Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate

The guidelines for this carnival.

Last time, I said I needed to average twelve entries from the first two levels to return the carnival to every two weeks. This was not a cue to send or submit every piece of spam and irrelevant nonsense under the sun. One per author or website per carnival. Articles for consumers of real estate, not agents or loan officers, and ill-informed garbage containing more mistakes than good information will not be accepted, either. Commercial solicitation within the article is strongly frowned upon, and raises the bar for articles to qualify. The guidelines apply.

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, nor a request for duplicate submissions.

STRONGLY RECOMMENDED

There were no articles in this category this time.

RECOMMENDED

Behavioral Finance - Use The Investor Psychology To Your Advantage isn't aimed specifically at real estate, but it's something to keep in mind.

The Ten Commandments of Finding College Housing makes some mistakes, but is a decent primer for college students.

How To Dispute Your Property Taxes is market specific, but covers an important point: If the property is worth less than the assessed value, you can get the assessment reduced. Be aware that in most places, it's not risk free. If it is determined that the property is worth more than the assessment, your assessment can also be raised. California, thanks to Proposition 13, is mostly an exception to this.

How Do I Know If I've Been Lowballed on a Mortgage Quote?

MET GUIDELINES

You want to make money in real estate, Buy Low, Sell High. The way some people act, you'd think that was rocket science or something.

SPAM AND OTHER RIDICULOUS SUBMISSIONS

A site called "Deposit Articles" solicited for people to write articles for them for free. The carnival wants expert articles for consumers in the subject of real estate, but they want experts to volunteer to write for free so they can get AdSense revenue. Definitely unclear on the concept, as well as being parasitic distractions from people who actually know what they're writing. How pathetic can you get?

A Site named "Discover Debt Freedom" submitted an article telling you to take a vacation in South America. The only mention of real estate in the entire article was a paid shill for a vacation rental site. How in the world vacationing abroad is going to help you pay down your debts is something I can't figure, and the whole thing is completely inappropriate spam.

A site named Credit Solutions submitted a worse than useless article that did not so much as mention real estate. Clueless, clueless, and more clueless.

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.

A little humor to top it off

Name your development carefully. Be careful how you pose, too.

Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate will return in one month on September 30, 2008, here at Searchlight Crusade, unless someone else wants to host. Deadline for submissions will be September 28th.