Late last week, I wrote a post about Craigslist's recent emergence as a prostitution clearinghouse. I thought that one post should do it; after all, how much can be said about the online purchasing site and its forays into the sex trade?

Apparently, more than I thought.

According to the New York Daily News, Craigslist has begun featuring posts that halve the distance between rental listings and prostitution solicitations.

Generally, the advertisements offer rental spaces in highly-desirable, pricey areas like the Upper West Side and the Financial district. The prices are ridiculously low, sometimes even free, as long as the roommate is willing to model, bestow "benefits" at least once a week, or otherwise barter for the rent. My favorite listing was offered by an amateur photographer who "would be willing to let the right girl live there for FREE in exchange for her being "...at my call to be my model. [She] must be attractive and sexy, like a 9 out of 10 [and] very thin, size 0 or 2." Excuse me while I have a flashback to Breakfast at Tiffany's!

Anyway...given our increasing reliance on the internet as a means of buying, selling, marketing, and socializing, I guess this shouldn't be surprising. After all, we're talking about a city where women are willing to date in return for a free meal; can rent really be all that far behind? While the whole thing strikes me as a little skeevy, the same could easily be said of most of the New York real estate market!

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. He acknowledges that some of his irritation may be sour grapes; after all, it's been years since he could fit into a size 2!

There are no shortage of books out there for first-time home buyers, but Alison Rogers' Diary of a Real Estate Rookie: My Year of Flippin, Selling, and Rebuilding -- and What I Learned the Hard Way is easily the most interesting I've read, probably because it hasn't a how-to guide filled with platitudes like "don't buy the first house you see."

As the title would suggest, this isn't a how-to guide at all. Instead it's a former real estate writer's tale of her first year as a real estate agent/aspiring investor -- it's a quick and funny read (I finished it in one sitting), and it's a remarkably candid expose of all the problems that prospective home buyers can face in dealing with agents. The book begins "More than six million Americans move each year. If anecdotal evidence is anything to go by, more than 5.9 million of them hate their real estate agent." She describes the unethical tactics that many of her competitors use to inflate their incomes at the expense of clients. Sprinkled throughout the narrative are informative sidebars like "tricks to keep from overpaying", "the greatest rental search tip ever" (definitely worth the price of admission), and "five tips to ease the pain of selling."

In addition to being a valuable guide for rookie buyers, this is also probably the first book anyone contemplating a career as an agent should buy.

At 212 fun-to-read pages, you can't go wrong with this book if you're interested in real estate.

If you own real estate in New York, you have been no doubt telling yourself and anyone who would listen that prices here were not going to fall like they were in the rest of the country. Limited supply, increasing urbanization of the country, enduring appeal, tight co-op loan restrictions were probably among your reasons. And if you looked at rental or sale real estate ads for the city, where some studios rent for $4,000 a month or sell for $600,000, you would not worry about a downturn. But now some data suggests New York may not be totally immune.

The S&P/Case-Shiller Index out yesterday showed home prices in 20 major markets were down an average 15.3% from a year ago and 1.3% in the latest month of survey data, April. Yesterday the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise said that nationally home prices fell 0.8% in April and 4.8% over the last year. The Pacific region lost the most--down 2% in a month--and the east south central did best--up 0.9%.

Case-Shiller shows that New York peaked in June 2006 at 215.83 on their scale and has slid steadily ever since. The April number was 193.93 (up slightly from the month before.) But Case-Shiller looks at the whole metro area, all five boroughs, parts of Jersey, Connecticut, Westchester, Long Island and even a bit of Pennsylvania. When people think of New York prices, they think of Manhattan. Today The Real Estate Group of New York issued figures showing an uneven market that has been mostly stagnant all 2008. Across Manhattan non-doorman one-bedroom rental prices are down 4% to $2,859 for the last 12 months. (With a doorman it's up slightly. Two-bedrooms were down a little in both categories.) Of course, I'm a renter and prospective buyer, so I've been telling everyone prices will fall.

