Homage to Irvine

It is always great when a pioneer gets recognized. Our inspiration blogger - Irvine Renter from Irvine Housing Blog - has published a book and gone public. Wow! Amazing and exciting. Here are some snippets from an article in the Orange County Register titled The guy behind that cranky Irvine real estate blog is... Lets take a peak -

Some consider Larry Roberts a hero for saving people hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost home equity. Others consider him a villain, cheering from the cheap seats as home profits vanish and home owners go bankrupt.

Roberts will tell you he's just a blogger, a guy with a keyboard and high-speed connectivity who happened to foresee the big pop in the housing bubble early in the game, and tried to warn as many people as possible.

...
Roberts is better known as IrvineRenter, the online voice that drives the popular Irvine Housing Blog web site (www.irvinehousingblog.com). He has become one of the biggest, best-known mouths in a world of big, mouthy real estate blogs. And he does, in fact, enjoy his role as un-paid economic guru.

...
Roberts stumbled across the Irvine Housing Blog soon after it launched in September 2006, and began peppering the site with comments. By the following January he was contributing posts to the front page, using his jaundiced eye and the nom de blogIrvineRenter. He profiles a different Irvine property for sale just about every day, and has become the blog's main voice.

Nothing, it seems, is off limits. Roberts unleashes his caustic wit on virtually every aspect of a listing; the home's décor, the Realtors' typo-ridden descriptions, the often insane asking prices. He also tracks public records to find out the home's previous purchase price, how many loans and lines of credit have been taken out against it, and how much equity the homeowners have lost.

The book is The Great Housing Bubble: Why Did House Prices Fall? Order it from Amazon.