estate Blog, which looks to be a very entertaining little bit of real estate bloggery indeed.  It reminded us about Zillow.com, a site a client mentioned that does free home price evaluations.  (I tried it out however and the algorithm wasn’t too awful, but it did go back too far on the comparables I thought — even if it did give a number for my house that was higher than my educated real estate guess!)  Also you can learn about video tombstones.

Clearly, Mari’s dad is not the sort of market data drudge you find here.  Well, congratulations to mom, dad, and the cutest little baby I ever saw — except for mine .

Hawaii Blog Takes Off

I wanted to congratulate my pal Tony Kawaguchi over at the Honolulu Real Estate Blog on his blog’s great progress. He’s kept up a pace of about a post a day, which to me is a bit dizzying.  Moreover, he’s able to write about different things all the time, whereas I tend to lapse into variations of the “What’s the Market Doing” theme. Sure, sure, I have two blogs to write, but still…

I’ve been slowing down a bit on the task of finding new and exciting real estate blogs. To some extent this is a scheduling issue, since believe it or not surfing the net takes time, and sometimes it’s hard to schedule work that in other contexts seems like goofing off. To some extent what I’ve been finding lately are blogs that have only very recently appeared and don’t have much track record yet, or blogs who’s last post appeared in April 2005 or the like.

The more I do this sort of work, I find that creating resources on the Internet is a fairly minor task. Maintaining them and making them truly useful takes a boatload of effort, however.

Chicago Real Estate Blog

The lovely and talented Fran Bailey is your hostess for the Chicago Real Estate Blog. Fran’s got a good rythm of daily blog posts going, which is more than you can say for old Johnnie now that I’m taking out buyers and working with sellers on CMAs and just generally back in the real estate business as opposed to this sort of full-time intellectual bloggie thing I was doing two months ago.

Intellectual bloggie. Well, you get the idea.

I must say I like the broker tour highlights on Fran’s blog. I’ve thought about doing something like that since I started real estate blogging, but it never quite works for me because I don’t do the broker tours any more. I did so for about my first year in the business, until it dawned on me that I kept working in areas that weren’t near my house. Thus, if I were to go on all the broker tours for all the areas I worked in, I’d never work anywhere. But it’s a cool idea, and good for Fran for getting it done.

In addition to having some good output, Fran was nice enough to link to my other blog as well. I’m linking back to her from here for reasons that are understood only by fellow search-obsessed obscurists.

Real Estate Blog in Arizona

Scott and Shannon Hubbard’s BlogArizona is worth a look. There’s good stuff here about the real estate market in Phoenix of course, and the authors have a neat perspective in that — if I’m reading correctly — Shannon is an agent and Scott is a home inspector. And out in Arizona they license their inspectors, too! The joke about home inspectors in California is that it’s a guy with a ladder and a flashlight. (The reality is that the home inspectors I’ve worked with in California are highly experienced, very diligent in pointing out potential issues to buyers, and really nice, friendly guys. And lets face it, when it comes to getting in the crawl space, I’m really glad I have them to do it!)

Give Scott and Shannon a visit — It looks like their blog has been up since April of 2005 or so, and is updated fairly regularly.

Triple Mint Blog

Well, I learned something today about a word I’m supposed to know as a real estate broker.

The owners of the Triple Mint Blog tell us that their name derives from the “somewhat breathless term real estate brokers use to describe a property that’s in absolutely immaculate move-in condition”.

We do? Must be a New York thing. My next New York buyers, I promise, I’ll use that phrase on you. Anyway, I was awfully glad to see the name has meaning, it’s not just random post-modernism like you find on so many blogs.

Fellow Simpsons fans will recall Moe Syzlak’s definition of postmodernism: “weird for the sake of weird”.

So not only is the blog educational, the author tells us that it’s not just “another hopelessly self-obsessed New York site”. The elephant that comes up in the room when they say that, of course, is Curbed.com. Everybody links to Curbed.com, no doubt because even though they’re hopelessly obsessesed, they have good page rank. And playing PR Polo is an even bigger room- elephant with most webmasters than Curbed.com will ever be.

As for whether Triple Mint is hopelessly self-obsessed, I disagree. I think a blog that’s about what it’s about is a good thing, and have said in my remarks here repeatedly that I enjoy local content. Let’s be fair: New York has room for more local content because, as of the last census data, they had quite a few local people there. More than Oakland, for example. Way more than Cameron Park.

