Greg Swann’s bloodhound inspired not only the name of his business and his blog, but also his weekly re.net writing competion, which in its short existence has inspired some very good writing.

This week’s three winners were as follows:

1. Geno Petro wins the Odysseus Medal for his post Memoirs Of A Big Fat Liar.
2. Krista Baker takes home the Black Pearl Award for writing Negotiating Commissions with Buyers.
3. Gary Elwood grabs the People’s Choice award for proposing a radical idea about getting people to believe you by, uh, telling the truth:  The Curious Secret to Getting People to Believe You.

Head on over to the Bloodhound to read more, then visit this week’s winners yourselves.

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Shailesh and Aimee Ghimire of the Arizona Mortgage Guru blog hosted this week’s Carnival of Real Estate, and with Halloween just around the corner, used a “scary” theme.

I’m honored to have been the top pick this week with my article on, as Shailesh puts it, the “scary” amount of money Active Rain could have made in their failed acquisition by Move.com.

Also featured were

• Joshua Dorkin of the BiggerPockets blog with his thoughts on  Investors Working on Foreclosure Deals: Avoid Fraud Suspicion - Disclose!
• Cliff Jacobsen talks about the Zillow-ERA deal with his article on ERA Lands On Zillow, One Small Step For A Search Engine, One Giant Step Toward A National MLS

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I’ve been remiss lately not only in participating in the various Re.net writing competitions, but also in giving credit to other participants.  Consider this an attempt to catch up…

First, the round-up of the Bloodhound’s competition.

Jim Duncan takes the prestigious Odysseus medal with his entry entitled “Wither False Blame?” which takes issue with a recent article from the Wharton School of Business which excoriates real estate agents for their role in the subprime debacle.  Jim says that Wharton’s article, while making a number of good points, includes a disturbing number of factual inaccuracies — such as that because buyer’s agents are paid by the seller, they actually work for the seller — that cast doubt on the entire article.  Here in California, as is also apparently the case in Jim’s state of Virginia, the “agency” documents filled out during transctions make it abundantly clear what the respective duties are of the buyer’s and seller’s representatives and to whom each of those representatives owes a fiduciary duty.

[As a side note, Jim ponders the revelation that business school professors, like many of their academic brethren, tilt leftwards politically.  During my days at an East Coast business school north of New York and south of Boston, the student population was overwhelmingly liberal.  A professor took a straw poll a few days before the 2000 Bush vs. Gore election (you remember that one!) and the results were roughly 85% Gore, 10% Nader, and 5% Bush.  When W himself spoke at the 2001 Commencement, he joked that one of the requirements for being invited to speak was not only that you had to be a sitting president, but that you had to have lost the New Haven vote to Ralph Nader.]

Jeff Brown wins the Black Pearl award for his insights into what a hyper-successful hyper-local real estate blog might look like.

Finally, Jim Cronin wins the People’s Choice award for some as-always sage advice about blogging to generate buyers leads.

Then we switch over to this weeks Carnival of Real Estate, hosted by ReRevealed.  Lani Anglin’s fascination with Nacho Libre shines through in the awards she gave out.

First prize goes to Daniel Rothamel with an article entitled, “How Your Business Can Benefit From Social Media Now.”

Yours truly is honored — I think — with the Chancho award for my article discussing the pressing topic “Three Reasons Why Dogs Pee On Fire Hydrants And Realtors Advertise In Newspapers.”

The other top 10′ers were as follows:

Kris Berg of Bloodhound Blog writes Face Time or Facebook?

Toby Boyce of Sadie’s Take on Delaware Ohio writes Q&A: Is Today A Great Time to Buy?

Jim Cronin of The Real Estate Tomato writes Looking for Ready to Act Buyers? Blog These Proven to Succeed Real Estate Topics

Jeff Brown of Bloodhound Blog writes House Agents- Wanna Start the New Year Kickin’ Ass? Here’s How

Cliff Jacobson of WebHomeUSA writes The Future of the Ad Model For Online Real Estate

Denny Oh of SanDiegOh writes Home… What’s in a Name?

Aaron Dickinson of Minneapolis Real Estate writes Real Estate Clients- Breaking Up Is Hard To Do 

Shailesh Ghimire of AZ Mortgage Guru writes Best Time for Canadians to Purchase Real Estate in the US

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The 54th Carnival of Real Estate is now live over at fellow white African Erik Hersman’s Realty Thoughts blog. Of the no-doubt numerous entries he received, he picked out 6 for special mention, including yours truly’s article on Redfin as an example of the Innovator’s Dilemma. I’m honored.

Prolific blogger, writer par excellence, controversy-stirrer, and maverick Greg Swann, disappointed with the judging and content of recent Carnivals, sets off on a course of his own with his weekly re.net writing contest. I’m honored to be the recipient of his inaugural Odysseus Medal, with the same article as above.

