Property Grunt

Monday, February 11, 2008

76



Welcome to Carnival 76 good people. To everyone who participated, thank you. Real estate is a subject fallen out of vogue for obvious reasons, but it is nice to know that there are people out there who are still fighting the good fight.

Brian block discuses the role that home owner’s associations play in a condominium as guardians of condominium’s property values. Although there are no alligator problems in New York City, that we know of, the role of the homeowner association is akin to a condo or coop board. Brian also discusses the pros and cons of the home owner’s association and what to look for in the resale disclosure documents. All is featured in his entry Please Don't Feed the Alligators (or the Birds)! posted at Virginia Real Estate News.


Jim Cronin of the Real Estate Tomato squeezes in his two cents about SEO which stands for Search Engine Optimization. Jim argues why SEO is bad and pushes for all real estate bloggers to focus on original content, instead of repeating key words. And I do concur with Jim. Business Blogging is a discipline which you can read more about in his entry Why Worrying About SEO Is Detrimental to Your Real Estate Blog posted at Real Estate Tomato.

Purva Brown gets down with her glass is half full take on the foreclosure crisis that is clobbering the California real estate market and saysSacramento Foreclosures - Why the Numbers Need to be Taken with a Grain of Salt posted at Sacramento Real Estate Gal.


And its another brown and this one is bringing the hammer down, Joshua Morgan Brown of City Hammer lays it on the line why he thinks Pier One is so divine. (I promise you this is the last rhyme for today.) It is an in depth analysis of why this retail operation will survive while others have fallen by the wayside. All is said in his entry Why I'm Rooting for Pier 1 to Weather the Housing Slump posted at cityhammer.com blog.

And last but not least, is the man, the myth, the legend. When he speaks, everyone stops in their tracks to listen. I give you Jonathan Miller’s entry Commitment Letter Is No Letter Of Commitment posted at Matrix.

Jonathan Miller presents the facts of why it has been so easy for homeowners to walk away from their homes when the going gets rough. Jonathan points out that the new mortgage products are geared toward monthly payments rather than the initial down payment. Therefore homeowners are not as heavily invested in their properties. Perhaps that can explain the attitudes of some of the homeowners profiles on 60 Minutes.

I want to thank everyone for pitching in and I want to thank Drew over at Zillow for putting me into the huddle.