In the case of Triple-Mint, however, one post left me stymied, so sometimes local content may go a bit overboard, perhaps. The author writes:

“If, as some magazine writer recently opined, Richard Meier is the Prada of architecture, then certainly the Swiss team of Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron are its Helmut Lang–the brand for the real insiders.”

Duh, what’s a Prada? Who’s a Helmut Lang? I know, I know, it’s the Internet, I could look them up. Then again, I guess if you’re talking about brands for real insiders, it makes sense that members of the No-Homer club like me would feel a bit left out.

Still, I recommend you give Triple Mint a look, especially if you’re interested in fine urban architecture and the like. Certainly if you’re a real insider or any kind of New Yorker, even a faux New Yorker. The blog features all the good technical / design features I look for in a blog, and lots of material about the goings-on in New York real estate

And let’s face it: your post-modern credentials will be radically enhanced if you say something like, “Curbed? Are you kidding? They’re so ten minutes ago. Have you seen Triple Mint?” I’ll bet the authors would thank you, too!

San Diego Blog

Peter Toner’s San Diego Real Estate Blog is the first real estate blog we’ve seen for “America’s Finest City”. This one’s been around awhile and appears to be recently updated. I see lots of local market data — all to the good.

Missing are a blog roll and easy navigation — I’m only seeing the last couple of posts, and no categories, though it’s possible to click through using archive links or the calendar. I haven’t seen a calendar in awhile — they used to be all over the place.

Aloha, Tony

That almost looks like a palindrome, but it isn’t.

Tony Kawaguchi is proving what I never said, but should have: Anyone who blog’s on Christmas deserves to sell something. Especially if your blog has a cool name like Aloha Tony. I happened across this one today, and though it appears to be new, Tony is cranking out good articles at a breakneck clip, Santa’s sleighbells notwithstanding.

One item that I was interested to learn is that Tony watches the California market to see what’s going to happen in Hawaii.

A word of caution, however: there is no California market. Well, I suppose there is if you’re the California Association of Realtors® (for example) and writing an article about it. However, if my market updates for Oakland and Sacramento are any guide, different parts of California may well be on separate planets.

Anyway, nice job, Tony. Next year take Christmas off, though.

Toronto at Home

Fraser Beach sounds like a name of a TV show, but it’s really the name of the broker behind the excellent Toronto at Home blog, which I recently found from a link on John Mudd’s blog. As usual, my favorite part is the local information — the National Association of Realtors being bullish on the 2006 real estate market sounds a little lackluster after about the fourth time you read it, though I must say I fully agree with them with respect to the local market here.

Also, I must say I really like the layout on this one. As Oscar Wilde said, “To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. Only very shallow people do not judge by appearances.”

Anyway, give it a whirl.

Palm Springs Blog

I have to hand it to Carey Ann Parker, host of the Palm Springs Blog, Desert Homes Today — I never would have thought of deep frying a turkey, but Carey Ann not only tells you how, she also has the good sense to understand that anyone capable of deep frying a turkey is more than a candidate for lighting their homes on fire.

That’s the kind of person I want for my Realtor® if I ever buy something in Palm Springs. A gal who can tell you how to load a holiday already famous for gluttony with more potential damage by actually frying the unfortunate fowl, and who also has the good sense to warn you off crossing what otherwise might seem an inevitably crossed line between gastronome and pyromaniac.

I mean, once you’ve become a thrill seeker, and you’ve gotten the adrenaline rush out of the thought of frying a twenty-one pound bird, doesn’t that inevitably lead to harder drugs — if not burning your house down, then maybe trying to spit roast a whole cow or something?

It fires the imagination.

Luxury Sarasota Living

A terrific local specialty real estate blog I just ran across is Luxury Sarasota Living. This blog has a nice clean look and feel, and fun up to date content. Too bad about those Laurel Lakes folks, and I’m sorry to hear Oprah is bored with her toys. Give this one a whirl.

Musings on Our Oakland Site

Musings? My gosh, I’ve grown up to be my mother, Peggy Hill.

Make your Cubicle a Youbicle.

Well, here it is the end of the long weekend, but it’s mostly been a working weekend for me, getting our link partner directory going. This is always a mixed blessing, mostly just a lot of repetitive, low yield work, but you meet some nice people, like Lek in Thailand, who owns the Phuket Landbusters site.

