Once again, Larry Cragun has revealed what articles he feels are most consumer oriented with his Magnificent 7.   I am very honored to have a couple of my posts from October recognized.   Please visit Larry’s blog, Real Estate Undressed to check out all of the nominees.

Big move today.  I’m taking www.rhondaporter.com off line; the URL will be forwarded to www.mortgageporter.com (hopefully) by tomorrow.   I may have a bit of down time with my email address.   If you’re not receiving a response from me in a timely manner, please pick up the phone and give me a call or use my alternate email.

Update 8:20 pm: my email is back and running! www.rhondaporter.com is now forwarding to Mortgage Porter…. Isn’t technology great?

Please visit Larry Cragun at Real Estate Undressed and place your vote for the best  consumer real estate article.   The competition continues!

I have another blog that I created to try to help real estate agents get on the blog-wagon.   I have found that many agents have not yet discovered blogging and since I’m fairly new to the blogging world, I thought I would share my experiences along the way in hopes of helping others.   There are many other great resources for real estate professionals who want to learn how to blog.   This is just my thoughts and ideas on real estate blogging. 

R TEAM is a group that I created back in 1992, when I was in title insurance, to help real estate agents in south King County to network together once a month.   We met once a month for breakfast and agents would talk about their buyers needs and listings.  We would also feature a guest speaker who would discuss a topic of current interest.   The synergy was great–I looked forward to our networkings each month.

R TEAM stands for

• Real Estate Agents
• Title Insurance
• Escrow
• And
• Mortgage

At the time, I represented the title and escrow portion.  I would invite various mortgage reps each month to our group…until I became a mortgage rep and I opted to invite a title/escrow person instead!  🙂

My R TEAM blog is designed with the same intent in mind.  To help real estate agents with their business with marketing ideas and to provide them insight on what going on with the mortgage industry.   I hope to add a few guest authors as well…just as I had in my former network group (we dissolved last year).

If you are a real estate agent who is just beginning to blog or have considered it…I invite you to check it out:  www.mortgageporter.com/rteam

The voting is for Round 2…the competition is tensely high.   Please visit Real Estate Undressed and cast your vote.   

I’m very fortunate to be in the running…please check them all out and cast your vote and help Larry out.

Don’t let the pressure of me wanting a Magnificent 7 t-shirt sway you.  🙂

I was just over at the Seattle PI Real Estate Blog to check out their latest post and decided to update my profile for when I comment when I noticed a comment I had made on a post that Jillayne Schlicke had done which…lead me back to the very story that is responsible for pushing me into blogging.   

It was a story that Susannah Frame had done on a local mortgage broker who committed fraud to her fellow church members.   It just irked me to no end…on top of the injustice, the reporter for King 5 wrongly stated how all loan originators would be licensed.   A small detail to some…but not to someone who is classified as working for a mortgage broker and therefore actually licensed.  Those who work for mortgage companies that are banks, like Washington Mutual, Wells Fargo, Chase, Countrywide…etc… are not licensed nor are they held to the same standards by the State of Washington and DFI.   Anyhow…you can see this bugs me.

Just kind of amusing to stumble over what motivated me to take the plunge into the blogosphere hundreds of posts and not quite a year ago!

Once again, I’m honored to be included with the other nominees of Larry Cragun’s Magnificent 7.    The post receiving Larry’s nod is one that I wrote in early August at Rain City Guide, If your loan ain’t vanilla, you may be in for a rocky road.

If you’re looking  for some excellent consumer content, you may want to visit Larry’s site, Real Estate Undressed, to check out his recommendations.