I live in a neighborhood that can't even decide on the theme for the Fall potluck, so I can't imagine ever getting together and agreeing to each sell our homes at the same time. But that's just what 23 neighbors decided to do in the Seattle suburb of Lynnwood, Wash.

About two-thirds of the property owners in this neighborhood have banded together to jointly sell at least 11.5 acres. Others still are considering whether to join in. Together, they hope to attract a big-time builder who can pay top dollar for their land and build hundreds of condos in six- to eight-story buildings. Otherwise, they worry they'll be forced to watch their neighborhood carved up piecemeal for townhouses. And if that happens, they fear their chances of selling their land will plummet.

Not only have they all decided to list their homes at the same time, they've apparently decided to all hire the same real estate agent too -- Steve Canter of Home Realty in Everett, Wash. That's cooperation!

(Photo courtesy of The Herald)

--Marlow Harris, 360Digest

It's official: Lesley Stahl has become 60 Minutes' real estate correspondent. After exploring discount brokers in a piece featuring Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman, Stahl has scored an interview with former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. CBS is promoting the interview, which airs Sunday, as a confession from Greenspan that he missed the threat subprime lending posed to the economy as the Fed slashed interest rates to the floor to stave off recession.

"It was our job to unfreeze the American banking system if we wanted the economy to function. This required that we keep rates modestly low," Greenspan tells 60 Minutes.

In a video promoting Sunday's piece, Stahl said  Greenspan doesn't think the current turmoil in housing markets will cause a recession -- he's "far more concerned about inflation" (sound familiar?). Stahl said Greenspan told her that when he was Fed chair, he had a long run of low inflation -- not just in the U.S., but worldwide -- which was "a huge factor in his being able to prevent recession." Now the pendulum is swinging back, Greenspan thinks, and inflation is the big worry.

Some critics thought 60 Minutes take on discounters was somewhat superficial and a little belated. With Greenspan, the problem is it doesn't really matter what he thinks now. He presumably did 60 Minutes to plug his new book, out Sept. 17.

Real estate professionals say street names and even numbers can influence home buyers -- the "pretty" names sell better -- but there is also the important issue of ensuring the name is unique and not confusing to 9-1-1 responders, according to a report at FloridaToday.com.

There are about 19,000 named streets and sections of streets in Brevard County, Fla., the article states. "That means the county's emergency 9-1-1 mapping office is busy screening new names to prevent chaos for firefighters or police responding to calls. But it's not just emergency staff worrying about street names: Residents have to live with their address, and Realtors say houses on streets with pleasant names are easier to sell."

Prior to the 9-1-1 system, there were 147 version of Oak Street, a county 9-1-1 database coordinator said. And there are still 37 variations of oak in street names, 21 with coral, 19 with bay, 18 with sunset and 13 with variations of hickory and orange, according to the article. The 9-1-1 official noted that trees, flowers, fruits, birds and water themes are popular for street names. A mobile home park in Cocoa chose a Monopoly board game theme for its streets, using Boardwalk, Reading, Chance and Mediterranean, for example.

A real estate professional quoted in the article said that a prospective buyer once snubbed a home he liked because of the "666" street number of the home's address, while another noted that a street name was changed from South Patrick Drive to Riverside Drive and Riverview Drive because it "sounded more prestigious."

Some unusual local street names reported in the article: Soggy Bottom Drive, Whynot Road and Osmosis Drive.

A home for sale in Edmonton, Canada, will be $1,000 cheaper tomorrow if it doesn't sell today.

Steve Sedgwick, a Realtor for Royal LePage Noralta in Edmonton, Canada, is knocking $1,000 off of the home price per day until the property sells, he announced on Aug. 31. The pricing strategy is intended to call more attention to the property in an environment of swelling for-sale inventory.

The 1,002-square-foot bi-level home had a list price of $375,000 in Canadian dollars ($357,109 in U.S. dollars at the current exchange rate) when the countdown auction began Sept. 1, and as of today is priced at $372,000. The home was reportedly appraised at $385,000 in May 2007.

