Housing Chronicles named top blog in this week's Carnival of Real Estate

I'm very pleased to report that the first blog posting I've submitted to the Carnival of Real Estate (a weekly compilation of submitted blog postings hosted by different real estate blogs each week) has been given honors as Top Post of the week by the Nubricks.com blog for the carnival's 79th edition. Nubricks.com is an online overseas property resource for unbiased international real estate news, pre-launch property deals, and timely expert advice for investing abroad.

Entitled "Strategies to Thaw out a Frozen Market," the posting synopsis is as follows:

Since it seems that any potential remedies offered by the federal government to address the frozen market for home sales and mortgages could take months to have a large impact, both builders and existing homeowners stuck with unwanted inventory have, by necessity, become much more creative. From housing swaps, auctions and providing insurance against pricing declines to leveraging unused home equity with reverse mortgages or offering hard money property loans, some sellers and buyers are finding that a little ingenuity can sometimes trump a market in paralysis.

Created by the bloggers at Zillow.com, The Carnival of Real Estate's mission is as follows:

The goal here is to bring together the best real estate bloggers from around the country (and world) to share information about what we’re all passionate about: real estate. This is intended to be a forum for everyone to participate. Like a potluck, everyone brings something and may the best dishes be recognized each week.

The Zillow Blog Team — well, actually one very tuned-in guy on the team — was pondering the existence of Blog Carnivals for everything from “street poetry” to cats, but there was not one for real estate. Obviously, we were amazed by this realization. No Carnival for real estate? This must be fixed! So, we at Zillow thought, “Why not create a Carnival of Real Estate?” And so, we did.

And I'm glad they did!

I'm thinking of taking some ideas from this blog post and pitching them as potential stories for media such as the L.A. Times, and for that I'd really like some input. Are housing swaps working? How about auctions? Interest-rate buydowns or price guarantees? Hard money mortgages? What is working in today's market to allow some movement in the marketplace? Please send all suggestions to me at pduffy@metrointel.com. Thanks in advance!