Blogs and anonymity

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Good morning. There’s an interesting post on one of our favorite real estate blogs, Manhattan Beach Confidential, about the subject of blogs and anonymity. MB Confidential is written anonymously, and it’s a sharp, incisive blog -- if a house is overpriced and sitting on the market forever, the blog will say so. Some real estate agents don’t like that and believe there must be some sort of nefarious agenda at work -- maybe the mysterious blogger is a sneaky, rival agent trying to make mischief in the market. Not so, said the blogger this week, in a post answering those rumors.

This is a subject we deal with all the time, and we’re curious to hear your thoughts on it. The 1,400 comments published on this blog in the last three months are all a bit mysterious -- most are anonymous. Are there agendas at work? Axes being grinded? You bet. We hope to attract enough diverse opinions -- buyers, sellers, renters, owners, agents, agent-haters, realists, pessimists, sunny-side-uppers, etc. -- to have a balanced discussion here.

We’ve also protected the identities of sources and guest bloggers (‘Kate in the Valley’) in the interest of fostering an honest discussion of a sensitive topic -- how much money do you make, how much have you saved, what kind of house can you afford, what kind of house should you buy?

That said, we’d like to hear your thoughts on this.