The USA Today reports that, in this era of unprecedented gas prices, an increasing number of home buyers are placing more emphasis on commuting costs in the search for the perfect property.

Homes near train stations, buses, and lots of jobs are back in vogue, and suburban McMansions are out like a fat kid in a game of dodge ball. Call it suburban contraction following decades of suburban sprawl.

A survey of 900 Coldwell Banker real estate agents found that 78% are making their clients more interested in city living. Some workers are planning to save more than $100 per month on gas costs by moving closer to the city.

In a way this increased focus on gas prices in the search for homes makes sense, but I'm not sure that it's really that rational. If you save $100 on gas, that's really only a savings of $50 compared to when the cost of gas was $2. A $100 savings sounds good, but living closer to the work has always reduced transportation costs, so it's important to realize that the savings may be more marginal than you think.

If you want to live in the suburbs, is it really worth sacrificing that lifestyle to avoid spending $50 a month more than you would have if you'd made the same decision a year ago? I somehow doubt it, for most people anyway. There are a lot of ways to add $50 a month that don't involve living somewhere you'd rather not. And remember: if moving into the cities becomes more popular in the face of rising gas prices, cities will get even more crowded, and you'll have to deal with everything that goes along with that.

My suggestion: before you put too much emphasis on transportation costs in your home buying decision, do the math: figure out your cost and how much you'll save on gas at price of $1 a gallon, $2, $3, $4, $5 and maybe $6. Then ask yourself it it's really rational to move to the city -- you might find that you're being emotionally swayed by the media barrage of new about soaring gas prices.

Another day, another best places to live list.

Kiplinger's Personal Finance looked at cities with strong job markets, cultural offerings and a reasonable cost of living. Some interesting cities that made the list are Omaha, Boise and Colorado Springs, but Houston topped the list. Coming in at number two was Raleigh, which you see a lot of prognosticators talking about since North Carolina has been a really hot state for real estate for the past decade or longer.

Some friends of mine just moved to Houston, and one of the things they mentioned is the property taxes are much higher than they are used to. So while the cost of living may seem relatively low, those high property taxes are probably going to keep prices depressed. Also, with gas prices as high as they are, a city with little or no public transportation is probably less attractive than a city like Boston where you don't necessarily need a car.

Everything you hear about the "housing crisis" is bad -- people losing their homes, plummeting property values, etc. All the negative press has politicians talking about the need for various bailouts (Of course they don't call them that -- but a rose is still a rose). But as I've written before, the housing slump is more of a zero-sum game than the crisis-criers would have you think. For every house that's "lost", someone else gets a home at a bargain price. It's not like housing slump is burning homes to the ground and turning prized lots into swamps.

A great example of the positive impact of the weak housing market is Habitat For Humanity which, as the video below describes, has been able acquire land at bargain basement prices to help hardworking low-income families build their first homes. So cheer up: the "housing crisis" has a silver lining.

Even celebrities and Michael Jackson impersonators aren't immune to the rough housing market. Usher's Atlanta home was listed at $2.3 million back in September but, with limited signs of interest, he has now cut the price to just under $2 million.

The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) that the home has five bedrooms, a hair salon, a guest house, a pool, and a professional recording studio. The listing agent told the newspaper that they are pricing the home to sell because the market in Atlanta continues to be weak, and a glut of new construction has made it difficult for older homes to compete.

His new album, Here I Stand, also doesn't appear to be the hit that Confessions was. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 but it's now down to number five in its third week. However Usher is an incredibly powerful concert draw, and should continue to do well there.

Maybe he should buy Michael Jackson's Neverland ranch.

Getting sound unbiased advice about real estate is almost impossible. Asking a real estate agent if now is a good time to buy is like asking a barber whether you could use a haircut. Most real estate agents are ethical, well-intentioned people, but remember: they make their money selling homes, not telling people to keep renting.