Other winners in Greg’s contest were:

• Michael Cook wins the People’s Choice award for his article challenging Realtors to concentrate on their clients.
• Benn Rosales wins the Black Pearl award for pointing out the danger of the mortgage drama becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Back to Erik’s carnival, other finalists were:

• Jonathan Dalton, with What Have We Taught Our Clients?
• Lani Anglin, with Obsession With Youth? I Think Not!
• Patrick Kapowich*, with How Can Brokers Protect Themselves From Agent Promotion? Pat notes that brokers who profess to be unaware (and often unconcerned) about what their agents are writing online may soon get a good old fashioned legal educatin’ for their troubles.
• Benn Rosales also scores a two-fer with his Mortage Drama, Real Estate Bubble, Dotcom Disaster.
• Finally, stager Craig Schiller sheds some light on what a bad idea it is to not stage a home when it’s on the market.

Thanks Erik for your hard work.

* Full disclosure:  Pat Kapowich is a client of Domus Consulting, of which I am a Managing Principal.

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Gina Gena Riede of Sacramento Real Estate Voices hosts this week carnival. Her theme was the game of Monopoly, and while she did not call out one specific winner, there were some true gems there.

• My own personal “Carnival of Real Estate Carnival Winners” Winner is the incomparable Kris Berg, who weighs in with yet another light-hearted but hard-hitting piece, this one tearing up the WSJ’s sage wisdom (relying on the no-doubt objective advice of the owner of a For Sale By Owner site) on just how much money you can save by selling your home yourself.
• Stephanie Edwards talks about the importance of having the right team behind your real estate transaction.
• America’s own be-suspendered mortgage broker, Brian Brady, weighs in on the ARM vs. fixed-rate debate, proudly calling himself an ARMS dealer.
• Tim Abbott looks into what the seller can and can’t pay for the buyer during a closing.
• Zillow’s Stan Humphries adds another chapter to the “Red State vs. Blue State” debate by showing that property values in blue states are significantly higher than in red states. Some interesting rebuttals to Stan’s arguments appear in the comments.
• Tom Armstrong boils plumbing, marriage, real estate investing down to three simple rules each.
• Carlsbad Realtor and Trulia Voices addict Robert Murphy tells us about a way of relieving the hardship of an escalating mortgage payment.

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Deluged by a flood of business and personal obligations, I alas had to delay judging of the Carnival of Real Estate, Consumer Edition, until today. Apologies…

Many of the entrants this week had mortgage-related topics.

The clear, unapologetic winner this week is from … Phoenix (who would have thunk it?) It’s Jay Thompson waxing loquacious about the problems that can arise with people who try to be both loan agents and real estate agents. While there are some “Renaissance” types who manage to pull it off — think Benjamin Franklin as a Realtor/mortgage broker — for the most part, there’s simply too much that you have to know in either field for the average person to be good at both.

Coming in second was Dan Melson at Searchlight Crusade in an article explaining the dirty little tricks mortgage brokers play to avoid competing on the one thing that really matters for most consumers: price.  By doing sleights-of-hand around pre-payment penalties, claiming ignorance about prices up front, avoiding discussions of negative amortization, lenders can make a loan look more attractive — in some cases much more attractive — than if they were transparent.  Caveat emptor.

Grad Money Matters comes in third with a post dispelling some myths about mortgages and home ownership. Among the myths talked about: getting a 40 or 50-year mortgage instead of a 30-year will definitely save you money; the only way to get the benefits of the old twice-a-month mortgage payment trick is to sign up in the bank’s (not free) program.

Honorable mention goes to Digerati Life with a discussion about handling eyesore properties in your neighborhood. The writer found something pretty rare to start off the article: a run-down, possibly abandoned property in Atherton, one of America’s toniest towns.

Without naming names, there were, unfortunately, some entries that were sadly lacking. One of them looked like a runner-up in a fourth-grade 10-minute speed-writing contest, and in fact the only reason I could see for the article was the chance to annoy me with ads liberally sprinkled throughout the article, including some of the links themselves. Well, I probably enriched the author’s bank account to the tune of about one Zimbabwe dollar — at the black market rate, not the official bank rate — simply by reading it.

The next carnival takes place on August 7th, with judging to be done by that wacky blogging Realtor in the town-of-two-states: Delaware, Ohio: Toby Boyce.

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Sorry for the delay, folks, but my judging of the Carnival of Real Estate, Consumer Edition, will have to wait till tomorrow.  A number of business and personal things have come up that has made it impossible for me to do so today.

