Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate

The guidelines for this carnival.

As always, I arranged the entries that met guidelines into three levels, based upon originality, usefulness to the consumer, and how much thought and effort and research went into an entry.

STRONGLY RECOMMENDED

There were no strongly recommended submissions this time.

RECOMMENDED

Asheville Mountain Real Estate submits Four Essentials From the Eighth Grade for Buyers & Sellers. I disagree with point four, because the dollars for your loan are numerically constant and not subject to inflation. In other words, the table is factoring out something that should be left in. But it's a solid basic article otherwise.

How To Analyze Real Estate - The Real Estate Stack is a good, if basic, measurement of a property's likely cash flow. If net cash flow is positive, it's very hard to go wrong - it's really more a question of "How long until things go right?" On the other hand, many properties with negative cash flow are nonetheless excellent investments.

Your host presents Why Cost Is As Important As Rate For Mortgage Loans

MET GUIDELINES

Restoring Your Finances and Your Faith presents Baby Steps to Buying Real Estate

I'm going to give this one the benefit of the doubt, as it really seems aimed more at agents and professional photographers, but sellers could benefit from it: When Your Wife Stabs You With a Fork You Learn to Pay Attention.

Is it Better to Rent or Buy? That is The Question considers only one variable in determining the recommendation. Regulatory situation? New Housing Supply? Demand trends? Macroeconomic support levels? What's likely to happen with rents in the future? Interest rates? Paying attention only to rent ratio is a good way to get yourself into serious trouble. But it does meet guidelines.

SPAM AND OTHER RIDICULOUS SUBMISSIONS

"Building a Strong Financial Foundation" actually managed to mention real estate in passing. On the other hand, elementary mistakes and misunderstandings of financial planning principles indicate that the author of this piece is operating by luck. Not everyone has good luck.

"Are You Really Buying Domestic Goods?" Did not so much as mention real estate, or any problem solving whatsoever. Four paragraphs expanding upon one stupid question which is irrelevant to this carnival. Kind of like the idiots that keep asking "Why?" no matter how good the answer. At a certain point, it becomes justifiable homicide.

American Consumer News has decided to act like all the other spam bots on the internet. Despite the fact I've blacklisted their email, they start sending more irrelevant (and wrong) claptrap from other email addresses. Nice of them to label themselves as purveyors of spam.

To prove you can't keep a bad idea down, the also banned and blacklisted KC Lau also sent an article about from another email address. If he read the guidelines or the carnival, he'd stop the submission spam. Once again his submission was irrelevant to this carnival, once again it was bad information, and once again his email was added to carnival blacklist.

"The Quest for Making Money Online" has nothing to do with real estate whatsoever. They claim it's not easy to make money online, and if you're finding it difficult to read carnival guidelines, I have to agree. By the way, the information contained in the post was a waste of time to read.

For those who might object to the treatment their submission received, the relevant information has been in the guidelines since before submissions were being accepted for this carnival. Having been told to read the guidelines, you willingly submitted these posts. Live with it.

Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate will return in two weeks (June 18th, 2008), here at Searchlight Crusade, unless someone else wants to host. Deadline for submissions will be June 16th.