If the home sells before Sept. 10 the seller will include a "$10,000 home theater package," according to an announcement by Sedgwick. The real estate countdown auction may be the first of its kind in Alberta.

The impact of the meltdown in the subprime mortgage industry continues to spiral out into various aspects of the housing industry and industries that count on it for some bread and butter earnings, such as remodeling and advertising.

A piece in the NY Times over the weekend put a spotlight on a Cleveland, Ohio, suburb that is starting to feel the impact of foreclosed homes and fleeing residents and having to cut various services as a result. (See, "Can the Mortgage Crisis Swallow a Town?")

And the LA Times today considers the future of home improvement and property flipping television shows that grew out of the boom years. (See, "Home Shows See Need to Retool.")

It's no surprise then that more than a few observers have started wondering about the future of Web services that have come to rely on advertising dollars from mortgage and real estate companies. A lot of new companies have sprung up in recent years with advertising revenue as a major part of their business models.

There are two schools of thought here: 1) Some believe that now is a great time for those offering online ads to industry professionals as they need to market and advertise now more than ever; and 2) Others say it doesn't matter that now is the time for real estate companies to make a push for advertising -- the sad truth is that many simply don't have the budget for it or are cutting back in a major way.

What do you think? Will you be cutting back or revving up?

More from the Web:

--Gauging The Hype on Mortgage Meltdown's Online Ad Impact (MediaPost)
--What the Subprime Mess Means for Real Estate 2.0 (Future of Real Estate Marketing)
--LowerMyBills Lowers Its Ad Bill (NY Times)
--First American Corp. laying off 1,900 (Inman News)

YouTube is not just YouthTube. A grandma-grandson pair has created a popular cooking show, "Feed Me Bubbe," using video podcasting technology. Bubbe is the Yiddish word for grandma. The show was featured on ABC News last week in a segment titled "Senior Stars on YouTube."

The proof is in the pudding: You don't have to be a spring chicken to market your expertise online and draw an international audience. Another lesson: Innovation doesn't always mean first or best.

Many of you have asked about the PDF of Jamie Glenn's presentation at Connect last week on 50 ways to market real estate online. The PDF is now available for download here.

You can also watch Glenn, VP of Product Management at Trulia, give the presentation in the following video clip (Glenn comes in at about 17 minutes):

Macdonald Realty, a Canadian real estate brokerage, offers its clients the opportunity to go green by choosing to donate a portion of an agent's commission fee to programs that are intended to offset greenhouse gas emissions.

"The Macdonald Realty real estate agent will offer the home buyer or seller the option to make his transaction carbon neutral," according to a company announcement.

To participate, the client can fill out a short online form and the agent will bear the offset cost. This cost will vary by agent depending on the number of transactions and associated emissions.

The company, which has 800 agents and staff members in British Columbia and Alberta, is attempting to become "carbon neutral" by tracking its overall carbon footprint and supporting projects to remove an equivalent amount of greenhouse gases from the environment. Real estate companies can contribute auto pollution, for example, and can use volumes of paper documents.

Offset projects can include the planting of trees or investment in renewable energy and energy conservation.

"Because global warming is a worldwide problem, it does not matter whether the carbon offsetting project reduces emissions in Canada or Africa, as it will have the same positive outcome on the environment," the company announced.

So there's a twist to yesterday's announcement that Realogy Franchise Group will feed listings from CENTURY 21, Coldwell Banker, ERA and Sotheby'€™s International Realty to Yahoo! Real Estate. Realogy's listings will be posted in the site's classified section, unlike listings Yahoo! gets from Prudential, which show up in agent/MLS searches on the Yahoo Real Estate page.

Huh? If you're a consumer, and you go to the Yahoo! Real Estate page, there is a search box that requires you to select one of five listing types -- including "Homes for Sale" (where you'll find Prudential's listings) and "Real Estate Classifieds" where Realogy's listings will be. If you don't have an eye for details, you may search one set of listings without realizing there are other options. There are also separate searches if you want to look at new homes or foreclosures, and a checkbox for apartments.

