Welcome to the 120th Edition of The Carnival of Real Estate. We are honored to be hosting the carnival for the 2nd time. As a technology company we stay very interested in technology’s impact on the real estate industry. Keeping with that focus, I decided the criteria for my top post would be one that focused on the topic of  Real Estate Professionals and their involvement with Social Media. Many great posts were submitted this week, but only one touched on Social Media. So I have one winner for the week and honorable mentions for the other great entries.

The Top Post and Winner of the Realty Thought of the Week Award goes to Dustin Luther for his entry : The trouble with Marc’s approach to Twitter. In this post Dustin examines an approach to social media engagement for real estate professionals:

However, on a recent conversation, we were talking about where he’s getting his business and he mentioned Facebook (he’s very active on Facebook and MySpace having uploaded thousands of photos and shared countless stories).  Says his friends on Facebook have been treating him well lately sending him great clients and he’d love to get more.  But he doesn’t consider those “internet” leads since the clients typically come to him on a recommendation from a friend.

Honorable Mentions to other Great Posts:

• Peyman Aleagha discusses the value of text messaging for Real Estate Professionals
• Doug Willis wrote a funny story about Real Estate Agents seeking a Bailout
• Patrick Duffy takes us on a Review of 2008 and a look ahead
• Jim Reppond showed us a cool thermography tool used for home inspections
• Riley Smith discussed how remodeling might not pay, but will help sell your house
• Diane Tuman gives us a look into houses that sit because of bad design and blue carpet
• Shawna Ebersole showed us there are still options to buy a home without a down payment

The beginnings of that idea can now be found at Roofable (www.roofable.com), a consumer-focused real estate blog for Orlando. Roofable is my attempt to create a rooftop view of Orlando’s real estate market, trends and neighborhoods.

If you’re in Orlando and have some thoughts, gossip or tips on real estate in our area – send it in to me at tips at roofable dot com!

Starting this new independent blog comes at a time where I’m also handing off the reigns of this blog (Realty Thoughts) to Damian Scott, president of eppraisal.com, and Allison Jordan, another member of the eppraisal.com team. I will continue to contribute here from time-to-time, but look for more from Damian and Allison than me.

Well, Matt Heaton and Jonathan Washburn have rolled out an advertising platform for their system. For a minimum of $10/per campaign you can start putting up impression-based ads on the ActiveRain network. Your campaign can be targeted at specific pages on our site, specific user groups, members or non-members, regional areas (state, county, city), or all users on all pages.

Other items of note:

1. The minimum campaign budget is $10
2. Ads have SEO value – Search engines walking the site they will see your ad as normal content.
3. You can choose to have your ad displayed only 5 times to a particular user session or choose to have it be unlimited
4. You can stop/start your ad at anytime and update your bids whenever you wish

The SEO Link Problem

[Update: this has since been changed/fixed on ActiveRain]

I would like to bring up one little point – bullet number 2 in particular. I’d be careful of claiming that at this point in time. You see, I follow some of the conversations on SEO, and I know that Matt Cutts has stated Google’s position on any type of sponsored links to be expressly tagged or mentioned as “sponsored” somehow.

Now Google doesn’t own the internet, nor have they been anointed as the “high priests of what you’re allowed to do online”. However, they do control a lot of SEO traffic – the lion’s share, so that allows them to be the big bully if they so choose. Basically, I’d be cautious of making that SEO claim, since all it takes is one little algorithm adustment to add make ActiveRain links be devalued as much as PayPerPost and Text Link Ads (which they’ve done).

In Summary
Okay, besides all that, I still think it’s a great platform for advertisers who have something to sell to real estate professionals. Smart marketers will do more than just advertising here, they will get in on their conversations and prove their value.

Jonathan Dalton reflects on the state of the industry. In What Have We Taught Our Clients?, he covers the sins of perception that real estate agents are propagating across the country.

We have taught our clients that agents are driving the buying process. We’re not. Yes, an agent will send properties to his or her buyers. But they’ll likely receive as many or more in return. Why? Because there’s little need for the middleman when it comes to searching for homes. Our role as agents has changed – finding the home is the easy part. Negotiating the contract all the way through to the closing is where our expertise comes into play.

Lani Anglin writes a fun rant titled, Obsession With Youth? I Think Not!, where she berates a letter writer to REALTOR magazine.

I object to the letter because those who have been successful in the corporate world that haven’t hit their 30th birthday SHOULD be celebrated. As a member of that group, I will tell you that my biggest professional obstacle is NOT my sex, my background or my vocabulary level- it is my age.

Patrick Kapowich, of Silicon Valley Broker, discusses How Can Brokers Protect Themselves From Agent Promotion?

My concern was the same then as it is now: Will agents and/or brokers answer online questions outside their areas of expertise? (As many do off-line) – They did. Which, by the way, is strictly prohibited.

Benn Rosales reminds us about self-fulfilling prophecies in Mortgage Drama, Real Estate Bubble, Tech Crash, Dotcom Disaster.

As some (including myself) try to remain positive around the blog-o-whatever about the mortgage industry, there are already those who cannot stop warning and passing along their own fears. It is already preordained that we will have a mortgage meltdown because the virus of words is already spreading.

Craig Schiller, of Home Staging, talks about the values of staging a home in Are Vacant Homes Black Holes That Suck the Life Out of their Own Sales?

…a vacant house will be more difficult to sell then a furnished home. A buyers market will only make it even more difficult for a seller to sell for there are more than enough homes to choose from.

