The million-dollar question being asked among the faithful followers of Bravo's "Million Dollar Listing" show is this: Where is Chad getting those cakes from?

Chad Rogers, one of the three Realtors whose antics are followed each week, let the frosting out of the bag. In an interview with WalletPop, he revealed that he gets the one-of-a-kind cakes at the Brentwood bakery, Susie's Cakes.

Rogers uses them to make his open houses memorable (the $700 cake was decorated with an image of Cake Chad wearing identical clothes to Real Chad, standing in front of an exact replica of the house with a talk bubble saying "It's always a wonderful day in my neighborhood." In the show, Real Chad waits for the end of the open house and then eats Cake Chad's hair.

Not to be left out of the Black Friday hype, Beazer Homes is offering special Black Friday deals at five of its Orlando-area communities.

What's being given away is up to $2,000 in "free" appliances for contracts signed on Friday. But before you give up your place in the Wal-Mart line at 4 a.m., just know that in today's buyers-rule-and-developers-drool market, you can likely mosey on in any old day of the week and let the good folks at Beazer know which dishwasher you want them to throw in for free before you'll sign on the dotted line. Just saying ...

Beazer Homes USA, according to its Web site, "builds for the middle-class buyer who's ready to make the move into the white-picket-fence scene." They build homes with an average price of about $248,700 and courts the entry-level, move-up, and active adult markets.

As for Orlando-area buyers who want to be able to gloat about how they got their house in a Black Friday special, here's the skinny: The special one-day incentive is being offered at Heritage Commons in Winter Springs, The Legacy in Orlando, The Enclave at Moss Park, Sawgrass, also in southeast Orlando, and at Victoria Park Trails in DeLand.

The Federal Tax Credit for qualified new home buyers at $8,000 and $6,500 for existing home buyers is still available.

I am a self-professed recreational shopper. Always have been. Some people play sports competitively. Me, I shop competitively.

The thrill is in the bargain. Hunting it down, getting it in my sights and then moving in for the kill. I sharpened my elbows as a child in Daffy Dan's in New Jersey (mob aside, a reasonable state with no sales tax on clothing; are you listening California?) but have since refined my methods.

My current weapon of choice: coupons I find online. My trophy purchase mounted on the wall of my closet: a 100% cashmere sweater with the Sak's label still in it that I got for $5 at a thrift store in Malibu.

It was only a matter of time before my prowess reached the TV networks. I was asked by CNBC to take a camera crew along while I shopped. My terms: They don't get in my way.

The occasion for closing on a house deal is frequently marked by a real estate agent giving the new owner a gift. An odd custom, at best, and one that seems to run counter to the philosophy that you gift those who provide you with a service: teachers, waiters, the gardener at the holidays, maybe even the latte maker at Starbucks who automatically starts up the little machine when he sees you walk in the door each morning.

So why do real estate agents spend an average of $51.80 come closing time on a buyer?

According to a 2009 Realtor Magazine reader profile study, it's a way of saying "thank you." Although in this economy, many clients might be more appreciative if their agent would cut their commission or spend more on marketing so the home didn't linger so long on the market.

It's been long established that curb appeal has moved to your computer screen. For at least two years now, the National Association of Realtors has been saying that at least 85% of all home buyers first saw the house they wound up buying on the Internet. We can't think of a better reason to get the best possible photos taken and posted online. Yet the realty industry's reaction has been slow and curious: Agents continue to shoot listing photos with their cell phone cameras.

OK, that's a slight exaggeration to make a point. Sometimes, Realtors actually invest in a digital camera and shoot the photos themselves. But as professional photographers like to say, "Buying a Nikon doesn't make you a photographer; it makes you a Nikon owner."

Queasy-stomached home owners who can't bear to watch the equity in their homes continue to dwindle have an option: Equity protection policies. These policies, will, for a fee that generally ranges from 1% to 3% of your home's equity, guarantee against further losses when it comes time to sell.

Most of the policies work like this: At the time the contract is purchased, the company takes a snapshot of the average home price in the customer's ZIP code. If, at the time of sale the ZIP Code property value has declined, the company would make up the difference -- in most cases, less a 10% "deductible."

Perhaps Janis Joplin said it best: Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. While there have always been people who, when handed a pile of lemons find a way to make lemonade, this recession is proving that we may indeed be a nation of lemonade-makers.

The unspoken motto: Make unemployment, funemployment.

Some use the time off to travel the world, visit friends in faraway places or just chill. But others see the break from the daily grind as a chance to chase a long-deferred dream, take a gamble with starting up their own business and test the limits of their creativity.

Will the American Dream of home ownership go the way of the myth that our streets were paved in gold?

Home ownership has long been a milestone rung on the ladder of success. Much as we use birthdays to measure our personal progress toward life goals, buying a home of your own has been the way we announce to the world that we have arrived.

Throwing in tax incentives like mortgage interest and property tax deductions just sweetened the pot. If you wanted to keep up with the Joneses, you added a bigger deck whether you needed one or not.

Authorities in Hong Kong have moved in to dampen demand at the highest end of that city's real estate market.

Coming on the heels of a developer there last week setting a world price record for the sale of an apartment -- $9,200 U.S. per square foot -- the Hong Kong Monetary Authority increased the amount of the down payment required from 30% to 40% of the purchase price to buy property valued at U.S. $2.8 million or more.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority functions as a central bank.

As recently as 2005, for every two people who moved to California, three left the Golden State. The high cost of housing was no doubt part of the migration for two reasons: Many were folks cashing out of their homes and buying in less expensive locales; and others were renters who realized they'd never be able to buy here.

The official number, according to Relocation.com, is that 60.7% of all relocation activity in California was to head for the exits. And while Oregonians never quite sent out the welcome wagon for their southern neighbors, Oregon did ultimately benefit from an increased tax base and what I suspect was a lot of highway construction projects.

But all that is changing, albeit slowly. That outbound number has been slowly decreasing every year, from 58.6% in 2006 to 54.99% in 2009 year to date.

Is this because Californians can no longer sell their homes for the big-profits they could back in 2005? Or is it because they can't sell their homes at all anymore?

Relocation.com also looked at the data for all moves in the city of Los Angeles and found that the percentage of people moving within the city was 25.2% in 2008 and rose to 32.33% in 2009. Downsizing perhaps?