Hello in Thai goes like this: Sawasdee Kha Khun.

The broker exam is coming up at the end of this week, so I won’t be able to do much more linkbuilding, or zen and the art of cut and paste. I’ll have to study my easements in gross and my bailments. But there are a few posts on deck for your reading pleasure in the meantime.

South Florida Real Estate Blog

Phyllis D. Hugenin’s South Florida Real Estate Blog is rich in area photos, which as I write this have many devastating scenes from hurricaine Wilma. This site is very picture rich, and they’re great photos, but you wouldn’t want to visit it on a dial-up. It’s good to see another Realtor® embracing largely local content.

Follow Steph

Stephane Grenier asked me to feature his Follow Steph blog here, and it’s a delight to do so, because this blog is a really good read. In addition to this clean, investment-related real estate blog, Steph is also the founder of LandlordMax Property Management software.

Steph’s experience with real estate investing definitely shines through on the pages of his blog. I don’t generally recommend real estate blogs that aren’t of a “local interest variety”, but Steph’s blog is thought provoking enough to be a worthwhile exception to this rule, even if I don’t agree with every line chapter and verse. For example, the claim that “Based on the housing affordability index of California, we could see [price] drops as high as 56.7%.” Sure, we could, but does anyone think we reasonably will? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect prices to never correct themselves in California, but no matter what happens in the market in coming months and years, California’s affordability won’t suddenly assume a position comparable to New Mexico or Idaho or the like. I expect that even were interest rates up to 18%, California would still be less affordable than the rest of the country.

It’s a demand-side thing, because it’s wonderful out here. Who’d want to live anywhere else.

The secret? It’s the Cheese.

But of course, I’m quibbling. A more serious concern in looking over Steph’s great blog is that his useful links page doesn’t have a link to “Oakland Real Estate”, with the http://www.oakland-homes-for-sale.com URL in the coveted HREF position. You know, all the best real estate sites have one of those links in them.

Yes, I know… I’m shameless.

Orange County Real Estate Blog

Real Estate Broker Vincent Bindi’s Orange County real estate blog would get two thumbs up, but I need to keep one thumb level to work the spacebar.

I said, I need to keep one thumb level to work the spacebar.

That got no funnier the second time, did it?

Well anyway, back to the Orange County real estate blog, this site has a nice clean design coupled with frequent updates, and the subject matter is rich, specific, and local — all the things I like in a real estate blog. Best of all, he’s linking back to two blogs of mine — like all the best blogs do.

Another Good Mortgage Blog

Got a nice note today on my Sacramento Blog from Chris Jones, who’s named after the Chris Jones Group.

No wait, I don’t think that’s right.

Anyway, Chris has a pretty respectable mortgage blog going. Actually he has a couple of them, but I’m sure you intrepid readers can follow the links. But listen, if your name is Joe Sixpack, don’t go there, because you might take umbrage at being called Joe Sixpack.

You might even if you’re not, but maybe I’m just being too politically correct here.

Happy Birthday, Charlotte. (I always miss the big financial news like how badly my bond indices are doing — oh wait, I didn’t miss that). Anyway, do give Chris’s blog a read.

More Real Estate Blogs

It’s been awhile since we’ve published anything about the real estate blog community more generally.

Leave it to our new MLS membership to get us doing something substantive. Substance in a blog? That’ll never fly!

However, one of the resources that I think we skipped over in our original Blog list was Lenderama, which publishes another list of real estate blogs (besides the one avaiable here and at Growabrain.

Ohio Real Estate Blog

Leah Ifft is writing what appears to be a fairly new but nice blog for Ohio Real Estate. We have to ask Leah for a reciprocal link here soon — we need to make contact with all the Team America Fans we can.

“America, - - - - Yeah!”

Dang that movie makes me feel so patriotic, when it doesn’t make me feel so ronery.

I’m surprised they let that one play in Ohio, though. Seems to me one could offend some delicate Buckeye sensibilities with that one.

Northern Virginia Real Estate Blog

The Northern Virginia Real Estate Blog is the work of Merv and Pam Forney. This blog gets my highest recommendation — we don’t usually have any stars, but I’ll give them five. Merv and Pam are SO nice. I asked them for a plain vanilla reciprocal link — you know, those dusty things sitting on a page in an archive somewhere, and Merv and Pam responded by finding my Sacrament Blog and linking back on their blog roll. They also have a nice design, and when I complimented them on it, they sent me the name of their designer.