When you're talking with a prospective real estate agent, here's a great question to ask them: do you own a home in the area where I'm looking and/or do you own any investment properties here? Find a Realtor who is actively investing in real estate and you've found a Realtor whose putting his money where his mouth is. There are a lot of agents out there preaching the gospel of real estate and then stuffing their commission checks in savings accounts paying 0.3%. This is a good way to screen those clowns out.

A lot of observers -- myself included -- give real estate agents a hard time. The National Association of Realtors serves as the agitprop of the housing market, declaring a brighter future no matter what the actual environment is. Ebullient optimism cheered on by the industry led a lot of people into serious financial woes.

But it's important to remember that a home is the best investment most people will ever make, and the impact of real estate agents on the financial health of the country is, without question, an overwhelmingly positive one. Right now the industry is looking for ways to target 20-somethings, and that could be a huge contribution to the welfare of Generation Y.

The USA Today reports that, in an effort to connect with young people, real estate agents are posting homes on social networking sites and making YouTube videos.

One solution: find younger real estate agents who can connect with young buyers. According to RealtyTimes, almost one-third of real estate brokers. are over 60. Only 12% of sales agents are under 35. This might seem like a crazy time to go into the real estate business but, if you're a recent graduate struggling to find a good job, it just might be worth a shot. There would seem to be a huge market (The echo boomers) that older agents are having trouble connecting with.

When you are looking for a home or even a rental, knowing more about your potential home's demographics can be a huge asset in the decision making process. Hotpads.com provides a bounty of options to narrow down your home search but it really shines by plotting the homes and apartments on your local map in with monopoly-esque icons, making it easy to find a location that suites you.

You can even place a heat map of the median age to make sure you aren't ruffling too many feathers by moving into the unofficial old folk's neighborhood in your area. Our sister site, DownloadSquad, highlights what appears to be the most useful heat map, rent ratio, which is a comparison of mortgage versus rental rates. If the rental rates in your area are low, you may be better of renting for the time being.

One top of the many demographics you can use, Hotpads also lets you find public transportation and schools located near your potential home. One additional feature which I found really cool, was that once you find a home you are interested in you can quickly see what the estimated monthly payment would be based on an your interest rate and down payment. This let me quickly rule out homes that were outside our monthly price range.

While the demographic information is useful and may help you pick a neighborhood which suits you best, the overall display of information really sold me on Hotpads.com. I am still pretty new to our town, which means most home searching discussions go something like this, "Hey check out this house on 123 Anywhere St.", my wife, "Holy cow! Don't you know where that is!?!" I think this map layout will be especially useful since the number of homes in our price range rises with the shadiness of an area. Now I can quickly figure out the actual location of a house, not just the abstract street name shown in our local paper's listings.

One of my favorite television shows is House Hunters -- if you're planning to buy a home and looking to learn more about the process, you should absolutely watch this show. You'll learn a lot.

I recently watched an episode that featured a middle-aged couple looking to buy a second home in Las Vegas, preferably a condo. They lived in Los Angeles and were enthusiastic about buying an "investment property" and the real estate agent was equally enthusiastic about Vegas' prospects. She had a commission to earn.

But as they looked at condos, there was just one problem. The units were nice and the locations seemed ideal, but the sounds of new construction were a major turn-off. Who wants to wake up to that? But every condo they looked at suffered from that problem.

Of course the show was taped in 2005 -- the height of the Vegas real estate bubble that has been crashing lately -- so it's easy to say this with the benefit of hindsight, but it's interesting nevertheless: did any of these people looking at condos hear the construction and wonder "Will demand keep up with the rapid building? If there's a glut of condos available, won't people want the fancy new ones instead of this old one?"

But they never thought of that. No one ever suggested that all the new construction could be anything but good, amazing given that a huge increase in supply would tend to drive down prices, which is exactly what ended up happening.

