There’s always something to howl about.

Saturday morning links . . .

Todd Tarson goes flat fee for buyers. I’ll be interested to hear how this flies in the high desert. Inlookers, Mohave County, where Todd works, is boom country. The new bridge over the Colorado is expected to turn the SR-93 corridor from Kingman to the river into bedroom communities for Las Vegas — which is running out of land. You might consider giving Todd one day of your Vegas vacation to take a closer look.

Greg Tracy at BlueRoof.com asks: What if Zillow Got Serious? Indeed. This is what makes Fidelity’s half-baked AVM interesting, actually. They already have the title farm, and they already have the Realtor relationships. This could be fun…

Jay Reifert, a true buyers-only agent in Madison, Wisconsin, sent me a link to a form buyers can use to cling to their unrepresented status. Jay has a lot more at his real estate reform web site.

RSS Pieces advises us that it is a myth that stand-alone web sites for listings drive traffic. This is probably true in the large. It is certainly false from an incremental and long-term perspective. But the real point is: So what? The purpose of a discrete web site for a home is not to drive traffic but to sell that house. Do they work? Oh, good lord, yes! Lately, I’ve read a number of tone-deaf observations on this subject, and I don’t know if the writers just don’t get it or if they’re playing dumb to rationalize playing it cheap. Here’s how you do this: You have a summary listing on your main web site, just like everyone else, except that the summary links to the stand-alone site for that particular listing. Now you have searchability at your main site and a link back from the satellite site, marginally improving your Page rank. More importantly, you have knocked the socks off your seller, your prospective buyers and the entire neighborhood. We sell to people, not Google. Don’t forget.

The Phoenix Real Estate Guy has a new “Ask the Lenders” feature, which I think is a rockin’ idea.

And: Jim Cronin at The Real Estate Tomato asks: “Who Are You Blogging For?” I have news for you, you can tell me if it’s good news or bad news: If you’re writing a real estate weblog, you’re blogging for people who are fanatical about real estate. Who would that be? Realtors, lenders and the vendors who live off their business. Bubbleheads and people on the bubble about bubbleheadedness. Real estate investors. That’s it. There might be some peeking-in/checking-up traffic from past clients, and perhaps some dedicated fans. There will be drop-ins from people shopping for Realtors, but they will not become dedicated readers. How do I know this? Because they don’t care. You can tell who cares about your weblog by looking at your Technorati links. There are 55 million weblogs out there, but the only ones linking to you are produced by other real estate fanatics. That’s not a wave. That’s the water…

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