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Patrick.net was featured in a SFGate.com article today. We all saw Ben Jones' blog featured in Business Week. According to author Carol Lloyd, NPR has been snooping around here for sources to interview (although that's yet to be verified, if you've been emailed or called by an NPR researcher/reporter, let us know).
What is the real impact of Bubble Blogs? Undeniably, blogs in general have quickly become established as a powerful alternate form of media. But blogs as a source of information are also often criticized for being raw, unedited, and often biased or outright inaccurate. It's even possible to find self-proclaimed internet curmudgeons criticizing blogs and bloggers in a blog.
Has this blog, and the other pioneers which took on the growing insanity of the real-estate bubble, really had a meaningful impact? I still maintain that blogs only affect the wider public sentiment on the margins. Most people do not receive their information through blogs. Those who still read consume simplified infografix color newspapers, the rest figure it out from commercials they forget to skip while watching something they Tivo'd. But, maybe affecting the margins is all that really matters. If we've helped to turn the few in the front of the herd, then the rest will follow.
Finally, what about anonymity? The largest single criticism leveled at blogs, and increasingly at Bubble Blogs, is that all the resident "experts" and "pundits" are anonymous. Anonymity breeds lack of accountability, and questions motives. Of course we aren't all anonymous. Certainly Patrick, Ben and others aren't. Some regular contributors and authors aren't either. But does it even really matter? I am not anonymous, yet I've been accused of being a real estate industry shill, despite the fact anyone can read my resume online. So I'm not so sure it truly makes a difference.
What do you think? Are we helping, hurting, or just fooling ourselves?
--
(Suggestion for thread by FormerAptBroker (FAB), who, while anonymous, is verifiable by this blog's admins just like most of our regular contributors).
--Randy H
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Brand,
Hehe. Somehow, I don't think ladies like SFWoman would ever pay attention to the likes of CR...he could drive a Bentley assembly line and she would still be able to detect his trollishness from a mile away.
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allah,
Perhaps, but horses are also severely underpowered. No matter what you add to that horse, its output will still be 1 horsepower.
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For me this blog instills caution and a willingness to wait things out. With the end of the boom we now seem to see ourselves in rather mucky quagmire of a just slightly subsided bloat. This smelly real estate swamp needs to give up much of its noxious hot air. We can't hold our breaths indefinitely, yet until the air clears it is hard to take a deep breath. Flatulent California needs to break wind.
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astrid says: [CR] could drive a Bentley assembly line and she would still be able to detect his trollishness from a mile away.
Somehow I don't think SFWoman is the type who would be swooned by anyone leveraged into credit-card serfdom to maintain an illusion of Gucci-clad, Bentley-driving wealth. I thought CR was bemoaning not netting any of the shallow types who want your $100K cash to pay off their credit card balances.
allah says: They’re also cheaper to feed, don’t lose value when scratched the exhaust can be sold as fertilizer.
LOL. Yes, they actually gain value when scratched. Especially on the nose. Try that with a McJaguar. Maybe I could use the line, "Yeah, my Mustang runs completely on organic fuel."
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CG,
Don't masquerade as a woman. That's just weird.
I picked Bentley assembly line for exaggeration purposes. One cannot drive an Bentley assembly line anymore than one can install reality in Casey Serin's brain.
What's the big deal with Gucci loafers, anyways?
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Michael Holliday said:
Also, we can do a call-in, roundtable live discussion on my Phoenix radio show if you guys want. I can handle multiple phone lines. It’s up to you.
Then I could send a CD of the show to Peter and he could upload/post it so everyone can hear it.
This sounds like an interesting idea. First offer for a guest should go to Patrick, being he's the reason for all of this. Realistically, how many guests can you roundtable in without it making for bad radio? With 5 or 6 people each guest will realistically only get a few minutes in an hour segment.
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I've known several people that bought nice Mercedes, Volvos or Audis fresh out of school. They also had very sharp condos or townhomes, nice clothes and expensive tastes in restaurants. Those folks were living it big, but most had large student loans, no portfolio, lots of credit card debt and were basically living at precisely their income level. One guy I knew in this particular situation had spectacular stuff, the ladies loved him, but he had a medical problem and had to borrow money from his parents to pay for it. Bear in mind, this is someone making an engineer's salary.
