Carnival of Real Estate #57

By: Drew Meyers, Zillow.com | September 4, 2007

The 57th edition of the Carnival of Real Estate is live at Valparaiso Indiana Home Builder – Northwest Indiana! Check it out!

The carnival will make its next appearance on Monday, September 10 at real/diaBlog. Please submit your best post by Sunday, September 9, to be considered. Are you a real estate blogger and would you like to host a future edition or take a more active role in carnival administration? If so, get instructions on how to do so here. Please check the complete FAQ list if you have other questions as to how to participate.

RoofableErik Hersman, whose day job is with eppraisal, is a blogaholic (like me). As a side project, he has decided to launch a consumer-facing real estate blog for his place of residence — Orlando, Florida. He recruited Pam Johnson, a local real estate investor, to help with editorial. The site is named Roofable and aims to give a “A rooftop view of Orlando’s real estate market, trends and neighborhoods.” The goal seems to be a local community blog much in the way Curbed covers happenings in NYC, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

I decided it would be interesting to get Erik’s thoughts and motivations behind the new blog, so I conducted an e-mail interview with him to publish here:

Q: What inspired you and (other founders) to start this blog?

Roofable is a new real estate and neighborhood blog for the Orlando area.

As you know, I’ve been blogging about real estate for a while at RealtyThoughts.com, and because I live in Orlando I keep looking for good local real estate blogs. You see great real estate blogging communities growing up around San Francisco, Seattle, Phoenix, New York and a few other areas. I want to help that happen here in Orlando

On top of that, I run seminars on real estate blogging for the local REALTOR organization, and keep telling people that they should be doing this on the hyper-local level – they are the experts in their communities after all. I wanted to make the meta-real estate blog for Orlando and use that to grow the hyper-local real estate agent blogs that should be coming up around the area in the near future. Something like this can really grow the local blogging community.

One last thing to note is that there are certain things that real estate agents can’t talk about. I’m not a real estate agent, therefore I’m not bound by those same restrictions .

Q: What target market are you aiming to hit?

If you’re talking about real estate in Orlando, we want Roofable to be part of your conversation. Roofable is for people who are interested in their neighborhood, their homes and who want to know what’s going on locally as it relates to real estate.

An old adage is that, “politics and real estate are local.” Our goal is to eventually drop down beneath the broader Orlando level and actually help facilitate neighborhood discussions around real estate within the hyper-local community. I might live in East Orlando, so don’t really care about downtown or Winter Park. Roofable will soon start segmenting content at those levels.

Q: How are you thinking about consumer versus industry content?

This is a change-up for me, as I’ve written mostly about the real estate industry in the past. Instead, Roofable is for the consumer and thus will have more information that they will care about. Since I can’t change completely, I’m sure you’ll find me injecting a few industry opinions into the mix, but with an angle that might actually interest non-real estate professionals.

I have recruited someone with a pure consumer mindset to help me write the blog – Pam Johnson. Her ability to give us an even keel when it comes to consumer content is very important. It’s too easy for us “industry people” to veer off into insider language and topics that don’t interest anyone else.

Q: What benefits are you aiming to get out of this blog, either for yourself or your company?

I’d like to be part of the real estate conversation here in Orlando. This is a great area to live in, has strong growth and continued economic strength indicators. As more people realize that they can find the conversations online about the local market, I want to position Roofable to be the place they do that at.


Honestly, I’m not sure where the blog will go over time, or what will happen with it. Right now I’m committed to finding good interesting stories that people here want to read. Luckily I can look to some of the other great real estate bloggers who do this around the country to see what works well for them and then try and incorporate that with an Orlando twist.

Found – Business2 Blog

By: Shaun McLane, EKDAY | August 29, 2007

I’ve decided to change the format for the “Found” blogs. I’m sure most of you are busy, and want to be able to just skim through your feeds. For that reason, I’m going to try more of a quick-hit approach to help you out.

Today’s “Found” Blog: Business2 – Real Estate agent News and Information Technology

Blog’s RSS Feed: http://www.business2.com.au/feed/

Business2 Header

Who: Business2.com.au is owned and operated by the Australian based company Agentpoint Pty Ltd.

What: Developed to help real estate agents better understand the Internet and its implications upon their business.

Where: Based out of Australia

When: Updates blog about 3-5 times a week.

Why: Nice to have a different perspective on technology related to real estate. The blog has a nice, clean look, and is updated frequently. Lists recent comments with a link to commenter’s homepage.

comments section

Interesting Topics Discussed:

Final thoughts: It’s a well done blog. It covers a wide range of topics that appeal to real estate agents, and the fact that it’s based out of Australia doesn’t hurt the content a bit.

Carnival of Real Estate #56

By: Drew Meyers, Zillow.com | August 27, 2007

I just posted the 56th edition of the Carnival of Real Estate at GeekEstate Blog! I highlighted 11 posts — 4 “geeky” and 7 non-geeky. Check it out!

Carnival with the Geeks

I tried my best to keep the photoshop magic going, but I don’t think I’m quite as good as Allan Shannon, who hosted last week’s carnival, with photoshop.

