In another trend piece on the influence of real-estate blogs, the New York Times finds that some New York City home sellers are being “undermined” by anonymous commenters on sites like Curbed, Brownstoner and StreetEasy.
“[S]ellers and their brokers are seething over what they perceive as a lack of accountability, hidden or misanthropic motives, and the fact that defending one’s property — even correcting a factual error — can prolong or aggravate its turn under the collective microscope. Sellers also object to being typecast as Marie Antoinette in the French Revolution-style discourse.”
When I last posted on this topic in October, Joe Zekas observed most of what he sees on “real estate blogs that indulge this sort of thing is the have-nots bashing the haves,” and several of the opinions offered in the Times article agree with that sentiment. “You may have someone really upset that they didn’t buy 10 years ago and now they want the market to go down 60 or 70 percent, so they’re writing all these things,” said Noah Rosenblatt, a real-estate agent and founder UrbanDigs.com.
Although that may be the case, the article finds that “the best insurance against online mudslinging is also the costliest: Price your place in bear territory — somewhere between 2004 and 2006 prices.”
Related posts:
• Quote of the day: Those nasty, “aggressively rude” real-estate bloggers (Oct. 28)