If the whole human race was like Merv and Pam, we wouldn’t have to race so hard. Or something like that. Anyway, click on their blog early and often.

Urban Trekker Blog

Washington DC real estate is the starting point for Dewita Soeharjono’s tasty and Urban Trekker Blog. I like what she’s doing with the real estate linkage, especially. Unlike Inman News, where I can click on a link asking me to pay, Dewita has links to some of the best real estate news I’ve read lately.

Another Good Investing Blog

Another decent real estate investment blog I came across was Rob’s Ramblings. There’s a lot of good articles here, but sadly this blog hasn’t been updated in a while. Maybe when Rob sees this beautiful incoming link from such a fine Oakland locale as this, it’ll fire him into a frenzy of activity!

Meantime, in this case of Rob’s Ramblings we’ve passed the six month point that marks this blog as a blug — my just made up word for a blog that’s no longer being maintained. (Let’s hope it never catches on).

You know, there’s a living to be made out there by somebody in approaching the people with dusty old blogs with good content in them and taking the content off the authors hands for a couple of hundred bucks, then reselling it to someone who can use it in the context of a web site that’s doing something.

Sorry I messed up Rob’s blug by firing him with enthusiasm, but hey, I gave you the idea, and there are plenty of other blugs out there.

Great East Bay Web Sites Wanted

I’ve put up new blog rolls both here and on my Sacramento blog. Going forward I would like to add a great deal more sites — not only real estate sites, but also favorite local sites. So please add a comment if you have sites you’d like listed yourself or know of a site for the East Bay region that I should be linking to.

Thanks!

Real Estate Investing Blog

Bigger Pockets has a blog tied to their nicely done site. I thought they did a good job from what poking around I did with their investment calculators. I was thinking about doing something like that ever since I picked up Frank Gallinelli’s Book on real estate investing financial measures.

But you can’t take on every project, and one would think that with two blogs and ten real estate sites or so I’d consider myself well project-ized already

Of course, one would also think that if I’m going to be linking to books, I should also go set up an Amazon affiliate account so twenty-eight years from now I can claim the $100 I got coming to me.

I need to give one a call later and find out how he’s doing.

Viva Las Vegas

Now maybe it’s just me, but having such a nice Las Vegas Real Estate Blog and not titling it Viva Las Vegas is a bit of a missed opportunity.

Everybody loves Elvis.

But anyway, Michelle Sterling does a nice job otherwise. Too bad about the IRS and poor Wayne Newton.

I’d love to see more detailed market information. I’ve become a bit of a detailed market information junkie. Of course, the critical reader will note that I’ve yet to join the MLS and publish any detailed real estate information in this market, though I do alright for Elk Grove and Roseville.

Normally I jump in with both feet a lot faster than this, but lately I just want to free up some capital.

North Carolina Real Estate Blog

Now that’s a nice approach if he can pull it off: “We’ve partnered with the top NC realtors in each market to bring you a one-stop solution to finding homes in North Carolina.” See the blog at http://nchomes.silkblogs.com.

In other words: put up a blog for the whole state, and then sell referrals. I like the cut of his gib.

On the other hand, ouch. I hate it when you get cut in the gib.

I was working on a directory to do something similar for California, but the solution seemed to point to a site that was too loaded up with computer-generated content, and I really hate that. Also it occured to me that my main bread and butter to date was going after one and only one local market at a time.

Having said that, I put up two web sites.

Some of us just are addicted to typing, I suspect.

It’s Not Easy Being Green

So lamented Kermit the Frog. On the other hand, San Francisco Realtor® Michelle makes it look easy with her Organic Realtor® blog.

An uncharitable soul might argue that all of real estate is organic, because we salespeople spread manure around liberally and see what grows.

But being in the business myself, I won’t present that case myself.

Real Esate Investor’s Blog

Kevin Kingston’s Real Estate Investor’s Blog has a lot of neat stuff. I enjoyed the Irrational Exuberance graph, for example. More bubble speculation, to be sure. In another article, Kevin argues “Personally, I feel that properties which throw off a positive cash flow will weather any coming storm just fine, and even if they dip in value you’ll have the cash flow to smothe the ride.” Well, sure. Any property will throw off positive cash flow — it’s just a question of how much money do you have to tie up to get there.

