Chuck Ponzi January 25th, 2006

Recent traffic has been driven to the site by a great article in the OC register Morning Eye. You might want to check out the article in its entirety.

Besides mentioning this blog and others in Southern California, it gives some great viewpoints on blogging and how that is shaping real estate in the future. The point? In the past, information about real estate primarily came from those selling it.

The implication is that blogs give homebuyers neighborhood information that real estate brokers might withhold. That position is stated most forcefully by Alexis Palmer, operations head for Curbed.com, which covers New York, Los Angeles and, in part, Orange County.
“Normally, in real estate, most of the information available comes from those representing the sale of properties,” she says. “They have a different agenda than the consumer.”

This is spot-on and it’s definitely surprising to most of us that a local news outlet such as the OC Register is picking up on the sublteties.

Even without fact-checking, blogs tend to be accurate enough to help homebuyers, Palmer says. “You get robust corrections from the community of readers.”

True. Groups have been shown to out-estimate even professionals. This is why bond markets are generally good at determining risks. Even large groups of novices have been shown to be far superior to individual experts.

I personally enjoy LA Curbed, and recommend people check it out. It’s got some great commentary on local issues, and even some of their disdain about the area is warranted.

The Orange County coverage in LA Curbed, for example, is sparse and snooty. Friday’s post took a potshot at last week’s O.C. Register stories on rising home prices, particularly the tales of homebuyers “lucky enough to have bought a home in 1997, who have since watched their investments double, then triple to the point that their wealthiness disgusts us.”

If you live in Orange County and aren’t disgusted by the snooty demeanor of your neighbor’s frequent refinancings to afford the MBZ, BWW, or other expensive foreign autos, you are probably one of them. And, part of what many people outside the state are voicing their disdain for.

However, the writer says this about bubble blogs.

Other housing blogs aren’t interested in informing buyers, except about the possibility of a housing bubble.

OK, thanks for plugging the site, but I think we’re behind the curve if we’re still discussing “The possibility of a housing bubble”. If Robert Kiyosaki can see it and you can’t, you should probably get your head checked. The fact that we are on the precipice of the world’s largest housing bubble makes this site both relevant AND informative.

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