Super Heroes of the Real Estate Blogosphere

It’s an honor to be able to judge this, the 45th week of the Carnival of Project Blogger, and choose who I feel to be the best super hero bloggers with the most super powers.

I was able to get my feet wet a couple of weeks ago when I judged the carnival of project blogger. In that carnival, I took most of the submissions and offered my comments and advice on how to make the posts/blogs better. But since this carnival isn’t about apprentices learning how to blog, I won’t bother my readers with my regular “how to” format.

My style of judging is typically to pick the posts that I think will be the most successful as a real estate related blog post. Whether that means trying to attract buyers/sellers/borrowers, or build a real estate related B2B blog, the goal should be success.

So, in no particular order, here are my 4 favorite carnival submissions:

John Barker’s Mortgage Blog: What is a Short Sale? - This was a great article. I admit that I had never heard of John, or visited his blog before, but this is what it’s all about. It’s well written, informative, and answers a question that I’m sure many borrowers and home owners want to know the answer to.

Ann Brenhoff, LA Times: Shoot — It’s for the Web - Ok, so this article clearly doesn’t fit your “classic” blog post. I mean, come on. It’s an article from the L.A. Times. But it was unique, and I appreciate higher level media standing up and taking notice of events like the carnival of real estate, so I decided to include it. Ann’s post was basically all about how to take quality pictures of listings for posting online. There were some great tips, and it was just plain valuable information for listing agent’s and sellers.

Blood Hound Blog: Dancing on bridges: Apprehending great real estate webloggers - Ok… I don’t even know how to begin commenting on this post. For starters, I’m scared to death to say anything stupid for the fear that Greg will squash me like an ant. Those of you that read Greg regularly know that he is a fantastic writer, in fact he rarely doesn’t include a word in each post that I have never heard before. This is silly, but I often get intimidated when/if I comment on his posts because his writing is so far superior to mine.

If you know Greg, you also know that he doesn’t shy away from speaking his mind. He has stirred up some pretty heated controversies and arguments in the past, and I still haven’t decided if it’s all part of a publicity act, or simply who he his (although I lean towards the latter). I’m sure he is aware of the links that being controversial brings. It’s linkbaiting 101. Anyway, this post was another one that some people may be offended by, but one that gets his point across: blogs good blogs are all about context.

Jonathan Dalton Phoenix Real Estate Blog: First Redfin, Now an Arizona FSBO Site - I’ve always been a fan of Jonathan’s writing. It’s often funny, creative, and always fun to read. This post pointed out a ridiculous article in a local paper that made me laugh about a FSBO site. It turned out that many of the “facts” of the article were just inflated and misleading, and it just made for a fun read.

Honorable mentions include:

Larry Walker - Comp Killers

Stewart Hsu - How to Build a Strong Real Estate Team

Alex Mather - Discount Brokerages and Homophobic Men

Thank you to everyone that submitted this week! And thank you Drew for continuing to run a great carnival, and taking the time to manage everything!