Welcome to the 40th Carnival of Real Estate! It's the first Carnival for Transparent and the experience of having great reading sent to me instead of perusing to find them through the feedreader is a real joy. 33 articles popped up and I've grouped them into natural themes. Here we go!

New Business Models

I love reading about new business models and Erik Hersman proposes a grand one: real estate ad networks. Real estate advertising predominantly revolves around listings and agent preferred placements ... agents are used to placing these types of ads on Realtor.com, Craigslist and more recently Trulia and Zillow. Eric posits: why not provide a one-stop menu driven application that allows advertisers to buy time on national and local/community sites including blogs? This may be an idea for one of the new "ad portals" like Vflyer or Postlets.

Mike Ognek in his article Open Market 2.0 posits that real estate brokerage is transitioning along the same lines as stock brokerage did during the Web 1.0 days of e-Trade. Web 1.0 had in part disintermediated the "market makers" as stocks traded on a more transparent platform... the analogy he makes is how the "transition of power" will occur in real estate as the old guard brokers cede authority to new models that connect buyers and sellers more directly.

The Real Estate Text Book

I've always thought that many of the prolific blogs like Bloodhound and RainCity should have instant book publishing contracts repurposing their posts describing the minutiae of the home buying process.

• Steve Leung describes the disclosure packet and what to look for - it's a unique explanation and worthy of a chapter.
• Dan Melson explains the variations of seller rebates to the buyer or their agent without committing fraud.
  
• Athol Kay has fine tuned his Listing Tour - a textbook marketing piece for agents.

Local Scenes

  
Lots of talk recently about the vagaries of local markets and how cities within a few miles of each other differ so greatly in price, culture and customs , especially in our fair state. Silicon Valley Blogger's sticker shocker shows circumstantial proof that a Stanford assistant professor of yesteryear could own a home now being sold for $17 million today (picture above, my take - it's simply the land... I guess Palo Alto back then was a backwater like Merced - the Central Valley city where the newest University of California starts up in September - is now).

And does your neighborhood have an open house signage problem? these tiny billboards are visual pollution when parked at every street corner... Kris Berg checks out those Board of Realtor rules about signage, it's hilarious so see the review at the Weenie.

New Bloggers on the Radar

• Tomato protege John Coley advises new bloggers about how to position their blog and not be intimidated with developing a national presence. (Jim, your submission was quite worthy but I opted for John's Tomato post)
  
• Silicon Valley newcomer Stewart Hsu publishes his diatribe on valuation of single family homes for investment purposes (it's also a good entry for the Real Estate Textbook)
  
• Melissa DelGaudio understands the MLS is still the frontline listing database and the other marketing sites (Zillow, REaltor.com) complement listing marketing... principally because the Realtor Boards enforce strict standards for accuracy.

 "Cheat the Prophet"

I enjoy the articles that contradict those who blow too hard, who make noise... they sell their predictions daily until they come true, and then ride their own wave as prophets. Nigel Swaby points out that some housing bubble bloggers are just blanket predicting economic armageddon... stocks, housing, global economy all tanking... basically they tend to give wrong advice from their bully pulpit. There's no room for debate in this kind of one-sided analysis because it's easy to set your google alerts to doom/gloom keywords and link to those articles daily. Yet, I myself admit these types of blogs are one-stop shopping for assessing the more extreme viewpoints out there. For a more balanced perspective on the economic play between stocks and housing, read Chris Smith's real estate vs. stocks article.

And for you NBA fans - we're cheating Prophet Barkley - slam him into Alcatraz! Our Warriors primed to upset the best team in the NBA !

Humor

The laughs section of the Carnival is over at the Real Estate Weenie... Teresa and I were a bit disappointed at the dearth of comic articles... I leave off with Introducing the Book, a funny video recommended by NAR's Mark Lesswing.

Addendum: check out the Carnival of Real Estate's Exploited Pets...

So many links, so little time... next week's Carnival is hosted by my SoCal neighbor Jon Lansner at the OC Register