Carnivals: December 2007 Archives

Guidelines for the Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate.

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.

Last time, I was very happy at the quality of the articles I received in submission. This time, quite a bit less so.

The Highly Recommended Category:

I almost didn't award a Host's Choice Award this time, but upon reflection, it goes to Loose Lips Sink Ships (or The Strategy of Silence in REI). I'm not certain if this was intended partially or even completely tongue-in-cheek, but the underlying advice is good: Don't let ignoramuses talk you out of a properly vetted investment. On the other hand, do talk to experts - as many as you can. If one of them voices a valid concern you can't answer, that's the proverbial horse of a different color.

Your host submits Which Makes More Difference - Buyer's Agent or Listing Agent?

Recommended articles

Full Doc, Stated Doc, and All The Other Mortgage Doc Types makes a couple of errors, as noted in comments, but is good information and worth reading.

Cool Gifts For The Real Estate Lover, Investor, Homeowner: A Photo Gallery is kind of commercial, but not in a self-promoting way, and also interesting.

Met guidelines

Student Housing - A Niche Market - The "Echo Boomers" are off to College is an good overview of issues, and would have made the "recommended" category had it been less explicitly a commercial. But even with the mandatory deduction, I still think it merits inclusion.

Are Subprime Loans Worth It For Your Mortgage? is a basic wide category article that offers very little in the way of useful information. In reality, the reasons for going subprime vary, and are most often a combination of credit score, low equity/down payment, and ability to document income. Furthermore, very few sub-prime lenders maintain public branches, unless they're a branch of a lender that also does A paper, and the actual profit margins are higher for sub-prime lenders. But it met guidelines for inclusion.

Ameriquest Compensates Victimized Mortgage Borrowers is only worth reading if you're one of their victims. But it met guidelines for inclusion.

Sam Zell says Subprime Crisis "Manageable" seems to be a classic "appeal to authority". But it met guidelines for inclusion.

Buying a Home near campus is a good investment is a very basic "think about this" article. But it met guidelines for inclusion.

I was looking for an excuse to exclude Rent Back House Tips To Avoid Home Loss, as it provided almost no useful information and made absolutely no mention of the fact that a very large fraction of these deals are scams with one purpose or another (most often to purchase a sucker's home for a below market price under terms they'll never meet for repurchase). But it met guidelines for inclusion.

Please, can we do better next time?

Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate will return in two weeks (January 2nd, 2008), here at Searchlight Crusade, unless someone else wants to host. Deadline for submissions will be December 31st. And please Read the Guidelines before submitting.

The guidelines for this carnival. Please note that they have been amended to give future hosts the explicit right to reject overtly commercial entries and obvious link fishing, spam or otherwise

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. This is the first time in quite a while I've had three entries in the "Highly Recommended" level, and we did get one at the end that was good for a little bit of humor.

It was a close call between the two eligible entries, but I have to give the Host's Choice for Most Useful Information award to Stewart Hsu, who gives us an excellent article directed at investors on the cap rate. Consumers invest also!

Silicon Valley Blogger over at Digerati Life gives us an excellent article on Split Real Estate Markets: Which Homes Are Holding Up In Value?. Property values have nothing to do with what the "average person" can afford. How many people make enough to afford a given property is far more important, and the wealthy didn't go for Negative Amortization Loans and risky subprime.

Your host submits The Doctrine of Delaying The Moment Of Truth, discussing the dichotomy between how consumers should want to treat proper disclosure, and how they do, and how it hurts them.

There were no second category ("Above Average") articles this time, but Tradeline Solutions with 3 Reasons Why I Can't Cry For Countrywide would have made it if they hadn't started directly pitching their services towards the end.

The rest of the "met guidelines" entries:

Green Rising says the St Louis MLS is starting to incorporate information on the environmental sensitivity of a project.

From the UK, Mortgage Blog has a basic article on How To Sell Your House for a Higher Price

The Truth About Mortgage sends us a basic handwaving article about What Causes Mortgage Interest Rates to Move?

Finally, to top it all off, a bit of humor:

One of the pastimes of the real estate community is kind of like something fishermen do: tell stories. But instead of the one that got away, we tell stories about the horrible things we've encountered and the "What were they thinking?" moments. These are always good for a little bit of humor, at least in retrospect. Bigger Pockets has one of the better ones of this genre.

Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate will return in two weeks, here at Searchlight Crusade, unless someone else wants to host. Deadline for submissions will be December 17th.