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As one of the instigators of some of the re.net April tom-Foolery unleashed on the world today, I thought it only fitting to end the day with a little carnival of my own, before Christine Forgione unleashes the real one tomorrow.

The “Please Say It Ain’t So” prize goes to four winners:

• Noah Rosenblatt claims he’s shutting down his popular New York-city based UrbanDigs blog…
• Mary McKnight tells us Google has changed its algorithm, dropping all blogs with a page rank of 6 or less…
• Christine Forgione has already judged tomorrow’s carnival and awarded all the glory…to herself…
• Kris Berg has decided to run her business as a non-profit, and donate more than 100% of her commissions back to the client. She has even bigger plans for the future, when she may even just buy homes outright for clients. What’s next, joining the Peace Corps?

The “Please Say It IS So” prize goes to Eric Hare, who informs us of Ben Bernanke’s dramatic plan to save the economy. Let’s just say that being a printer or a helicopter pilot may prove quite lucrative.

The “Linguistic Acrobatics” prize goes to Sacramento’s John Lockwood with his intriguing history of the name of Sacramento. Let’s just say that the California Central Valley’s drug problems started long before the current meth epidemic.

The “Trump This” prize goes to two creative pranksters:

• Sellsius claims Donald Trump is getting into the Blog Apprentice thing
• RainCityGuide’s uber-blogger Dustin Luther, in turn, claims he’s snagged the Donald’s apprentice to be his own!

The “See, You Can Make Make Money From Blogging” prize goes to

• Teresa Boardman, whose controversial blog has just been bought by Inman and
• Jay Thompson, who so piqued Google’s curiosity that they just bought him up!

The “April Fools for Dummies” prize goes to Athol Kay, whose wry wit gives us a new bestseller: “Days on Market for Dummies.”

The “Should Have Been April Fools, But Unfortunately Wasn’t” prize goes to those who reported (a few days ago) that Trulia and Zillow had been kicked out of the Prudential conference in San Diego:

• Mike Simonsen of Altos Research
• Sami of Trulia

The “Coordinated Assault Wins Laughs, But No Believers” prize gets shared between

• Greg Tracy of BlueRoof.com
• John Keith of BostonREB.com and
• Me!

Alas, hard as we tried, we couldn’t get a whole lot of people to believe that Redfin had bought Move.com and that Glenn Kelman and Alan Dalton were to become Co-CEO’s.

Finally, I award myself the “Too Much Time On Your Hands” prize for putting together an analysis of the relative evil of two leading re.net bloggers.

Let me know if I’ve missed anybody!

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Larry Cragun at Mortgages Undressed (one of the more creative names in real estate blogging) hosts this week’s real estate carnival, consumer edition.

Our very own Ann O’Connell, a stager who contributes stellar content to compliment her stellar staging, won this week’s bronze with her entry on taking advantage of the current spate of good weather (yesterday being an exception) to make your home presentable.

Silver went to Amy Fontinelle’s explanation of the need for a home inspection.

Gold went to Athol Kay, whose slick and shiny, newly re-designed (and FINALLY converted to Wordpress) blog muses about a home that really needs a dumpster…and, I might add, a good stager.

Thanks Larry!

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Maureen Francis hosts this week’s Carnival of Real Estate at her miOaklandCounty blog. True to her Detroit-ish market she went with a Motown theme, and the clincher of the Diana Ross and the Supremes award went to a newcomer in the real estate blogging world, the FBS Blog.

FBS is brought to us by FBS Data Systems, an MLS provider. Their blog is not where you’d go to spend a leisurely Sunday afternoon of light reading; it’s an intelligent, well-written, and deeply industry-geeky look at what’s going on in the world of MLS’s today. The winning article looked at the changing landscape of MLS’s.

As a recovering consultant herself, Maureen found my penetrating analysis and highly analytical graphs in my article on the impact of bubblistas on the housing market to be worth a mention. (Actually, the numbers in that particular article were completely fabricated.)

Other mentions went out to:

• Nigel Swaby (Salt Lake City), with his article on FHA loans.
• Nina at QueerCents talks about the changing real estate environment for the LGBT community.
• Teri Lussier comments about her unexpected introduction as one of the new bloggers at Bloodhound.
• Diane Tuman from Zillow brings us a story about a neighbor from hell — perhaps somebody who would benefit from the “Make My Neighbor Move” program
• Jay Thompson tries a stripped-down approach to a real estate site.
• Seattle Housing Buzz wonders if there are too many CondoTels coming up in Seattle.
• Jim Cronin feeds us another juicy slice of Real Estate Tomato advice with a look at how to use blogging to pre-emptively answer prospective client’s objections.

Now if I can only figure out a to use my blog to get sellers to look at my buying clients’ pre-emptive offers!

Great job, Maureen!

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