Sacramento Real Estate Blog

I thought I’d start reflecting a bit on the forthcoming birthday of this blog.  On July 27th, this blog will turn five years old, making it the oldest real estate blog in Sacramento, and one of the older (but not the oldest) real estate blogs, period.  This site and blog officially launched on July 27th, 2003.

You’re welcome.

Such longevity is a partially a testament to my ability to endure my own tedium, since for much of that time — since about 2005 or so — a lot of what this blog has been about has been real estate market data.  I’ve posted some 287 market updates.  It’s my second most popular category next to “The Open Sac” (another word for miscellaneous — the default category).  In fact, I’m sure if I looked through the Open Sac I’d find several market update posts where I simply neglected to check the Market Updates box.

Oops.

Here are some of the things that have happened since I’ve been blogging:

• The Market Cycle
  Homes got more expensive, then quickly got a lot more expensive, then slowly got cheaper, then quickly got a lot cheaper.  We’re still in the getting cheaper phase.  We have gotten to the point where demand is rising because of it (in Sacramento County — we’re not there yet in Placer or El Dorado County).
• The Rise of the Bubble Blogs
  Once homes started getting less expensive, people started putting up blogs to make fun of those who were hurt by the downturn, bag on Realtors® and/or blame them for the market cycle, and otherwise encourage anonymous commenters to paint a coat of semi-gloss I-told-you-so (though as it happens, they didn’t) over the rotted structure of schadenfreude.
• Two Failures By Democrats
  OK, so George Bush stole the 2000 election, but how could you let him beat you again in 2004?  The American people, no doubt feeling the need to reward the underachievement of losing to an underachiever, elected a Democratic congress in 2006 to end the war in Iraq, which they didn’t do.  This fulfilled the 1974 prophecy of Stevie Wonder:  You Haven’t Done Nothin’.
• Irreplaceable
  Beyonce Knowles released this hit single on December 5, 2006.
• The Bigdealification of Real Estate Blogging
  Somewhere around time that Beyonce Knowles was releasing Irreplaceable, give or take a Thanksgiving turkey, an increasingly large group of real estate bloggers and their vendors started making a huge fuss about real estate blogging and how something called social networking was going to create — well, something — where people would all be doing — well, something. 

  Twitter evolved as the written equivalent of the Bush Presidency.

• I Become The Anti-Blogging Blogger
  In response to the hype, and no doubt because of thoughts like those in the last bullet point, no less a luminary than Mr. Bad MLS Photo of the Day himself once declared me the anti-blogging blogger.  Or words to that effect.  I think he nailed it.

  It’s only a web site.  It’s only a web site.  It’s only a web site.

• Getting a Contributor
  Purva Brown was nice enough to start pitching in, hooray!  Actually, really early on I had a contributor, too, since my wife, Kathy, used to help out quite a bit on the Sacramento Things To Do blog that launched at the same time as the real estate blog.  

  That other effort has since petered out, but this Sacramento Real Estate Blog lives on in the Sprit of Christmas and the Hearts of Children Everywhere!