What I see a lot of in the Sacramento area are potential investors from Bay area buyers calling us up because our grass is so much greener over here, who run off when they learn it’ll take 30% down or more here to get a positive cash flow.

Southwest Florida Blog

Hope all is well there in the wake of Katrina. I was going to fire the author up to write something, but now may not be the right time.

Maryland and Virginia

Here’s the Maryland and Virginia Real Estate Blog. It’s takes a pretty minimalist approach — fairly dense with statistics.

Whereas here, I’m likely to say anything.

Anything.

Another Real Estate Blog

John Keith’s Boston Real Estate Blog is worth a visit. The average asking price in Boston these days is $720,781.

John, inquiring minds want to know — what’s the average selling price?

The difference, or “swing” as it’s sometimes called, is one of those things I like to look at to see how hot (or not) a given local market is.

A Great Real Estate Blog that Isn’t

I was over at ired earlier, America’s Source for Paying $25 for a Real Estate Link, and I noticed they now had a pay $25.00 section for real estate Blogs. This is where I came across Anita Cross’s lovely Exploring Oregon blog, which they had sitting there under the Oregon Real Estate blog section, presumably either because the author paid the requisite twenty-five bucks, or they just wanted to have something sitting there for Oregon.

Let’s face it, photographers have bit of a leg up on Realtors® when it comes to compelling content.

So alright, I cheated on this one, but there was one post with two real estate blogs in it, so the count is even. I wouldn’t want to get to my self-proclaimed goal of fifty real estate blogs by any ill-gotten means, however, lest there be some penalty posted in whatever afterlife a Buddhist Atheist is prone to believe in.

Back to Anita’s blog again, one of the things I like about it is that it’s well designed. I’ve seen other photographers’ web sites that were four kinds of ugly from an HTML point of view, but maybe highlighted some nice pictures. Anita’s is just a nice simple layout with a rose on it and her husband plus pooch. What’s not to like?

The Foreclosure Bus

I enjoyed having a look at the Michigan Real Estate Investing blog, particularly the link to the bus. Getting into the foreclosure / REO market was one of those unrealized pipe dreams of mine — I even have a domain name registered for foreclusres in the Sacramento market, and started digging into the legal side of it fairly heavily — so it’s nice to see someone having so much fun with it that he’s got himself a bus load full of disciples.

“As ye lowball on earth, so shall ye lowball in heaven.”

Words to that effect.

I do hope there are sodas on the foreclosure bus. And sandwiches.

Real Estate PBrain

Wow, I’m honored. I’m actually on someone’s blog roll, and a really nice guy he seems to be, too, Sonoma County Realtor® Ed Rosenthal’ Real Estate PBrain Blog.

You folks in Sonoma County should list your house with Ed. Hmm…, well you never know, Ed, it might work.

Now what was really neat about Ed’s blog, besides the extreme good taste he showed putting both my blogs on his blog roll, was the genuine peek inside the Realtor® brain. “OK, here I am, loyal to you, and what do I get for my trouble? Heartache. A big fat heartache.”

As for my take on that, I’ve had some really nice clients in this business. But (at the risk of complaining) I’ve also had people who were convinced on some level that the Realtor trademark is a kick-me sign. You remember those kick me signs from high school.

So I can in some measure understand the quest that Ed is on — hope I don’t get into trouble with him for characterizing it. The quest to do more business with loyal people, be more of a consultant, work from a true fiduciary position.

In my own career, I’ve decided that the best defense against disloyal clients is to make them up in volume, by letting others on my team take on the pain while I develop the web sites that create the pain to begin with.

I am verbosely chicken.

This week one of the best agents on my team had to watch a client of hers mess up the transaction by calling the party on the other side and complaining about both agents while the transaction was still being negotiated. And of course, even as she was pounding nails into the coffin herself, the client blamed her agent for not getting the house she wanted. Never mind that along the way it was the client who offered five percent less on the home after the agent told her it was already at a good price.

At times we’re nothing more professional than professional scapegoats, getting a commission for being the whipping posts that clients turn to to asuage the guilt over their own self-centeredness and greed.

Of course, on the other end of the spectrum, there’s the client of mine I’ll never forget, the grateful first time condo buyer who cried when she took possession and baked me cookies.