So do I believe that someone could be making 50% more a year, still live beyond their means, own a McMansion and a Bentley and still be hosed? Yeah. Very much so. Because their definition of the Joneses to chase after are in a much higher tax bracket. There's nothing that says more money makes you smarter.
cowgirl, if there are no deep women in this world, I am going to be horribly disappointed. However, I know a few already (or at least a few that are putting on a magnificent act), so I do believe there is hope.
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I think for the forseeable future, I am going to call CG "cowgirl".
That would kind of explain his obsession with shoes...
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CG,
How about "code generator?"
Of course, there's no guarantee of deep men either...deepness may be altogether overrated.
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(repeatedly hits her head against the computer monitor)
Oye, not again...
Let's just move on to the new thread, okay?
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CG,
Well, if you had thought about that before saying no to Google...
But, ugh, moving on...
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CG
You would be advised that spoofing as multiple identities, as per the previous thread's discussion, falls into the bannable camp.
And, being that this is my thread and you know my feelings about your presence here, better to move on.
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Allah:
My mom's selling a house. It's been on the market for 7 months.
First price: $298K (a bit overpriced).
Second price: $279K
Third Price: $265K
Fourth Price: $245K
Fifth Price: $235K SOLD!
Now she's waiting to clear Escrow, get the appraisal, etc.
She's damn happy to be getting out with a tidy profit, despite the time-phased price downgrades
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Randy H:
I wanted to get Patrick on months ago, but he seemed pretty shy about it.
I'd be interested in getting at least two, maybe three people on the horn. I'd like to get you on the air because your'e a pretty good quant/stats/econ guy.
Surfer-x would cool. He could come on buzzed/drunk if he wanted.
Patrick would be the king, since he started this site. I'd like to hear his story of how/why he started the site, some stats on the number of viewers, bloggers, etc.
DinOR can roll with it.
Just basically have me and two others on the line, and have everyone else listening live via the web and calling/checking in to say hi or whatever.
We can do it whenever you guys want.
I've got a show from 10-11 p.m. every Friday night.
It would be easy to set up, but I'd like to have some structure as far as questions to ask Peter, you, Surfer, etc.
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Correction: insert [Peter] where you see Patrick on my last post.
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I’d be interested in getting at least two, maybe three people on the horn. I’d like to get you on the air because your’e a pretty good quant/stats/econ guy.
Do you have an internet feed? 10 pm fri is 2 pm sat here, i would have crawled out of the cave by then... i can make a VoIP call cheaply, i know you'll want an informed international perspective... thanks for asking :P
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Different Sean Says:
Do you have an internet feed? 10 pm fri is 2 pm sat here, i would have crawled out of the cave by then… i can make a VoIP call cheaply, i know you’ll want an informed international perspective… thanks for asking.
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Different Sean:
10 p.m. in Phoenix is 9 p.m. California time and 12 a.m. East Coast time. Arizona doesn't ever adjust it's clocks.
I am on KFNX News-Talk 1100 am in Phoenix (5th largest US city). Our station carries national hosts Michael Savage and Jerry Doyle. My show is the Michael Holliday show.
To listen live go to Google and type in "KFNX." Then, click the "Listen Live" button on the upper right hand side of the screen, and you are on. It's that simple!
Where are you Sean?
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PS - just a point of clarification for everyone else. I've never meet CG (AKA GC AKA numerous other aliases) in real life. Though we both allegedly lived in Shanghai during the late 80s, Shanghai is an awfully big city and I was in elementary school at the time.
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Where are you Sean?
I sometimes wonder myself... Sydney, Australia at present, currently GMT+11:00 including DST... tends to be about 16 hours ahead of left coast...
there is a similar bubble here, except that there's very little relief from high prices in the whole country due to aggregation in the capital cities -- nothing equivalent to 'flyover states'... there's been a number of articles in The Economist in recent times identifying the biggest bubble countries -- a recent OECD report actually pegged Sydney and Australia as the 'most' unaffordable out of 17 affluent countries when wages are taken into account, although that's perhaps debatable. further, Oz is slightly ahead of the bubble curve than US, so it's a bellwether to some extent...
are you on at 10 pm or 11 am???