Due to the upcoming Labor Day weekend, the carnival will make its next appearance at on Tuesday, September 4 at Valparaiso Indiana Home Builder – Northwest Indiana. Please submit your best post by Monday, September 3, to be considered. Are you a real estate blogger and would you like to host a future edition or take a more active role in carnival administration? If so, get instructions on how to do so here. Please check the complete FAQ list if you have other questions as to how to participate.

allenshannon.jpgIt’s been a couple weeks since the last CoRE podcast, but we got back on track this week. This afternoon, I had the pleasure of speaking with Allan Shannon from Lands of America, which hosted the 55th edition of the carnival at TheLandJournal.com, for this week’s CoRE Podcast. I thought it was a great conversation, particularly Allan’s thoughts about rural vs metro real estate trends (towards the end of the podcast). Hopefully, you find some value in listening to the discussion.

Note that my other office phone rang during the podcast, so I had to edit out a small piece in the middle – I don’t think it’s too choppy though.

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Carnival of Real Estate #55

By: Drew Meyers, Zillow.com | August 20, 2007

The 55th edition of the Carnival of Real Estate is now live at TheLandJournal! There are three 1st place winners and six 2nd place winners — check em out!

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A note to all the recent hosts: I’m absolutely LOVING these graphics that have accompanied the last several carnivals — keep up the Photoshop magic!

The carnival will make its next appearance at on Monday, August 27 at Manhattan Real Estate Voice GeekEstate Blog. Please submit your best post by Sunday, August 26, to be considered. Are you a real estate blogger and would you like to host a future edition or take a more active role in carnival administration? If so, get instructions on how to do so here. Please check the complete FAQ list if you have other questions as to how to participate.

Carnival of Real Estate #54

By: Drew Meyers, Zillow.com | August 13, 2007

The 54th edition of the Carnival of Real Estate is now posted at Realty Thoughts! Erik Hersman from Eppraisal highlighted the 6 best posts from last week — check em out!

core54.jpg

The carnival will make its next appearance at on Monday, August 20 at TheLandJournal. Please submit your best post by Sunday, August 19, to be considered. Are you a real estate blogger and would you like to host a future edition or take a more active role in carnival administration? If so, get instructions on how to do so here. Please check the complete FAQ list if you have other questions as to how to participate.

Phoenix Real Estate Blogging Seminar

By: Shailesh Ghimire, Arizona Mortgage Guru | August 13, 2007

Real Estate Blogging Seminar sponsored by Grand Canyon Title Company. The event will be held at SEVRAR on August 16th at 3PM. This event is geared towards agents seeking to learn the fundamentals of blogging. In the first hour I’ll cover the very basics such as how to blog, when to blog and such. The second hour will be devoted to promoting your blog and building professional online networks.

Please contact Adam Saunders via asaunders(at)gcta.com to R.S.V.P.

Carnival of Real Estate #53

By: Drew Meyers, Zillow.com | August 6, 2007

core53magnificent7.jpgThe 53rd edition of the Carnival of Real Estate is live at Real Estate Undressed! Larry Cragun highlighted the “Magnificent 7 Consumer Articles” in a dandy of a carnival. Head on over and take a look to see who was magnificent this past week!

The carnival will make its next appearance at on Monday, August 13 at Realty Thoughts. Please submit your best post by Sunday, August 12, to be considered. Are you a real estate blogger and would you like to host a future edition or take a more active role in carnival administration? If so, get instructions on how to do so here. Please check the complete FAQ list if you have other questions as to how to participate.

Finding Your Voice

By: Drew Meyers, Zillow.com | August 1, 2007

Finding your voice is a critical part of succeeding with blogging. I think I have a bit of a unique perspective because I blog in both a personal and professional capacity. I became really active on Zillow Blog about a year ago and have been blogging on my personal blog since early August of 2006 (1st post).

Here are the main points that I’d like people to take-away from the “Finding Your Voice” panel discussion I participated on at Bloggers Connect this morning:

Unfortunately, I don’t think there is really a “magic formula” to finding a unique voice. It really comes down to lots (and LOTS) of reading and writing.

  • READ — Start out by reading numerous blogs and figuring out what you like about them. There’s no better way to start determining what type of writing style resonates with you than reading numerous different types of styles.
  • WRITE — In life, there’s no substitute for experience. Writing is no different. The best thing you can do to find your voice is start writing, writing, and writing some more. Any writer will tell you great writing takes time; don’t let the fact that you’re not a superb writer at the beginning (you won’t be) discourage you from starting.

Once you decide that you want to set up public blog, you should really think about how much of your life to expose online and draw the line somewhere. Are you going to talk about your significant other, your friends, or your personal hardships? It’s often a fine line. Personally, I find myself only referencing friends if I don’t reveal the name of the person I’m talking about. Also, think “golden rule” — when writing a post, think about if the tables were turned and the post was about you. Would you mind that story being public? Regarding personal hardships or thoughts, I don’t think I’m in any position to give you advice — it all comes down to what you are comfortable sharing with the world. Blogging does open up a whole new world of transparency.

Comments are one of the beauties of blogging — instant feedback and debate are what many bloggers live for. Most bloggers will tell you that extremely active comments is a sign of success — I’m no different. However, there is a line to be drawn as to when to intervene when people have differing viewpoints. In my mind, that line is really only if commentors attack each other personally. If they stick to the issue being discussed, let them fire away as long as there is fuel on the fire.

If you were in the audience, I hope you enjoyed the discussion.

Here are some other great tips.

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