Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate

The guidelines for this carnival. There was an disproportionate amount of inappropriate material (pure spam and link spam) submitted this month, and another huge dollop of material that was just plain worthless or actively wrong and damaging to any who might have paid attention to it. Readers: Be careful who you trust out there.

Out of 55 submissions, I was only able to use nine in good conscience, and one of those was a dual submission. To be fair, three people submitted more than twenty submissions between them and have now been blacklisted, so it might not be quite as bad as first glance suggests, but 10/33 isn't a sterling ratio either. If you submitted and were not included, READ THE GUIDELINES before submitting again, put some thought and effort into it, and check your work with someone who knows what they're talking about in the field of real estate. If you can't write quality articles containing accurate information, don't bother. I will skip a month or cancel the carnival altogether before I link to the stuff I rejected. It does you no good to submit fecal matter. It wastes your time and mine. I would rather have one article or none at all than link to crap.

End rant.

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

I don't like to toot my own horn, but this one is just that much better than the other stuff submitted Buyers: Stretching Your Budget Means Compromise

RECOMMENDED

The Asset Protection Misconception: Why Insurance Alone Isn't Enough Reads like an insurance post at first, but it evolves into an article telling you why you should have a limited liability or business entity taking title to an investment property because it protects your other assets in the event of a successful tenant lawsuit.

How to Respond to Late-Paying or No-Paying Tenants gives a pretty straightforward approach to the problem.

Is it Ethical to Re-Lock your Mortgage Deal when Rates Drop? He neglects to mention that the lender you locked with has already ordered your money and committed to paying for that money. A lock is a bargain you should not break without better reason than "I can do better now." You were happy with it or you wouldn't have locked in the first place. The lender has to deliver to you; contracts are not one sided. You should expect to live up to a lock you agree to. A better plan is to try renegotiating that lock with the same lender.

Housing Rebound "The last piece of the puzzle to a housing recovery is a lower inventory of homes available for sale. Once this equation returns to a more historical level, housing prices should start to rise." That is market specific. Here in San Diego, we've seen inventory levels drop over fifty percent from a year ago. Also, treasuries have no longer have direct impact upon mortgage rates. It's the rates on securitized mortgage bonds that you need to watch.

MET GUIDELINES

An Interesting Day Today. Yes, when banks are telling you they're not willing to loan money on a property, that's something to be careful about. What they're saying is that if you don't make your payments, the bank doesn't think they can sell it to someone else.

Why it's a Great Time to Remodel Your Home

location, location, location

Free Insulation - R Value

SPAM AND OTHER RIDICULOUS SUBMISSIONS
I got a blortload of spam submissions this month. Uselessly vague, misinformed, and flat out wrong information. I don't know who posted the carnival to the spammeisters forum, but it's not doing you any good. However, most of them at least mentioned real estate, and it's vaguely possible that some of them were written in good faith by hydrocephalic six year olds who have no clue what they're talking about. Be careful about what you trust on the internet - ask yourself what assurance do you have that this writer has a clue about what they're writing on, because I got at least a dozen submissions that would cost you tens of thousands of dollars if you paid attention to their advice. Nonetheless, because they were real estate articles, I could not fairly put them in this section.

Someone named Bill Johnson submitted a post claiming to help people make money that was a recruiting pitch for a multi-level marketing scheme. No, it did not so much as mention real estate. What a scamming spamming moron.

A site named 401k Lookup submitted a completely worthless post about borrowing from your 401k that did not mention real estate. Not only did it not mention real estate, it didn't build any kind of a case for what it was proposing. You don't want to use a financial advisor that votes "present".

An idiot named Jack Schmidt submitted a whole bunch of articles having precisely nothing to do with real estate. By this evidence, he's either illiterate or feels that guidelines are for other people, if he even thinks there are other people on the planet. I'm not real certain he does. For multiple link spam submissions, this clown can join the Blacklist.

Another person who believes that he's too important to follow guidelines is Jim DeSantis, who submitted an irrelevant political post. I may agree with more of it than I disagree, but it should not have been submitted to this carnival.

Yet another imbecile named Steve wanted to tell us about how to buy mailing lists, submitting multiple posts for his loser site Mailing List Resources. Here's a couple of clues for this clearly challenged individual: This is the Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate. Marketing has no function here except enabling consumers to deal successfully with marketing. Second, even agents who use mailing lists don't buy them if they want to be successful. The only list relevant to this clown is the Blacklist.

Yet another boob named Jay submitting spam for his computer repair business. I wouldn't use him at all as he clearly is incapable of paying attention to even major information, and I definitely wouldn't trust him to deal with a spam, trojan horse, or virus problem as he's part of that problem, not the solution.

Damn, it's the Month of the Mailing List Zombies. If you ever do meet Mike Stevens from Biz Data List, I suggest you employ any anti-zombie measures you think appropriate. My first measure is placing his email and site on the Blacklist for the carnival.

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 one month on April 30, 2009, here at Searchlight Crusade, unless someone else wants to host. Deadline for submissions will be Midnight April 28th.