Second Home Real Estate Blogs

Lisa Keys:

Mr. Baily's father had recently bought a place in the Catskills, and visiting his home the couple realized how much they liked it there. Soon enough, Ms. Phillips and Mr. Baily thought about buying a getaway of their own.

"It's tough to go into a sort of rural area, where everyone's been there forever," said Mr. Baily, the director of publicity at Shore Fire Media, a Brooklyn-based public relations and online marketing firm. "There's a real barrier for entry. You stay at a B & B and think, oh, wouldn't it be nice to have a place here? To go from thinking about buying a place to looking at places -- seriously, it's a big jump. It's a little scary. You just don't know what a good deal is; you don't know the landscape. You can't go buy a manual. You need to find someone you can trust."

A Web search led Mr. Baily to blog.catskill4sale.com, a blog about the real estate scene in Sullivan County, N.Y., written by David Knudsen, a broker at Catskills Buyer Agency. On his widely read site, Mr. Knudsen ruminates upon everything from current market conditions to energy drilling and new restaurant openings. Mr. Baily said he read "pages and pages" of the blog, and not only was he convinced he'd found his real-estate agent, he said, but he also gained confidence in his decision to buy a home in the area.