Here’s some of the stuff that caught my eye this week:

A Real Estate Deal, Seen From 2 Sides

The New York Times published this article consisting of two fictional letters. One from a buyer to a seller and the seller’s response. The piece was written after the author had spoken to a number of real estate professionals. The content of the letters echoes a lot of the conversations happening online about why to buy and how to market/position a home for sale. Read it at the NYT site.

Real Estate and the Meatball Sundae

The Real Estate Zebra strikes by interpreting one of Seth Godin’s wonderful metaphors for real estate. The point seems to be that all the fun and exciting toys we all like to play with (Twitter, Flip video cameras, blogs, social media sites etc etc etc) probably shouldn’t just be slapped on to existing business structures and models. I’d love to hear more about this line of thinking. Maybe I’ll tap into it some next week. For now though, read up at the Real Estate Zebra.

Level playing fields in Real Estate Internet Marketing?

Bill Lublin, over at agentgenius.com, talks about MLS rules and level playing fields (and why those of you who bother reading blogs about marketing and all that probably don’t need/want level playing fields). Which brings us to…

The Dept. of Justice vs Nat. Assoc. Realtors settlement

This one is well outside my knowledge base (aka: I am not a lawyer). That said, lots to read about it: Inman News wrote the first piece I read on it, Jay Thompson gives a good roundup of reaction, Greg Swann gives a strong “who cares?” and Sellsius frames the decision in light of Zillow.

Silly MLS IDX Rules

Andrew Mattie posts at Geekestate a great list of odd MLS IDX rules. Sort of reminds one of those collections full of quirky laws on state and municipal books.

And it is the weekend after all…

From one of my favorite real estate blogs: Bad MLS Photo of the Day. We get a quick lesson in composition.