Hello everyone! We are happy to be hosting the 158th Carnival of Real Estate; we received many great entries, six of which we have decided to share with the CORE readership. Although our site is only for apartments and homes for rent, our business is intimately linked with the for-sale market and keep our eyes on and share many of the same issues and concerns.

This week's submissions were all very interesting, but we were able to narrow down our list of favorites to six; remember, posts should be somewhat current, we did receive a few from 2008 and 2007, which, however informative, will not be showcased here.

And now, for the winner:

Karen Goodman of Arch City Homes suggests a new approach to holding an open house: invite the neighbors! This may be counterintuitive, as neighbors are obviously not moving next door, but it does bring the real estate agent in close connection to that neighborhood in their city or territory, it brings about the possibility that the neighbors will have acquaintances looking and mention the listing to them, and if and when interested buyers do show up, they'll see a crowded house filled with what appear to be interested parties.

Karen's approach to inviting neighbors, “Choose Your New Neighbor," is outlined in the video above and we think it will be very successful. I know that on a Saturday afternoon many neighborhood people would be more interested than they'd like to admit in checking out the neighbor's house.

And here are the rest of the submissions in particular order:

The Real Estate Tomato gives great advice on the very first step that real estate agents need to take to get started reaching out to their online audiences, going to godaddy.com and buying a URL.

The Bigger Pockets blog (next week's host!) outlines a comprehensive list of costs that homeowners should be aware of before you try to flip that house.

Mortgage planner Dan Green at The Mortgage Reports blog shares how he quickly ballparks four different types of mortgage calculations, monthly mortgage payments on principal and interest, interest only, and how to calculate the amount of principal you pay for a given month or year.

Bob Schwartz at the Broker for You blog identifies an oft overlooked “rip-off" tactic occurring in the California short-sale market, where independent escrow companies, whose fees are not regulated, are trying to get a bigger piece of the pie.

And finally, The Housing Chronicles asks that age old question, is real estate a good hedge against inflation?

Of course, right before we sign off, we'd like to plug our CEO's latest whitepaper, Cost Effective Resident Acquisition, which helps real estate professionals develop a sound understanding of how to best leverage online advertising expenditures.

Thanks for reading to the bottom! Be sure to submit your posts for next week's Carnival of Real Estate, which will be hosted by the good folks over at Real Estate Investing for Real. Please leave us comments if you have questions or comments or contact MyNewPlace on twitter for a more interactive discussion!