"I try to keep it as light and fun as possible," but, he said, an agent's incompetency with a camera can cost a client.
"If the agent straight up stole a $5,000 deposit or something, that would be a clear illegal act," Kay said. "But butcher the photos and have the house languish on the market for months or force huge price reductions . . . that's just bad luck for the seller."
Kay, from New Zealand, has been blogging for about as long as he's been selling real estate in Connecticut -- since October 2006. His site, www.reagentinct.com/, gets about 1,200 unique visitors a week.
Another agent with a hook is Marlow Harris, whose 360 Digest blog is written from Seattle. Harris, a fanatical Elvis fan, freely admits that she has a "never-ending quest to put Elvis and real estate into the same post." And she does so with regular success.
How's it been for business? Howling like a hound dog, apparently. Although the popular 360 Digest is aimed at realty agents, her other blogs, Seattle Twist and Unusual Life, focus on potential clients.
Harris finds that a "soft connection" brings the most results. Her unusuallife.com features "unusual homes, amazing architecture and interesting people," and although she's not actually selling real estate there, she features people who might buy or sell at some point.
"I consider this a more gentle practice of real estate," she said, "a more Zen-like approach to a business that is sometimes harsh and brutish."
But unlike Kay's and Harris', many agent blogs seem to lack the pizazz and originality needed to thrust them into the national limelight.
Still, a blog can be a place for buyers and sellers to get to know an agent without having to step out from behind the curtain of anonymity. They can watch from afar and determine whether they "like" the agent and what he or she has to say. When they are comfortable and ready to make a move, they pick up the phone and generally don't need to be pushed into a transaction, agents say.
Cyber round-table
Although some blogs are marketing tools, others are a forum for the thorns in the realty industry's side -- which is where most of the cyber-fur flies.
The housing-bubble bloggers are, in general, people who predicted that the high prices of homes -- the bubble -- wouldn't last forever. Today, they offer a gloomy picture of how low the housing market may fall and do so with a certain glee over having been right.