While it's logical to let people narrow down their searches if they want to, why force them to conduct as many as four searches to find the homes for sale in their market on Yahoo! Real Estate? The answer, it seems, has more to do with the agreements Yahoo! enters into with advertisers than making life easy for consumers (and enabling them to find your listings).

When asked about the deal with Realogy during a panel discussion Friday at Real Estate Connect SF, Yahoo! Real Estate's Michael Yang said it's part of a "road map" the company is constructing to "engage with the industry in accepting more listings"

Agents have long had the ability to upload listings to Yahoo! Real Estate Classifieds, Yang said (the advertised price is $49.95 per listing for 21 days). But with the new eagerness brokers have been showing to push their listings out to portals, he said, "The phone and the e-mails have been coming off the hook, (with brokers saying) 'Work with us to find a way for us to submit listings en masse.' "

So does the deal with Realogy mean that anybody can start feeding listings to Yahoo! Real Estate (if only to the Real Estate Classifieds?). Well, no. Yang said Yahoo! Real Estate will work with brokers who want that capability on a "partner-by-partner" basis, because Yahoo! wants to pitch other ways of advertising through the site as part of a package deal. You can't just send a feed, Yang said -- you have to buy into the company's "road map."

To get started down that road, you have to fill out a "Partner with us" form on the company's Web site, which is a starting point for further discussions, Yang said.

Meanwhile, Google's Justin McCarthy sat next to Yang, chomping at the bit for his chance to plug Google Base, which allows brokers and agents to upload listings in bulk to Google for free.

Plug it McCarthy did, extolling the simplicity of the Google Base interface and explaining that, while it can be difficult to explain advertising concepts like cost-per-click to a small brokerage, "The bulk upload and free display of listings is kind of a no-brainer."

Apparently not for everybody.

While it might not make sense for every portal to take free listings, if you're going to charge for them, it seems like you'd want to make the process a simple one. If the agreements you reach with one advertiser make it hard for consumers to access another's listings, aren't consumers going to end up on somebody else's site? Without traffic, how do you attract advertisers?

It's hard not to wonder if Yahoo's road map for accepting listings is actually turning the site into a maze for advertisers and consumers.

In today's keynote address at Real Estate Connect SF, GapingVoid publisher Hugh MacLeod explained how a viral marketing campaign he engineered for a South African winery, Stormhoek, has helped boost sales from 50,000 cases to a projected 250,000 cases in 2007. To oversimplify things a little, MacLeod -- a former ad copywriter who draws crude but clever cartoons on the backs of business cards -- got bloggers writing about the wine by having the winery send them a free bottle. Then cartoons he created for the winery also went viral.

One of those cartoons, the Blue Monster, seems at first glance to have nothing to do with wine. The cartoon is sort of an unofficial slogan MacLeod created for Microsoft empoyees. "Microsoft: change the world or go home" it reads. MacLeod posted a high-resolution file of the cartoon on the Web, and Microsoft employees started "downloading the heck out of it" to make their own t-shirts, stickers and screen savers. The blue monster got noticed on social networking sites like Flickr and Facebook, and influential folks like tech blogger Robert Scoble helped spread the word (Scoble supposedly has a Blue Monster sticker on his laptop).

The Blue Monster was actually part of the viral marketing campaign for Stormhoek. Notice the winery's URL is in little letters at the bottom of the cartoon (above).

"Microsoft is my bitch now," MacLeod joked to Connect attendees. It's not so much that the Blue Monster got everybody going to the company's Web site, but that suddenly industry publications were talking about the unusual ad campaign. That helped Stormhoek sales people get their foot in the door and talk to the people who could distribute their products, like grocery stores, MacLeod said.

The takeaway for marketing real estate? Social networking sites are all about "social objects." The objects themselves -- pictures people upload to Flickr, say -- are unimportant. It's the conversation that takes place around them. Social objects always consist of a noun, such as the photo, and a verb -- the action they create, such as the urge to share. MacLeod didn't dream all this stuff himself, he said. It goes back to research anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski did while living among Pacific Islanders nearly 100 years ago.