Carnival of Real Estate #147 - Get Out Your Shades

Ah summer time! Most Americans are getting excited about vacations, camping, boating, fishing, swimming and carnivals... in other words, sunglass weather - gotta watch those UVA's. - Real estate professionals typically get excited about the short couple of months where the offers are multiple and the closings bountiful. Of course, for most that's a distant memory of summers gone by. So what are most doing to fill the void? Sharpening the saw. Right? Learning new skills, joining the social networking craze, reading blogs etc. The Carnival of Real Estate is an invaluable resource for the latter because it protects sensitive eyes from viewing blog posts that cause time loss and retinal damage from exposure to poorly written pabulum and overtly self-promotional content. It's with that in mind that this weeks carnival theme assigns the FDA's new UVA rating of 1 to 4 stars, (4 being the most protection ).

I picked Dave Smith as the overall winner because I feel so strongly that there exists huge opportunity in finding creative ways to deliver great community content that is part of the RE professional's own intellectual property, not just linking to the same information or using template content that does nothing to set you apart as the location expert in your area. Good stuff Dave!

Overall Winner, 4 Star UVA Protection

Dave Smith - Real Estate Blog Lab

Post Title: Loosen Up, Look Around, Sell Your Town

3 Star UVA Protection

Jack Schmidt - Sector Matic Money Journal

Post Title: Making Money? "Trust Me: I'm In Real Estate"

2 Star UVA Protection

Tina Merritt - Hampton Roads Virginia Real Estate - Tina in Virginia

Post Title: The Ten Commandments of Commenting - Thou Shalt Not........

1 Start UVA Protection

Jay Thompson - The Phoenix Real Estate Guy

Post Title: The Perils of a Part Time Agent

Thanks to everyone ( except the spyware removal tool spammer guy - jeez!) for submitting your entries to CORE. If you enjoy CORE as a resource as much as I do, visit the site to see how you can get involved!

CORE #147 - Carnival of Real Estate Hosted at Mike's Corner

I'll be hosting the CORE (Carnival of Real Estate) next week. This will be the 3rd time the Carnival has stopped at Mike's Corner here in H-Town. The uninitiated should take the time to check it out. Why is it called a carnival?. Rembember when you were a kid? The carnival would show up in your town. In my case we would cut grass, hunt down pop bottle refunds and suffer the indignity of baby sitting my little sisters only to find out the carnival was bout to pack up go to another town that was way to far to ride our bikes. In the case of CORE, the town happens to the location of a selected host blogger and the stay is for a week starting every Monday. The carnival host accepts submissions of the best post(s) of the past couple of weeks from other real estate bloggers from across the web. The host then selects the best of those posts to showcase and provide awards. In my opinion, if the Carnival Host is doing things correctly, there will always be a clear winner.

Over the last couple of years the hosts have been very creative with themes for hosting the CORE, usually based on a holiday taking place at that time or just a generally entertaining way to introduce what the host believes to be the best in real estate blogging content.

When if first stumbled upon the real estate version of CORE if found it to be just the tool I had been searching for to help me in my quest to keep up with great content. As the real estate blogging community has grown, so have the number of top notch blog destinations. It can be a daunting task to search out and read only the best. CORE helps that effort in a big way.

MLBroadcast hosts a great audio podcast for the Carnival of Real Estate. From time-to-time the folks at Zillow will interview the CORE host for insight on their picks, criteria for selection, themes and more. Get a free subscription here (iTunes). You will enjoy the conversations.

Submit your best post(s) between now and this upcoming Saturday. If you ned to get your submission in a little late and the form is not working you can e-mail it to me. Be sure to include all of the required information. I will start making selections Sunday afternon. If you're interested in becoming involved with CORE, check out these links:

• Host a Carnival
• Promote the CoRE
• Write for CoRE

I'm Back!

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I haven't gone anywhere - Life and family matters had to take a front seat to my social networking and blogging efforts for a while.

I will be posting again on a regular basis soon and look forward to reconnecting with my friends in the RE.net.

The Breaths We Take

I want to thank everyone who extended well wishes during my recent stint in the hospital. I am overwhelmed by the compassion of my friends.

I am feeling great and glad to be back to work. The docs are still not sure how the pneumonia came on so strong but at last check everything is clear and I continue to take a round of antibiotics at home as a precaution.

The photo below was taken by my wife. The quote is from a gift given to me by a family member some time ago, I do not know who the author is. I have created a screen background and uploaded it at as a zip file in several different sizes. Feel free to use it as your "spring has sprung" image and know that when you look at it, I am thinking of you.



















Thanks again, I love each and every one of you.

Land of The Peach & Home of The Braves - Meet Us In Atlanta

RETech South takes place one week from today in the city of Atlanta. We're really looking forward to the event. I've heard great things about last year's event. Brad Nix and Matt Fagioli have been working hard to make sure this year's event exceeds every expectation.

RETech South is a real estate technology conference that packs quite a bit into a single day. There are RE.net luminaries coming from around the country to present and be part of the panels. Scheduled to Keynote is Dave Jenks of Keller Williams who will be telling us how we can get order from chaos.

Yours truly will be moderating a panel on the main stage at 2 pm entitled,"Hype or Help? Does Real Estate Video Work as a Marketing Tool?" The panelists are a varied group of real estate professionals that I feel confident will result in one of the best sessions of the day!

The organizers of the event are using an interesting web based platform to allow the attendees to connect in a social media platform called Crowdvine. I've spent some time in the Crowdvine site for this event and I am very impressed with the clean, easy to navigate elements that bring together the event calendar, twitter feeds, documents and more under one interface. If you're attending the event I highly recommend you join me in using Crowdvine to make your experience even an better one, before, during and after the event.

Joining me on this trip will be two of my business partners, Mark Basile our Executive VP and his lovely wife Sandra. We will be conducting a breakout session at 3:30 pm to introduce ourselves and demonstrate the features of MLBroadcast and show how it generates results for marketing listings, communities and beyond. Come and find out how you can use your still photos and great copy to take advantage of advanced video distribution channels, easily and very inexpensively. We promise to make it entertaining and worth your time. If you come to this session you'll get a coveted RE Barcamp Houston '08 T-shirt and a chance to win free MLBroadcast video episodes and a custom graphic set up valued at $136!

If you haven't registered there's still time! Hope to see you there!

Interview With AcreScout.com on Commercial Real Estate & The Web

One of my recent Twitter connections has been with Kent Shaffer. Kent is one of the founders of AcreScout.com, a commercial real estate portal. Commercial RE has always lagged behind the residential space when it comes to the web and its full potential as a business and marketing tool. I'm not aware of any notable moves to a web 2.0 model in the industry, including the biggest player, Loopnet, who operates under a basic search model. The goal of AcreScout is to develop a Trulia style platform along with a mobile tools and integration of social networking connections within their system.

Kent and I had a great conversation about the state of the web and commercial RE and AcreScout's ambitious business model. Enjoy!

PS, You can now listen to any episode of Mike's Mic directly from the site with the new widget I've installed in the sidebar. Let me know if you have any issues with it. Click the graphic below to get a free subscription via iTunes.

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