Who’s speaking of real estate? A better question might be, who’s not? For years, it seemed as if people all over the country were swapping stories about getting priced out of their own neighborhood. Today, the real estate talk is more likely to be about troubled markets and unease over the subprime lending mess.

It’s difficult to make sense of all this from a national perspective. As NAR keeps reminding us, there’s no such thing as a national real estate market. But trying to make sense of it is what we do at REALTOR® magazine. We spend the better part of each day reading up on and interpreting what’s happening in your world in order to help you succeed, regardless of your market’s conditions.

Much of what we discuss as a staff doesn’t make it into the magazine. So on our revamped site, we decided to launch Speaking of Real Estate, using the blog medium to share what we’re hearing and to seek your feedback. Your comments can help inform our editorial content, so please don’t be shy about using the comment section to let us know what you’re thinking.

One quick way to give your feedback is to take our poll question. This month, we ask you to comment on how you like the changes to our print magazine and Web site.

To be sure you don’t miss out on the conversation, on the lower right of the screen, you can subscribe to receive e-mail updates of Speaking of Real Estate blog entries, which will be sent automatically to you whenever new blog posts are made. Just enter your e-mail address to sign up! Or, receive RSS feeds of blog entries that will be automatically loaded to your news reader.

Thank you for being part of the REALTOR® magazine community of readers. I look forward to the conversation.

— Stacey Moncrieff
Editor in Chief, REALTOR® magazine