The good folks at Ubertor took the helm at the Carnival of Real Estate this week, wading through a ton of good entries to narrow it down to 11.  Pat Kitano of TransparentRE rightfully won top honors for his entry on first mover advantage in a Web 2.0 world, a much-discussed and dissected article (see the comments) on how difficult it is to stay ahead of the game technologically these days.

In addition to thinking kindly of a recent post of mine, (my second in a series on why the Internet will never displace realtors)  Ubertor also highlighted the following:

• Searchlight Crusade on “Buyers Who Don’t Want a Buyer’s Agent.“  Dan makes the good point that a lot of unattached buyers who meet agents at an open house get a poor impression of agents in general simply because they (the buyers) don’t understand that the listing agent not only isn’t on their side, but actually has a legal obligation to do everything short of lying, concealing the truth, or misleading in order to get the the most amount of money in the least amount of time for his client — the seller.  So, yes, if you’re at an open house, and you feel the listing agent is putting pressure on you…that’s their job!  They’re not there for your benefit…
• Douglas Heddings at True Gothan discusses the luxury market.  Psst, Doug…if your clients can’t find the $15M property they’re looking for…send them my way!  It’ll be a long commute, but a hell of a property!  Though Doug makes no mention of it, my understanding of the Manhattan luxury market is that it’s heavily affected by Wall Street bonuses, which apparently are going to be pretty good this year.
• Joel Burslem at FutureOfRealEstateMarketing talks about Quantcast, a new — and free! — web traffic analysis service.  Using Quantcast, Joel notes that Trulia’s site has a stickiness problem, while Redfin’s visitors are pretty wealth — which makes sense, considering their current activities are confined to the wealthy West Coast enclaves of Seattle and the Bay Area.
• Jonathan Dalton muses about some of the bone-headed decisions NAR has made regarding the Internet.  Preach it, brother!
• Zillow’s general counsel Liam Lavery comments on a recent court decision exonerating Craigslist in a lawsuit that claimed the site was violating the Fair Housing Act.  Perennial Web rivals Yahoo and Google chimed in on the case in support of Craigslist, and Liam notes that this decision bodes well for both purveyors and consumers of online real estate.
• The Tour Sheet, written by Kyle Else, notes that caveat emptor remains the best consumer anti-scam protection, and then he goes on to list what some of the more common scams are.
• Chiming in from Utah, Greg Tracy asks “What if Zillow Got Serious?“  He proposes — hypothetically — that Zillow might benefit from hiring scads of on-the-ground folks to keep their data up-to-date and accurate.  My take?  I think we’re all missing the forest of Zillow’s future plans for the trees of its current AVM offering.  Zillow has made it clear they have no intention of being a one-hit wonder, and though what their next offering will be and when it will come out is anybody’s guess, I would put money on it being as compelling to the general public, and controversial to the industry, as their Zestimates.
• The RealEstateTomato’s headline is one that brings shivers to grammatical purists, but, ending in a preposition or not, Jim Cronin’s question (re-phrased) is valid:  For Whom are You Blogging?  Our corner of the blogosphere sometimes resembles an echo chamber, but Jim suggests that some first time home buyers and sellers might be finding our sites too.
• We all have our favorite clients, and the Bloodhound takes us on a long, delightful journey with some of his, the Pawlenko’s.  The best example I’ve seen in a long time about the whole “real estate is a relationship” thing.

Tags: Carnival of real estate, Liam Lavery, National Association of Realtors, Real estate, Redfin, Trulia, Zillow

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