Holidays with the Geeks 2009 (CoRE #169)

I can’t believe there have already been 168 real estate carnivals, but the 169th edition is now upon us and yours truly is at the helm once again. The last CoRE hosted here at Geek Estate Blog was Holidays with the Geeks (#121) — and it happened to be just about 1 year ago today (1 year from tomorrow to be exact). I thought it only fitting that this edition of the CoRE be dubbed “Holidays with the Geeks 2009” and take on a festive holiday theme. Without further adieu, here are this year’s winners:

The Santa Claus Award goes to Silicon Valley Blogger (The Digerati Life) — Cool Gifts For The Real Estate Lover, Investor, Homeowner: A Photo Gallery. Since we all know Santa Claus is the bearer of great gifts over the holidays, how could I not give the Santa Claus Award to the post detailing cool gift ideas no matter what your interest in real estate is? I couldn’t — so I did. Photo courtesy of HowStuffWorks.

The Mrs Claus Award goes to Karen Goodman (Arch City Homes) for her post titled What are the Best High Schools in St. Louis? To me, this is a great example of an agent providing relevant and valuable hyper local content to a consumer audience. In this case, providing all the information a consumer would need to come to their own conclusions regarding what St Louis schools are best for them. More agents should be writing resources like this with the goal of becoming a trusted resource for all things real estate related. Considering it was published December 10th, I’m guessing she hasn’t closed any business from this post yet, but I’d be willing to wager a St Louis buyer from Google will come across her post in the future and call her as a result of the information provided. Photo courtesy of BuyCostumes.com.

The 2009 Grinch Award has to go to Dan Green for Mortgage Myth Busted : Mortgage Rates Don’t Take The Elevator Up And The Stairs Down (At Least Now, Anyway) posted at The Mortgage Reports. He breaks the myth that “Mortgage rates take the stairs down and the elevator up” with data and shows that the saw has no teeth.

Photo courtesy of MajorityRules.org.

The best of the rest:

• Jonathan Dalton (All Phoenix Real Estate) — Quality Customer Service in Action
• Joshua Dorkin (The BiggerPockets Blog) — Can the World Get a Good CRM for Real Estate… Please?
• Stan Humphries (Zillow Blog) — U.S. Home Value Losses Stabilize in 2009; Nearly $500 Billion Drops Off, Compared to $3.6 Trillion Last Year

Next week’s CoRE will be over at Mortgage Loan Place, so make sure to submit your post by Sunday, Dec. 20 for consideration. Hope you enjoyed this week’s carnival!

Happy holidays from the Geek Estate crew (and let us know what we can help you with for 2010)!