Kevin Boer on The Innovator’s Dilemma In Real Estate: Beware Of That Redfin Swimming Just Below You, where he applies lessons from Harvard’s Clayton Christensen on how low-cost competitors move up the value chain to real estate brokerage.

If the new entrant succeeds, it starts to take market share from the incumbents, who finally wake up — often too late — and discover that the “cheap, undesirable” part of the market is much larger than they previously thought.

Again, you can use any of these images for anything that you would like – free and open.

(50 more pictures at Todd’s blog)

Interesting tidbits:

• NAR wants to play directly with the consumer
• Raising NAR dues gives them $100 million to play with
• NAR wants to be the consumer advocate to Washington DC

Is it just me, or does anyone really think that an organization that moves as ponderously slowly as NAR, and needs 900 people to reach consensus for any decision, really has a chance to play in the fast-moving and dynamic consumer market?

How many large organizations have been able to make a web-play that actually works? If tech giants like Microsoft can’t even buy their way into the consumer market, how realistic is it for NAR?

I might be being overly pessimistic on this. Dale did mention that they wanted to be the consumer’s advocate lobbying in DC. Okay, I can buy that. How though? How are you going to get consumers to pay attention to you online?

Dale mentioned that Realtor.com has fallen behind, but that when they catch up, they won’t fall behind again. Technically, that’s possible, I just don’t believe they can do it. There’s a lot of catch-up that will have to be done, as the Trulia’s, eppraisal.com’s and Zillow’s of the world keep innovating and winning the attention of the average American.

Congrats to Mary Pope-Handy of Live in Los Gatos and her mentor, Frances Flynn Thorsen, theRealtyGram! $5000 will be donated to a charity from this competition.

“Facebook is the white pages,
Your blog is the yellow pages.”

There were more thoughts on why it’s important to be a part of the online conversation. With those of us who blog, that tends to be the central node of our informal social network. We do still tend to take part in the “real” social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Active Rain though.

Dustin Luther, of Move.com, brought up the point that anytime you link to someone, you “vote” for them. This is the foundation of the informal network.

Anil Dash spoke about the reality that human behavior hasn’t changed – we’re still the same. Social networking is what humans are born to do. The sites are just revealing the types of things that we do anyway. These same behaviors are just manifesting in a new medium.

Finding Your Voice Panel

(more images on Flickr)

“It takes a while to find your voice, you have to write a little bit first before it really clicks.”
– Philip Ferrato, Editor, Curbed SF

“When someone asks a question, send them a link to a blog post that you wrote answering the question. When the next person asks the same question, the link is already there – send it to them.”
– Ardell DellaLoggia, Associate Broker, Sound Realty

“Write about what you’re passionate about and throw in your opinion. Without your opinion, your voice, I’m not interested in reading it.”
– Drew Meyers, Community Relations Specialist, Zillow

“I don’t want the same people reading me all the time, I’m an agent, I want new people calling me.”
– Ardell DellaLoggia, Associate Broker, Sound Realty

“When you’re writing about things you’re passionate about, you’re bound to offend someone sometime.”
– Marlow Harris, Realtor, Coldwell Banker Bain Associates

Monetizing Your Blog Panel

Can advertising hurt your credibility?
“Yes, in the beginning, you should be focused on growing your brand and credibility first.”
– Paul Chaney, Vice President Marketing, Blogging Systems

“No. We’re not writing for fun here, you should try and get a return on that time investment from the beginning. Especially when it’s leveraging the local connections and non-competitive partners you have (plumbers, home inspectors, etc…)”
– Rudolph Bachraty III, Co-Founder, Sellsius°

What about Banner ads?
“The most successful source of revenue we’ve had is from TLA. Google AdSense only works for a select few.”
– Rudolph Bachraty III, Co-Founder, Sellsius°

“I’ve personally cached a $65,000 check from Google, but that’s when I managed over 400 sites. It’s about volume.”
– Ted Murphy, Founder/CEO, PayPerPost

“Sponsorship might be a better avenue – where someone will pay $x/month to have the link on your site regardless of how many people come to the site or click through the link. This really works well for niche sites.”
– Ted Murphy, Founder/CEO, PayPerPost

Should you get paid to write a post?
“I don’t think that you should get paid to post anything in the real estate industry. Our industry has a hard enough time building credibility, so it has to be authentic.”
– Rudolph Bachraty III, Co-Founder, Sellsius°

It’s to easy for us technologists to get caught up in our technology, our blogs or our social networks. When we do, we often fail to remember that these are tools that are there to facilitate communication and build towards offline interaction, business and partnerships.

A bunch of us are converging on San Francisco in our annual pilgrimage to Real Estate Tech Mecca. It’s a fun event, where we realize the culmination of our online work throughout the year in the connections made face-to-face. Many of us will go away with partnerships and new business opportunities because of the time spent online blogging or connecting through social networking vehicles like Active Rain and Facebook.

This same lesson applies to real estate agents online. Again, it’s easy to get lost in the myriad tools and possibilities open to you online. You could spend a lot of time making sure you’ve got a couple hundred friends on Facebook, answering questions on Trulia Voices or blogging. The most important thing to remember is that you should be driving towards offline (face-to-face) meetings.

The websites and tools available online are just facilitators for your offline interaction.

Chances are, the next real estate deal you make might be instigated by something you did online. However, it will likely be finalized only after meeting face-to-face. The truth is that offline interaction is far more powerful than online.

Take the opportunity, whenever it arises to use tools that help raise your visibility online – grow your brand. But, also take the opportunity to leverage that into meetings and events that actually result in business.