Another thing: all the discussion about an "investment property" aside, I never heard any mention of rental rates, vacancy rates, cap rates, etc. I think they were planning to buy the unit as a second home, calling it an investment property. But remember the golden rule of real estate investing: if you aren't generating income, you aren't investing. You're speculating (i.e. hoping) that rising prices will bail you out of a bad investment.

A friend of mine lives in a house she hates. She and her husband bought it about a year ago. They rushed into the decision, feeling that they absolutely had to have a house to live in and their wedding was coming soon. They had a strict budget and were having a hard time finding a house in a decent neighborhood that fit the bill.

Until they found the one they're living in now. The house they loathe. What do they hate it? The walls are damaged and a horrible color. The flooring needs to be replaced. It needs a new roof. It's an ugly color on the outside. The list goes on, as you can imagine.

If they hate the house so much, why did they buy it in the first place? They fell into a trap that many home stagers hope you'll fall into: Focusing on the things in the house rather than the house itself. You see, staged homes often sell faster and for more money because the buyers see how nice the things look in the house and they probably don't notice some of the flaws.

The rich are different from you and me. For one thing, they seem to need a lot more space to live in.

The Los Angeles Times yesterday reported that despite the dismal state of real estate these days, the building of mega-mansions is still going strong. One builder cited in the story, while overseeing the construction of a 32,000 square foot home on Sunset Blvd. in Beverly Hills, said that he knew of 20 more 20,000 square-foot-plus sized home under construction or about to break ground on the wealthy West Side.

How is this possible? Anything is possible when you don't need no stinking mortgage.

Most people feel like they can't do anything to stop the overwhelming foreclosure crisis -- even if they do feel sympathy for homeowners. Buyers are going on bus tours of foreclosed homes, hoping to scoop up bargains. A Florida production company is making a foreclosure reality show.

Philadelphia Sheriff John Green, profiled today by the Wall Street Journal's Michael M. Phillips, decided he would try to do something on his own to keep people in their homes.

The sheriff's job is to auction off homes that the court orders. The judge was supposed to handle the merits of the case. But back in 2004 and again this year, Sheriff Green just stopped doing the foreclosure sales. He wanted to buy enough time to sit lenders down with homeowners to work out a solution. His campaign website says he has saved thousands of people from foreclosure.

The WSJ piece (subscription required) chronicles how his effort started as a lone desperado move, but then picked up the imprimatur of a council resolution -- facing questions about whether his actions had been legal at all, ever. Earlier this year home lenders didn't want Congress to allow bankruptcy judges to be able to rewrite the terms of mortgages, so you can imagine how displeased they were that a sheriff was taking matters into his own hands.

About a month ago, I wrote a post in which I noted that, even as the mortgage crisis gains steam, there are still some bargains to be found in real estate. Granted, my suggestions centered around ghost towns, abandoned monasteries, deserted islands, and empty factories, but tough times sometimes require a little creativity!

Speaking of which, if you're in the market for a classic Victorian home with a top-notch security system, tons of space, and a great location, look no further! The Somerset County jail, in Skowhegan, Maine, is currently up for sale. Built in 1897 and renovated in 1984, the 14,000 square foot prison is built of sturdy brick, is surrounded with a razor-wire fence, and has room to sleep 100 of your nearest and dearest. It is located in the heart of downtown Skowhegan, and has no zoning restrictions. It has two floors, a full basement, and is an absolute steal at only $200,000. If you're interested, here's the listing.

The jail's realtors have suggested that it be renovated and turned into a gallery, restaurant, artists' colony, school, or other public-use building. With that in mind, the people for the ethical treatment of animals (PETA) has proposed that the county lease it for use as a "Lobster Empathy Center." The idea is that visitors could sit in grubby glass-enclosed jail cells with rubber bands strapped around their hands, which would give them an idea of what it is like for a lobster to live in a cramped supermarket aquarium. One wonders if footage of lobsters tearing into rotted underwater carcasses will be part of the tour.