See, this is where it’s get interesting, if indeed, it get’s interesting at all. The human inter-relationship. Bubbles come and go. But people inter-reacting in ways that are at times touching and at times just stupid is bound to be more entertaining.

Another Blog Across the Pond

Unlike Chicago, San Francisco supports at least two active blogs. We’ve already mentioned the daily pundit blog — the other, not quite as well known, is Adam Koval’s SocketSite. Adam’s raising money for the American Red Cross’s relief effort for New Orleans Katrina victims, so check out his site, or visit the Red Cross directly.

Real Estate Marketing Blog

The real estate marketing blog is a little different from many of the real estate blogs we’ve mentioned so far in that its audience is real estate bloggers rather than some broader community. (I say broader community because I don’t see how something like Curbed can be said to be aimed at buyers and sellers, successful though it is).

One of this entries in this blog raises — but does not resolve — the rather commonly arising question of whether blogs make sense from a business perspective. My own feeling on how they fit is that they provide a convenient mechanism for doing “Content SEO”. But doing content SEO only will only get you so far — you need to combine it with linkbuilding. And one might argue that blogging does that too when done really well, but the truth is there are more expedient roads to that destination.

Let’s just call it typing for fun and profit, in that order.

Real Estate Blog - Property Grunt

Well, as promised — one of Curbed’s links leds us over to the Property Grunt, including his interesting doomsaying about Two More Signs of the Real Estate Apocalypse. Here’s a good example of my Inman Pet Peeve mentioned yesterday — you can read the rest, but it’ll cost you. Fortunately for us the Grunt was good enough to quote liberally.

There’s an echo from our ethical real estate sales article too in the fact that he finds it ironic that he should be urging caution even though he’s a broker.

To tell you the truth, I think there’s a bit of hubris involved whenever we think we can utter anything intelligent about the behavior of any market in the future, other than in a general way.

Two in Chicago

After checking out New York, I thought I’d see what’s in the midwest, and found Ron Knoll’s Chicago Real Estate Blog. Ron’s blog is nice and focused — those who’ve been reading know I tend to prefer blogs that are fairly simple even if they risk being focused on one’s own business.

On the other hand, a blog that was in Chicago — but is not much any more — is MyPlaceChicago.com. As an old fan of ER and other hospital dramas, I wonder how long one has to not write anything before you should pronounce a blog’s time of death.

Typing Up With the Joneses

I first learned about Curbed from the San Francisco Real Estate Blog, which quotes another blogger as saying: “San Francisco Real Estate Blog. It’s every bit as interesting as Curbed, the New York Real Estate blog.”

So I had to go over to Curbed and check out how interesting it was, of course, but I’m afraid that somewhere along the line I missed the boat, because Curbed doesn’t strike me as over-compelling. I suppose if you’re a New Yorker worried about where his view will go, it is, but I’m having a hard time getting it. I mean, it’s nice and all, but sometimes I enjoy some of the less well developed blogs out there. (Maybe they remind me of this one.)

Curbed did have a nice batch of links to other blogs that I did enjoy — we’ll check out some of those going forward.

I do feel like a bit more of a critic and less of a contributor here. I really must sink in and get some listings here to keep me off the streets.

Real Estate Blog - Boston

John A. Keith’s Boston Real Estate Blog. Maybe it really is a commentary on these real estate blogs, but I must admit I find myself most drawn to the off topic stuff

So-and-So.com

Searching for blogs in Phoenix, I came up with one in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina that’s more interesting than most. It focuses on preconstruction condos, condo investing, and the like.

I do wish blog authors would say who they are so I can mention them. Probably I violate that rule myself, don’t I? Well, let me see if I can’t give some more information about myself, so when my throngs of admirers arrive they won’t be left scratching their heads.

Santa Clarita County’s Real Estate Blog

Yet another California blog, Darla Vanderlip’s blog covers Santa Clarita and Northern Los Angeles County. This is number six on our hit parade, with apologies to Casey Kasem.

I haven’t done a study or anything, but I strongly suspect many real estate blogs will be concentrated in California and Florida, since my experience has been that there are huge concentrations of real estate web sites in both areas.

Quick, somebody do a study. Or at least a guest room.

