Back in 2006, which in the real estate blogo- sphere is pretty much akin to the dawn of creation, Real Estate Undressed blogger Larry Cragun had this to say to the American home-buying public:
"There is a new wave growing. Agents that blog. We believe you will eventually only use an agent that blogs. Why? Because . . . if they blog about a community they must know it. . . . You also learn more about them as they blog."
Cragun's advice must have been heeded, since it seems that every agent and their brother now has a blog. And if anecdotal evidence is to be believed -- nobody actually tracks this -- agents who are still selling today are agents who blog.
Take Diane Cohn, who started Reno Realty Blog two years ago. An agent with Chase International, she's been selling real estate for just three years and last year closed 21 transactions totaling almost $13 million in a declining Reno market. This in a place where the median home price is about $285,000.
"About 75% of those clients came from the blog," she said. "The other 25% were previous clients or referrals from them." And she deals primarily with families looking for principal homes, not investors or second-home seekers.
Is her experience just a flash in the pan? It doesn't appear so.
There's also Teresa Boardman, a St. Paul, Minn., agent whose www.stpaulrealestateblog.com regularly makes everyone's short list of great agent blogs.
Boardman started blogging two years ago. She intentionally hyper-localizes her blog to her market and posts photos and jazzy graphics that she generates.
She says that in the current Twin Cities market, "if I didn't have this blog, I wouldn't be in business." Boardman, with Keller Williams Integrity Realty, adds: "Most of my business today comes from my blog."
Talking via cellphone from a New York City taxi as she was en route to speak to realty agents about successful blogging, she said most industry blogs are too mundane and offer generic buying and selling tips available anywhere. In her blog, she writes about architecture, local developments and life in the various St. Paul neighborhoods. "A blog needs a hook," she said.
Athol Kay, a Prudential agent in Bristol, Conn., has certainly found his. Kay has garnered national attention with his Bad MLS Photo of the Day. Although critics dismiss it as just a gimmick, Kay is quite passionate in his cause: to rid the world of bad real estate photos that ultimately cost unsuspecting sellers money.
