Neighborhood Roundup: Breaking the Espresso Rut

Posted on March 25, 2007 by Dustin Luther

Creating the list of active neighborhood blogs was only the first step in my grand vision… (or is it Greg that has the grand neighborhood vision?) Okay… Maybe there is no grand plan, but I thought it would be fun to give a roundup of recent neighborhood posts…

The West Seattle Blog has turned to Cafe Rozella to break out of an espresso rut and is “really impressed”.

Dave at the Learning from Lake City expanded my skatepark world view considerably… Skatedots? Skatepots? Districts? Regionals? Who knew?

Georgetown Stew highlights a scam where people are not only taking advantage of day laborers, but it gets worse…

Not only are some folks in South Park being stiffed out of their wages, the employer(s) are apparently asking the workers for their home address, with the promise that a paycheck will arrive in the mail. And then the surprise arrives. Not a check, but officers from Immigration & Naturalization show up.

Beach Drive gives us a beautiful photo of a brave soul on the Sound…

Linked a day too soon to the Outer Limits blog… Ericka announced that she was moving on (thanks to a job!) and looking for a replacement…

The Miller Park Neighborhood Association blog is looking to get people out at an upcoming (March 28th) Sound Transit meeting to show support for lightrail on the eastside…

The Kirkland Weblog highlighted a great new photo blog out of Kirkland… The idea (as I understand it) is that the author of Kirkland 52 is planning to post photos of Kirkland once a week over the next year.

The Capitol Hill Seattle blog indulges their love of maps with an interesting map of voter patterns on the Viaduct Replacement. (PI Article)

The Belltown Bent highlights an award given by a Harvard Group to Weiss/Manfredi Architects for their work on the Olympic Sculpture Park.

Ballard Avenue wallows a bit in the transportation history of Ballard… I think the photo makes the post.

Top 10 List of Real Estate Lists

Posted on August 26, 2006 by Dustin Luther

That’s right, I’m going meta-meta. Or better yet, I’m going mega meta (unlike Greg who went mini meta! 🙂 ).

Hanan’s irregular list of new real estate blogs. Beautiful idea, perfectly executed. It is interesting to note that almost none of blogs from his first installment are still around writing interesting content…
10 Best Women Bloggers. Because it matters.
3 Easy Steps to Stop Zillow from Publishing the Zestimate of your Home… Because it doesn’t matter (and it still generates a ton of hits).
Curbed’s Broker Boys and Babes Contest. No one else could have done this right.
Curb Appeal Enthusiasm. Simple. Relevant. Useful. Interesting.
21 reasons to bank on the Phoenix real estate market… Should serve as a great warning to agents writing about the bubble… Be prepared to take the issue on like Greg or don’t even go there… (and I simply can’t ignore his list of blogs that feed a hungry mind.)
The consistently growing list of neighborhood videos from TurnHere… I’m addicted.
The PMI Group’s list of cities with the riskiest housing market. (This is a personal favorite since they traditionally rank Seattle as one of the least risky places to invest in real estate.
Another ego item for the list… I check out the technorati site multiple times a day to find out if anyone is linking to RCG. But technorati provides so much more like keyword searches of blog posts and keyword searches of blogs. I similar argument could be made for del.icio.us since it is so darn useful for finding good content!
Ardell’s list of posts for buyers and for sellers make up an incredible, wild, colorful, useful list of content.

And the worst real estate lists?

I have only one: PubSub. This great concept is in desperate need of some algorithm love. For starters, if they are not going to count blogrolls each day, then they have to be consistent. For example, the Seattle PI Real Estate blog shows up #1 day in and day out because PubSub thinks that all the PI blogs are giving a fresh link to PI Real Estate blog every time they post a new blog entry. In reality, it is simply a function of their blog being on the blogroll of all the PI blogs. In addition, many features (like their URL detail page) have been broken for most of their existence. Lazy-coding issues like this make their tool nearly useless.

How much for the bathroom?

Posted on August 25, 2006 by Dustin Luther

[photopress:WWCG_logo_JPG.JPG,full,alignright]Frances Flynn Thorsen is raising 100K with the Web Women Giving Circle for CARE — a humanitarian organization that works with women to fight global poverty.
There is no good follow up item because everything else is void of the meaning in comparison. I recommend (1) following the links in the first point, (2) donate some money and/or time and (3) repeating the process until it creates an infinite loop of giving.
NAR has whole pages on the social benefits of homeownership. “Homeownership also provides many benefits to the family, children and the community, such as increased education for children, lower teen-age pregnancy rate and a higher lifetime annual income for children, as discussed in the following articles and studies.” Does anyone really believe homeownership causes these things? I don’t doubt that there is a correlation, but causality?
Joshua Dorkin decides to one-up (make that 22-up) Cheryl, and lists his top 35 real estate blogs!
Fliperati is searching for good investment blogs… (I am too!)
How much is a bathroom worth? depends on how bad you gotta go…
Today’s seemingly random plug for a decent person: Seattle Agent Ann Bergstrom.
I noticed some traffic coming from a MarketWatch article on the value of agents despite the web. Looks like RCG is featured in the sidepanel as an area to keep up with real estate trends. Very cool!
Tom has a different take than MarketWatch his comments on how the web is helping agents compete.. He quotes an article I found most interesting because people like Brad Inman and Greg Sterling comment on the type of real estate companies that will survive a soft housing market.
Dean is asking what I (and you) think of 50-year mortgages? Personally, I despise acting desperate in anything I do, and 50-year mortgages reek of desperation.