Real Estate Blog - San Luis Obispo

Keith Byrd’s San Luis Obispo Real Estate Blog. Not only does this have some really pretty template work going on, it also wins my award for the most cut-and-paste friendly title. One thing I noticed though that was less pretty was a lack of permanent links so I could readily link to the article. Well, no matter, I’m neither here to bury Ceaser nor to praise him.

While reading Keith’s blog, I did get to thinking about the whole enterprise, however — not to blame Keith in any way for this sudden, and some would say uncharacteristic, cognitive activity. I just started to wonder how many humans actually read these real estate blogs. I suppose that insofar as I can think up ways to be more appealing to a wider readership in some way, these sorts of considerations are all to the good.

Looking at it from a traffic perspective, when I review my web server logs (on another site — there’s not enough happening here yet to give any indication) the real heavy duty traffic seems to always come in to the static pages. Moreover, when my clients do talk about my web sites, they tell me that what they liked was the ability to search without having to register. No one has yet mentioned the blog.

I suppose if the blog helps to point out updates to the site and drives the occasional reader or two here, that’s about all one should expect it to do. I’ll probably never get the readership of something like “Pretty Young Girl with a Vaguely Artsy Subtext” or the like.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, eh?

Another Real Estate Blog

Raju Mahone maintains a reasonably up-to-date real estate blog for the Columbus, Ohio area. In case anyone’s keeping score, it turns out that this is the third Real Estate Blog of 50 that we’re shooting for in our Real Estate Web Log Category Sweepstakes.  (Note:  I later removed the link to this blog as it now appears to be defunct, so let’s try Maureen McCabe’s Columbus Best Blog instead.

Columbus ranks #78 among the most liberal cities, according to the Bay Area Center for Voting Research. But Oakland ranks an extremely respectable #5.

See the things you learn by blogging?

Real Estate Blog List

Well, in my relentless quest to post about fifty blogs, number four or five on our list is a web site that’s already bested my fifty handsomely, I would think, the growabrain blog. I’m trying not to cheat and just republish their list, but every time I get a do a search for real estate blogs, growabrain figures prominently.

Ethical Real Estate Sales

Bill Quick, in his San Francisco Real Estate Blog (#2 in our oddly numerical quest to identify 50 real estate blogs), posted an interesting article wrestling with the market as it is in It’s the Deal, not the Deed.

“I occasionally get mail asking me why I am so downbeat on my own local market. I am a real estate sales agent, I am reminded. Am I not supposed to be an optimist? How can I sell real estate if I think real estate is potentially a disastrous investment?”

Well, good stuff, indeed, Bill. And I’ve wrestled with it myself, and I can see how in San Francisco it’d be so much more of an issue. On the one hand we want to help clients achieve home ownership, and on the other we’re often in a position of either working with clients who are wealthy enough to afford it, or people who already bought in when the market was different, or people who can’t possibly make a move without getting somewhat overextended.

A strictly sales-mechanics perspective offers no easy fix. Stage two of the sales process (or stage 3 depending on who you read), is “qualifying the prospect”, in other words, answering the question, “Is this someone who can afford and benefit from what I’m selling?” One of the problems with being at a market extreme as we are now is that any salesperson who’s honest with himself ends up answering “no” as often as yes. Not very comfortable.

I suspect (though I haven’t sold through the eighties and nineties myself), that at the opposite end of the market spectrum, with interest at fourteen and sixteen percent, one ends up answering “no” a lot, too.

Shouldn’t a sales “agent” be more optimistic? Maybe so. But it depends on how you see your role. A sales “professional” in the Tommy Hopkins sense would have the integrity to tell his clients the truth, and spend more time in the qualifying stage to make sure he’s talking to the right people. Of course, that’s not easy to do if you really want to help more people achieve home ownership.

Well, one thing’s fairly certain — the market will change someday and we’ll be complaining about rain instead of sun.

Real Estate Blogs

Well, we are a real estate blog right here after all, aren’t we? So here we are on a mission to write about fifty or so of our colleagues.

I’m not sure where fifty came from as a parameter for this goal. Maybe from fifty sad chairs — which no doubt dervied originally from Cool Hand Luke, who could eat fifty eggs.

1) Well, let’s start with one of the first ones I found, since Gary Woods was such a gentleman the first time I talked to him when I was launching my Sacramento Blog. Gary’s the author of the Santa Barbara real estate blog.