From forty links to infinity: Apprehending the full scope of the RE.net

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Okay, here’s the meme game I mentioned yesterday.

I want to build something like a canonical list of every weblog in the RE.net. By this I mean weblogs created by Realtors or other real estate agents, including commercial brokers; lenders, appraisers, investors or other real estate professionals; mainstream media real estate weblogs; and vendors marketing to real estate professionals.

I’m giving things a kick start by citing 40 weblogs from the BloodhoundBlog blogroll. Here’s your challenge:

1. Add to this list by linking to real estate weblogs not listed here. Please be judicious. We’re interested in true webloggers — helpfully informative and not too self-promotional — not blog-based spammers.

2. Link to those blogs on your weblog, repeating the text from this challenge.

3. Add your links to a comment to this post, as well, since I may not see them by trackback or Technorati citation. (The moderation bot will eat your comment, but I’ll pull it out.)
Permanent link to the original post on BloodhoundBlog:

From forty links to infinity: Apprehending the full scope of the RE.net

If you can send more than 40 unique links, you’re my hero. I’ll build all of these links into a page on BloodhoundBlog, with a link to the source HTML if you want to mirror the list.

Note: This is not quite a tag game. Just because you’re not listed below, it doesn’t mean you can’t play. The goal is to leverage all of our information sources to get to a highly-comprehensive, strongly-vetted picture of the RE.net as it exists right now.

Once we’ve assembled everything, Cameron or I will put together a form for adding new weblogs. And if someone should want to volunteer to organize and maintain this list, your link will come first, lexicology be damned.

Here are my 40 links:

When you write your post on this, copy my three rules from above, if you would, so that others joining the game from your site will know what to do.
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Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing

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30 Comments

Greg Tracy says:

I even refer business to you and you forget me- nice…

http://blueroof.wordpress.com

BlueRoof Blog

January 18, 2007 — 10:04 am
Comment by post author

Greg Swann says:

Ack! My apologies, Greg. Once a weblog hits my feed reader, I need a goad to get it to the blogroll. Amended.

January 18, 2007 — 11:01 am
David G from Zillow.com says:

Hi Greg. Great idea; you and Drew Meyers seem to be on the same meme this week.

ALL – while you are at it, please also add your blog to the growing blogroll on the real estate wiki. Either list your blog by its industry focus on this page or, if you publish a local blog, simply categorize it by City and State on this page. It’s easy to add to wiki pages – just click on “Edit this page” at the top right.

Greg – regarding yesterday’s post about helping new bloggers understand their options, please consider contributing your thoughts to this guide.
PS — and consider yourself goaded again.

January 18, 2007 — 11:07 am
Cochise says:

The best most informative real estate site on the net.
Thanks
Cochise

January 18, 2007 — 11:19 am
Dustin says:

I have a much easier solution and one that is a little more communal. I’ve been saving all the real estate blogs I find interesting on del.icio.us for at least two years now with a few specific codes. If I want them to show up on my site, then I give them the tags “realestate”, “blog” and “rcg”. I’m seeing a good 70 or so sites there right now.

If you want to use del.icio.us as a platform (which distributes control of the database!), then we could develop a slightly different tagging system. And I’d be happy to play along. The tags “realestate”, “blog” and “re.net” come to mind.

By the way, to see the results of this in a clearner fashion, I publish these type of tag combinations to my Linkation page.

January 18, 2007 — 11:25 am
Dave Smith says:

Greg,

Just down I-10 in the Old Pueblo is Tucson Real Estate in The News.

http://www.barbaralasky.com/tucson-real-estate-blog/

This is a great idea. Thanks.

January 18, 2007 — 11:42 am
Toby says:

I took your challenge — and it went very well until I got to about 15. Then it became harder, and I finally decided that 21 was enough.

http://www.delawareohrealestate.com/archives/234

Have a great one!

January 18, 2007 — 1:32 pm
Jonathan Dalton says:

Here’s my post … only up to 22 but I’ll add the others later today. My RSS reader’s a little thinner than yours.

January 18, 2007 — 2:16 pm
Jonathan Dalton says:

Okay, here’s the post … it didn’t take the first time.

http://myblog.daltonsazhomes.com/2007/01/18/if-you-link-them-they-will-come/

January 18, 2007 — 2:17 pm
REBlogGirl says:

Very cool idea, Greg. I like it. A one stop shop for real estate blogs!

January 18, 2007 — 2:29 pm
Lee Trice says:

Greg,

Great job on your blog…I have become a Bloodhound addict.

Here are a few from my Favorites list:

http://www.appraisalscoop.com
http://soapbox.millersamuel.com/
http://www.inman.com/blogger/bradinman.aspx
http://www.webhomeusablog.com
http://www.zillowblog.com

January 18, 2007 — 2:46 pm
Comment by post author

Greg Swann says:

Lee, Jonathan, Toby — Thank you!

Mary, will you add the sites y’all are building?

Dustin, I like the idea, with two caveats: Decay and self-selection. Without an active editorial pruning — a problem I haven’t solved yet — a static list becomes less reliable every minute.

