Our site tends to be a pretty regular stop for Realtors looking for a rebrand (if you look at our greatest hits on the right you'll see our most popular post for real estate types.)  But we haven't always been entirely positive about our views of the parent brand or fire-and-forget realty types (as seen here and here.  Oh, and here. And here.  And maybe here.)  so it came as a bit of a surprise when they asked us about Web 2.0 and realty for their national magazine.

We were happy to oblige. 

Excerpted from the article:

Which Real Estate 2.0 tool should you try first? Experts agree you need to take a step back and do some work before you decide. “It’s entirely likely there are real estate professionals out there making a killing using Web 2.0, but I would bet that they have a killer brand behind them,” says Tate Linden, principal with Stokefire, a brand-naming consulting firm in Springfield, Va. “Find a way to differentiate yourself.”

Claude Labbe, ABR®, GRI, with the Flaherty Group in Kensington, Md., consulted with Linden before deciding to position himself as a real estate professional for people who need things done quickly. His tagline, “Realty for Your Busy Life,” is on his Web site and is part of the name of his blog, YourBusyLife.com.He started the blog in the spring of 2007.

“I knew I wanted something to get people to talk to me more,” Labbe says. “Real estate is a contact sport; you have to be with people.”

Amazing how a 45 minute conversation can be boiled down to a paragraph.  John N. Frank did a good job summing up my many stories and asides. 

And in case you're interested - I did indeed let John know that I wasn't exactly a team player - and he took it very well.  We had a good discussion about the sorts of stuff that passes as realty these days and what the National Association of Realtors could do to make it better. 

(For instance - the National Realtor campaign slogan "Now is a great time to buy or sell a home" from last year is looking pretty bad right now...  Perhaps they could have taken a stand that had meaning... and that wouldn't make all the buyers last year look foolish in light of a widely anticipated collapse in the housing markets.)

Nice article, John.  I look forward to more conversations in the future and perhaps to helping NAR solve some of the more troubling issues we discussed.