01:00 AM EST on Saturday, November 12, 2005

BY SAM ALI
Newhouse News Service

By now, you have probably heard of Weblogs, those online diaries where people post memos to the world on just about any topic -- politics, fly-fishing, a trip around the world, their daughter's wedding.

So when 52-year-old Alan Weinkrantz decided to sell his $349,000, three-bedroom bungalow, the public-relations professional figured, what better way to get the word out and give prospective buyers a taste of the town than to create a blog? Weinkrantz's blog is called "826 Cambridge Oval, San Antonio, TX" -- essentially a digital scrapbook of his turn-of-the-century home and life as he knows it in the two-square mile city of Alamo Heights, population 7,319.

His idea: anyone thinking of moving or relocating there, can go to his blog at alanweinkrantz.typepad.com/826--cambridge--oval/ and get the skinny on the community.

"A home like this has a story to tell. I'm trying to extend the personality of the real estate into cyberspace rather than just talking about the square footage," says Weinkrantz, who describes his community as an enclave of older, historic homes. "But I also talk about my next door neighbors, the school system, what happened the other day when I was mowing the lawn."

Real estate experts say finding "the right neighborhood" is as important as finding the right house -- one reason behind the time-worn real estate cliché "location, location, location." And someone sold on a location is less likely to balk at a steep asking price.

The idea of neighborhood blogs that dish about life in the hood or the 'burbs seems to be gaining ground. Type the words "real estate" in blogsearch.google.com and you get more than 1 million entries.

Sure, a person can scour official statistics that are available on home sales, schools, crime rates, and taxes. But for many house hunters, finding the right neighborhood or town is often left to chance, or a quick drive-by with an agent.

Neighborhood blogs, on the other hand, give outsiders a glance at what the insiders are saying about a community -- information that can ultimately help people get a feel for an area and its flavor and determine if it's the right place for them to live.

Ken Baris, president of West Orange, N.J.-based Jordan Baris Realtors, says he believes neighborhood blogs -- if done right -- can be excellent tools for sales agents to promote their listings and distinguish themselves from other agents. He says he has been considering the idea of launching one.

"At first blush, it sounds spectacular," Baris says. "But the real key is, how do you let a neighborhood know that it's out there and how do you get the neighbors to use it regularly? You have to have enough depth to make it exciting so the public feels like a part of that online community."

One of the biggest real estate blogs is Curbed.com, a site devoted to New York, created by Lockhart Steele, a 31-year-old journalist.

In a little more than one year, Steele, who moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan after graduating from Brown University in 1996, has turned his love of New York, architecture and redevelopment into a must-read blog for many real-estate enthusiasts.

It's the place to go to get the inside dope on crazy New York celebrity gossip, who or what is moving into the city or out, what bars and restaurants are good or bad or going out of business. You can even find out if an area has a rat or cockroach problem.

Since Curbed.com launched in May 2004, its traffic has grown to a million page views a month.

"We're one of the oldest, and we're only a year old," Steele says.

"All these people in New York are obsessed with real estate and their neighborhoods," Steele says. "This is what it's all about. I know a lot of people who read it because they're looking for an apartment or a place to live, and there is no good central place you can find out what's going on in this neighborhood or the flavor of the place."

Steele began blogging five years ago as a way to chronicle the rebirth of his own neighborhood in the Lower East Side.

"I figured 10 of my friends would check it out," he says, but soon his posts, photos and rants started attracting a wider audience. Still, despite its fame, Curbed.com is far from a profitable venture for Steele, one reason he refers to his blog as "an aggressive hobby."

To pay the rent, Steele holds a day job as managing editor at Gawker Media, overseeing 11 blogs including New York media gossip site Gawker.com and the Washington news and gossip blog Wonkette.com.

Meanwhile, across the Hudson River, Ian MacAllen, a 24-year-old Rutgers University graduate, was so inspired by Steele and Curbed.com's curb appeal that he launched his own neighborhood blog devoted to Jersey City and Hoboken. MacAllen's blog is called NewYorksSixth (www.newyorkssixth.com/ ) -- as in New York's sixth borough, because of their geographic proximity to the city.

MacAllen, an art director at a political marketing firm in Hackensack, moved to Jersey City six months ago from New Brunswick and is renting a two-bedroom apartment for $1,300 a month.

"I am hoping someone might come across the blog and learn about the area," he says. "I'm fascinated with planning and new architecture and I like to keep track of how these things play out and I think people like to keep track of what's going on in their neighborhoods."

As for Weinkrantz, he says he recently fielded a serious offer on his home and believes his blog played a role.

"I told him about the blog . . . and the attention I am getting, and he made a decision that day," Weinkrantz says. "My sense is that he did not want to miss the opportunity."