The CoRE is Back (officially Carnival #177)!!

After a 5 month hiatus, the Carnival of Real Estate is back, and I’m thrilled to be able to host the first edition of the revitalized Carnival of Real Estate (aka CoRE)! I´ve had a long history since helping found the CoRE while at Zillow in July of 2006; it´s safe to say the CoRE will always have a special place with me given the immense amount of time I´ve spent with it over the past 4 years. When Jay published his vision for the rebirth of the Carnival, I immediately emailed him and told him I’d volunteer to host — and here we are.

With this edition of the revitalized CoRE, I’m going to highlight the best of the best from the submissions I received over the past month. There were a few spam submissions, which I obviously excluded, and also legitimate submissions omitted from this in favor of showcasing the best content out there. I´m going to deviate from the norm a bit and publish the “best of the rest” first, then reveal the Bronze, Silver, and finally the Gold Medal winner at the very end of the post. And please, please accept my sincere apologies for not coming up with a more creative theme — my creative juices are just not flowing right now. Without further adiea so as not to waste your valuable internet time, here we go with the best of the rest:

Dano Sayles’ South Maui luxury market snapshot & 3 homes you dream of buying at Dano Sayles Luxury Real Estate. I like the fact that Dano kept this post relatively short, but packed it with great market data on the Maui luxury market. Anyone looking at purchasing in the his area would find this post extremely valuable.

Geordie Romer guested posted on HyperLocalBlogger with “Using Facebook to Promote a Local Blog“. Having a Facebook presence is not an option, it´s a requirement now that FB has over 500 million users. Geordie is a real estate agent I really respect when it comes to an online presence, so his advice should be listened to.

Ken Brand’s “Are you kidding? Are you on drugs? Taking over priced listings?” on Agent Genius is a lesson for all of you trying to figure out how to attract comments on your blog, his post has 43 thus far…and counting. The lesson: have an opinion on a controversial topic!!

My former co-worker Stan Humphries makes the list with June Data Shows Markets Continuing to Limp Toward Stability; Hoping We Won?t Fall Back Down the Stairs After Losing Our Crutches at the Zillow Blog. Stan is one of the brightest people I know and gives a very thorough analysis of the state of the overall real estate market nationwide.

Karen Goodman presents Who are the Top Real Estate Agents in St. Louis? posted at Arch City Homes. The data behind the topic of market share of listings in a particular geography really surprised me — but I won´t give away the secret, you´ll have to head over and check her post out to find out for yourself.

Of course, it should come as no surprise that Kris Berg has another gem — Making an example of myself: What matters when preparing your home for sale at San Diego Home Blog. It’s simply impossible to leave Kris out of a CoRE highlighting the best writing — I still don’t know how she writes post after post after post after post at such a high quality level.

Now, on to the winners of this month´s CoRE!

Bronze: Aaron Dickinson´s The Difference Between Foreclosures (Bank Owned) and Short Sales at Twin Cities Real Estate Blog takes the Silver this month. This post doesn´t have a lot of voice in it, which usually is what draws me in, but it is a great example of using a table format to get across an important topic. In this case, Aaron details the differences between forclosures and short sales in a digestible format. Aaron even made a PDF for those of his readers who wants to download the analysis.

Silver: Dan Green has won his fair share of carnival, and comes close again with his FHA Mortgage Insurance Premiums To Rise In October : Should You Act Now, Or Should You Wait? posted at The Mortgage Reports. He successfully explains FHA mortgage premiums for consumers in a way that doesn’t make it seem boring and complex (both adjectives of which come to mind when I think of anything related to mortgages). Dan is truly one of the best at simplifying — also known as “dumbing down” — complex topics.

Gold: And the Gold medal winner is — Rob Leroy for his 5 Fun Facts About Short Sales and REOs over at The Real Estate Novelist! I like the voice in his writing — he makes a topic I personally have no interest in whatsoever entertaining and interesting. My friend went through the short sale process a few months ago, and I heard all about every issue Rob mentions, such as the fact that a short sale is anything but “short” (my friend´s took months and months and months).

And that’s a wrap — it goes without saying that I look forward to hosting another CoRE sometime in the future!

The extremely talented Kris Berg will be hosting the next CoRE at the San Diego Home Blog at the end of September. Stay tuned for further details at the Carnival of Real Estate!