January 18, 2007 — 5:30 pm
Toby says:

I noticed that as well. I went to a couple of the ones that I had used when I first set-up my blog in September — and a majority of them were either “dead” or in decay.

So I’m not sure you prune them, without it becoming a laborous task.

January 18, 2007 — 8:24 pm
Norma Newgent says:

Feel free to scold me if I’m doing this wrong.
http://www.thedogthatbitme.com
I’m here in the Tampa Bay area and there is not much in the way of support from my fellow agents. When I mention blog, someone usually hands me a kleenex, so there’s much to be learned on this end. Thanks,
Norma

January 18, 2007 — 8:49 pm
bart thimes says:

why dont you include thehousingbubble.com blog?

January 18, 2007 — 9:38 pm
Pat Kitano says:

Greg, 25 more here

Erik from Eppraisal has a mashup RealtyAppMap that shows matches the real estate sites and blogs to their location. Perhaps Greg and Erik might work together on this.

January 19, 2007 — 2:12 am
Brandon says:

I currently have a 100-part series on real estate Internet marketing happening here:

http://www.armingyourfarming.com/realestatemarketing/

Some days I wish I had made it a 20-part list. Yikes!

January 19, 2007 — 6:57 am
Dustin says:

Greg,

I guess I’m just not 100% sure what you are trying to do… I’m under the impression that you want to determine which blogs are worthy of some type of extra recognition… As in, these are the valuable members of the re.net. I sure wouldn’t want to be on that board… Talk about a mess of emails.

If I had to set something like this up, I’d take a different tack and do it completely algorithmically using Technorati. A very first cut at the “rules”.
* Blog must be tagged “real estate” in technorati
* Technorati must recognize at least 25 recent links from other bloggers to your site
* 10 of those links must be from other blogs already recognized

A current glance shows that there are about 100 “real estate” tagged blogs with 25 or more links and my guess is that less than half would even opt-in to being in the re.net.

This allows you to deal with the decay issue pretty easily and the self-selection is that they have to be a damn good blogger.

BTW, I originally laid out plans for organizing a list like this on Rain City Guide about a year ago with John Mudd… His idea was to create a Real Estate Bloggers Network in which we could highlight the best of breed real estate bloggers. I added the technorati bits in order to make things easier to manage, but we never moved forward with the idea. Since he was my inspiration, I’d give a vote for calling it the Mudd List in honor of the original real estate blogger.

January 19, 2007 — 9:54 am
Comment by post author

Greg Swann says:

Mudd List: Very interesting. Is there a way to handle that algorithmically? A Technorati API?

January 19, 2007 — 10:03 am
Comment by post author

Greg Swann says:

> A Technorati API?

Duh. Got it. I’ll have Cameron take a look at it tonight.

January 19, 2007 — 10:08 am
John Lockwood says:

John Mudd was basically a nice guy who linked to everyone. Naming this exclusive clique you’re building after him is an insult to his memory.

January 19, 2007 — 9:18 pm
Michael Buckley says:

Greg,

Interesting article. Will work on this. In the mean time, my blog is based out of Washington, DC. http://www.dcrealestateguide.com

January 20, 2007 — 4:55 pm
Jessica Hughes says:

how about a great home staging blog? Craig Schiller is funny and informative.

http://www.realestaging.blogspot.com/

I didn’t see Kristal Kraft’s Real Estate and Relocation here:

http://thedenver.blogs.com/

January 20, 2007 — 7:48 pm
Brian Brady says:

http://brokerbryant.com

January 20, 2007 — 10:25 pm
JeffX says:

The XBrokers other mentions:

* ARDELLS Seattle area blog
* Ubertor
* Condo Domain
* Zillow Blog

January 21, 2007 — 10:11 am
Travis : Neighboroo says:

Very cool. There’s a new option to add any article tied to a geographical location on Neighboroo now. You can add a blog article by clicking “Forum” inside the information bubble. We offer to donate new blog domain names we get to this master list. Not much yet now, but will hopefully have many more soon.

BTW, when the list is sizeable, the location specific ones should be on a map! (Either location of author or area blog covers. For some it would be the same.) If few others want to pitch in as well, we offer to help do this. Neighboroo is essentially one big map, and this sounds fun.

January 21, 2007 — 11:13 am
Rob Blake says:

Here’s my blog and another Denver blogger

The Mortgage Insider Blog
http://themortgageinsider.net/blog/

Ms Krafts real estate blog…
http://thedenver.blogs.com/

both great additions if I do say so myself…ha!

January 25, 2007 — 10:28 am
Austin Real Estate Land says:

Not sure if I am doing this right. We have a blog down in Austin Texas.

Austin Real Estate Blog

February 15, 2007 — 2:52 am
Comment by post author

Greg Swann says:

Got you covered. Thanks!

February 15, 2007 — 6:08 am
Bryan Stanton says:

Can’t believe this is the first time I’ve been to your BLOG. Keep it up.

November 19, 2008 — 7:17 am