Welcome to the Carnival of Real Estate at the Minnesota Investment Property blog. I spent the last couple cold days over the warm glow of my laptop reading all the fantastic submissions. Considering it is currently 11 below zero outside as I write this, I thought it might be fitting to showcase the top 11 entries (in no particular order):

The Contrarian Goldfish has no concerns about swimming the opposite direction by himself! He argues against the conventional wisdom is his post about Why Buying a Luxury Car is Smarter than Buying a Luxury Home.

Trevor Mauch answers the question of many small investment property owners: “Which Rental Property Software should I use”. Trevor posted a 20 minute video and an in-depth review of Quicken Rental Property Manager, at the Real Estate Investing Brain.

Have you ever wondered why the appraisers and real estate agents set such different values on the same property? Hojin Chang, at Hojin’s Southwest Orlando Real Estate Scoop, explains The Disparity Between the Opinion of Value from Appraisers and Realtors.

Cindy Lin, at Staged4more, found this horror story about a stager that started a fire at her customer’s house and refused to admit it. With that in mind, Cindy goes on to tell us the #1 Question You Need to Ask Your New Stager.

As real estate bloggers, we all have the competing goals of wanting to be ranked well in the search engines and to be building relationships with our readers. At The Real Estate Tomato, Jim Cronin outlines the Dichotomy of the Real Estate Blog – Do You Please the Readers or Search Engines?

Dan Melson, from Searchlight Crusade, exposes the secret that some homeowners in California are building additions or making alterations on their properties without permits, in order to sneak under the radar of the tax assessor. The complications come up when Buying and Selling Properties with Unpermitted Additions.

Watching the economy and trying to predict what will happen next is a daunting task. Nigel Swaby, at Salt Lake Real Estate Blog, presents an interesting twist on why The Economy is Getting Really Ugly.

Because of the previous halcyon years in the Mortgage business, ARMs have ultimately become the scapegoat for most everything that when wrong. DeeinAustin tells us Why Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs) Don’t Scare Me, at the Texas Realty Blog.

Evaluating our current time, Cyrus Khadivi argues that 2008 is The Year of the Appropriate Mortgage. He encourages us to start investing in the “bank of ME/YOU”, and stop spending so much of our money on our mortgages.

As we examine our mortgage history and our options, Peter Thompson, at Illinois Mortgage Rates and News, explains our refinancing options. Peter describes When Does it Make Sense, and How Much Does It Cost to Refinance Your Mortgage?

Lastly, if I had to pick a winner for this Carnival, I would select the entry by a brand new real estate blogger who submitted his 5th blog post, Tony John, at Real Estate Investing with Tony John. His post Fast Equity? Think Commercial, did get me thinking. Tony makes a compelling argument with good examples of why he believes real estate investors should “stop looking at residential real estate, and turn your eyes to commercial real estate”.

Thank you everyone for the great posts. I definitely found some new blogs that I have subscribed to.

To submit your blog article to the next edition, on January 28, of the Carnival of Real Estate (at the Zillow Blog) use the carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the blog carnival index page. You can also read the FAQs on how to host and how to post on the FAQ page.