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p.s. my knowledge of phoenix is limited pretty much to knowing it's the home of robert kiyosaki, who claims to have built a property empire there, altho a search only brings up 2 or 3 title deeds in his name, an old VA place and his current McMansion...
hey, you should try to get john t. reed onto your show ;)
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AEST is currently 18 hours ahead of MST -- one quick heuristic is to subtract 6 hours from the current time and add a day...
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Different Sean Says:
"...(a)re you on at 10 pm or 11 am???"
_____
10 p.m. Friday night. I guess that's 4 p.m., Saturday afternoon your time.
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Michael H,
Please play some substrata on your next show. I tried to buy a copy in Amazon, but it was like $50. I ended up buying Shenzhou instead.
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Probably I shouldn't use this site to advertise my show.
You can delete the above links. Sorry for pimpin' Peter's hospitality.
It wasn't my intention. I think I got a little excited.
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How about some Phoenix (the French band) when talking about Phoenix?
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Brand said:
anyone leveraged into credit-card serfdom to maintain an illusion of Gucci-clad, Bentley-driving wealth.
Most Bentley owners are not in net borrowers. Rather poor taste, of course, but not debt-serfs.
SP
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Michael Holliday,
It's all good. I think cross-promotion is fine, especially when on topic. I only cracked on Juku(bot) when he(it) started calling people here communi$ts, infidels, and fifth columnists after he(it) cross-promoted.
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I think any cross-promotion should be faintly relevant to the topic at hand, and Michael is offering a gig to the cast of patrick... (plus we all secretly want to promote our own sites on air for 15 minutes of fame...)
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Different Sean Says:
I think any cross-promotion should be faintly relevant to the topic at hand, and Michael is offering a gig to the cast of patrick… (plus we all secretly want to promote our own sites on air for 15 minutes of fame…)
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Well my offer is open for a show. I'd love to do it.
Everyone's welcome & encouraged to promote their respective sites when we all get together on my show.
Randy, my e-mail is radioholliday@yahoo.com when you want to go for it.
Some structure would be appropriate, such as an introduction of my guests, you, Peter, etc. and your backgrounds, education, websites, etc.
Then I could hit a few key questions and we could free-form-radio it from there.
Plus, all of the bloggers on this site would get a chance to meet/hear the personalities on this site.
Come to think of it, Sean kind of hit on a good idea for future programs for me. There are some good blogs out there, with hidden experts of Randy and Peter quality. I should have their founders and personalities come on my show. I think that would be a great source for interesting shows.
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Michael,
Who is Peter? Do you mean Peter P? He's an expert on sushi, but I didn't realize he had expertise on the housing market.
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Astrid:
Peter's the one who started this whole shebang!
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I thought Patrick owned this blog and the site...
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Do you mean Peter Schiff?
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I don't know what I mean anymore.
I...am...friggen'...CONFUSED!
Sheesh...
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Sorry...
Please don't turn into a realtor in renter's clothing
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Damn, Michael H still won't talk to me.
I'm really sorry :-( Can my venture capitalists send you some tomato seeds to make it all better?
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Peter’s the one who started this whole shebang!
How come people still think Peter = Patrick?
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must be your charisma, Peter...
the site progenitor is patrick killelea, michael, an irish-american californian programmer ;)
his e-mail is easily available on the site. i noticed some substitution confusion a few posts back...
Peter P is... a zen master of sushi...
i'll forgive michael one lapse, all his posts i've read are very switched on...
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Peter P,
It must be because when people think of housing, their mind turns to food.
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Looks like a good night for the Dems.
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Up here in Canada Bubble Bloggs have really got the realtors worried. One site called "Let's Imagine a housing Crash" about Vancouver BC has at least one RE agent pumping out counterspin 24/7. One well known housing "investment" specialist even stated in the newspaper a warning against visiting Bubble blog sites.
Many realtors have their own web sites where you can post comments about their properties. The result is about 3 to 1 openly ridiculing their properties and many now edit the posts before they put them up for viewing.
If we had had the internet and bloggs back in the '80s imagine how many people could have saved themselves a lot of suffering. Here in Alberta it was non stop spin right until it crashed and the media did not report a thing until after the fact.
US media is a lot more willing to publish news that is contrary to industry spin than Canadian media is.
By the way love your site and I truly believe it is doing the public a service.