Lots of Blogosphere fun going on this week at Altos HQ. In today's post we host the Carnival of Real Estate: Consumer Edition. Tomorrow we'll be playing Simon (Paula? The other dude?) on Active Rain's Project Blogger competition of up and coming real estate bloggers.
First for the Altos Research readers who aren't knee deep in real estate blogging: Blog Carnivals are simply a collection of best-posts on a particular topic self-submitted by a group of bloggers. I like the carnival concept because it gives readers get a filtered-for-quality collection of reading each week. As a blogger, carnivals are a great way to get a little publicity for your best work.
We've been participating on and off in the more broad Carnival of Real Estate over the past year or so. (It'll be hosted on this site next month.) Many of the best posts in that collection are folks writing for real estate pros. Lots of blogging about blogging. Great topics but not meaningful to the consumer who just wants to hear more about home buying and selling. Thus the CoRE: Consumer Edition was born.
On to the posts
Top of the Heap
My favorite post this week is from Jay the Phoenix Real Estate Guy. It's a topic close to our hearts here and I find it a valuable exercise for the consumer reader. In What The Heck is a Buyers' Market? Jay explores the common euphemism for the growing levels of homes on the market. Demand is down and supply is up. If you're in the market to buy, you'll have plenty of selection. If you're a seller, well, opportunity is all relative, I suppose. It's a tricky topic because the converse is true too.
Runner up today, with a timely and compelling topic, is from Toby at the Delaware Ohio Real Estate Blog. Increasing foreclosures and what to do about them. Toby points out that everyone loses in the foreclosure process - the borrower, the lender, the community, etc. The Ohio market is facing higher rates of foreclosure than most of the rest of the country, so what should be done? Toby looks at a few options on the table, but misses the one I see as the logical and most productive choice: Do nothing--gotta let the pain work its way through. I've been meaning to rant on the subject for a while, but I'll leave that for another post.
Some other entries worth perusing:
- Michael Emilio dives into the legal arrangements of who represents whom in the real estate transaction. Good stuff. Michael - you should post this topic in some of the real estate wikis flowering out there these days.
- Athol instructs us not to have a heart attack in rural Connecticut.
- Jill (Kathy?) at ShakandJill gives us tips for not creeping out your realtor on open home visits. By the way, that's a good lookin' web site.
- Nigel in Salt Lake City runs through the emotional reasons for why condos can be good for you. I'd love to see the financial side a bit more.
- HotPads tells us to bring a camera and notepad to your open home tour. It's funny how quickly the different properties run together after four hours of home (or appartment) shopping. I'm a spreadsheet guy, personally.
That's all for the Carnival this week. To submit for next week, go
here.
As Altos Research has been steadily growing our market coverage, we're making friends and clients in new parts of the country. Here's a quick mention for our Arizona readers to check out Phoenix Realtor Christoph Schweiger's new blog. He's jumped in to
Tracked: Jun 01, 11:46