wheel makes one more turn for Manhattan Loft Guy, the blog

we just did this last year at this time …

Yes, friends, it’s cake and balloon time (virtual cake and virtual balloon??) as another blog-aversary rolls around. EIGHT years ago today a real estate guy who had by then been living in Manhattan lofts for 25 years first pounded the keyboard in a (then new-for-real-estate-internet-thing-y) called a Web Log, or “blog”, with a new and virtual persona … Manhattan Loft Guy. It’s been eight years of mostly steady blogging since then, with one long post-kidney unauthorized sabbatical in late 2009 and a slow start to 2014, until the counter is at something greater than 2,200 posts since March 19, 2006. (Sadly, the transition to the new WordPress platform has made a true count mysteriously difficult.)

firewalk with me, down the memory lane of Manhattan Loft Guy

Last year there was this bit of retrospective. As I said then, (use your Charlton Heston voice for the next three words) In The Beginning … I had no idea if this blog-thing would ever be a real thing:

 I didn’t tell anyone about that first post, or about any post for at least the first month or so, until I had made blogging enough of a habit that I could confidently predict there would be more (and more) content. In those days, there were a lot of real estate agents who announced they were blogging, but if you ever stumbled across their work you’d see two posts in the first month, and maybe another 3 in the next 6 months, then perhaps one or two more before their Google juice completely dried up.

Three years ago, I looked around a bit for older Manhattan residential real estate blogs (spoiler alert: they’re aren’t many):

how would Lorne Green count?
Five years is a long time in the blogosphere. The Miller’s copyright dates start in 2005, so even he is not much older than MLG. Ditto Brownstowner. Curbed, of course, is ancient, having started way back in 2004; but they pay people to do stuff over there   If there is a local Manhattan real estate blog by an individual older than Noah’s Urban Digs(August 2005), I don’t know it.

forward, into the future!

I continually frustrate myself by not moving social media projects from the To-Do pile to the Have-Done folder, but an anniversary is more inspiration to put real life nose to virtual grindstone and improve my use of multiple social media channels, in depth, breadth, frequency, and (for readers) utility. As always, I blog about Manhattan lofts because I follow Manhattan lofts … and I think about Manhattan lofts … and the process of writing down things I think about Manhattan lofts crystalizes some thoughts about Manhattan lofts … and it leads me to think more rigorously about the sales market for Manhattan lofts in a buy-or-sell neutral fashion.

The fact that the blog attracts clients who appreciate that this blog is a unique set of public expressions about this market niche and particular sales transactions is a wonderful side effect and, by now, a feature not a bug.

Resolved: to be a loftier Manhattan Loft Guy in Year Nine!

You’re welcome 😉