For the last three years, real estate agents in Manhattan Beach have been vexed by an anonymous blogger.

MB Confidential has become a must-read for prospective homebuyers by ridiculing overpriced listings and exposing deceptive real estate industry practices. Among the city's agents, the blogger's identity has been a subject of intense speculation.

The guessing ends today. Political consultant Dave Fratello has outed himself as the writer behind MB Confidential.

Fratello has blogged for years under his own name at the Huffington Post. His main interest is drug policy.

Now he'll be writing about real estate across the South Bay, in a column

for the Daily Breeze.

This has been tried before. A couple years ago, the Easy Reader published a weekly column by Fratello under his pseudonym. The column was pulled when real estate agents started to pull their advertising.

It'll be interesting to see how that potential conflict plays out at Fratello's new home.

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