Bob,

I echo all the enthusiastic praise above - lest anybody think I'm not. Here's a part of your post which is obviously right as RAIN:

We are firm believers that hyper local content is the best way to reach consumers in your market. It affords you the best opportunity to reach consumers much further in the buying process than the traditional internet home buyer. What is hyper-local? It's content that targets something more specific than a city. It might be about a specific community in your town. It could be content that focuses on a specific sub-division or condo complex. This kind of content is easier to get to rank in the search engines and it's the kind of things people search for as they really begin to narrow their home search down. It's also the kind of content your neighbors search for that allows you to market to them by being the central purveyor of information for your area.

(underlining mine).

That is absolutely where many of us want to go.  Frankly, the big national operators/aggregators/sponsored links advertizers have cities nailed down tightly for SEO/generic search results.

We must take a more narrow, rifle-like approach.

But I admit being confused.

First point of confusion:

The definition of a featured HL post:

Featured hyper-local posts will capture the essence of an area and serve to enhance the visitors understanding of the community/neighborhood/area about which it is written.

Is this meant to be something static.  Something that will stand the test of weeks/months/seasons/years?

If not, then what is it to be?  A subdivision post?  A post featuring a business?  A summary of a past community/neighborhood/area event?  Something publicizing a future event?  Those are good.  We should do them. But those don't seem to fit the above definition for a featured HL post.

Second point of confusion:

The intended organization/layout of community pages.

You say this featured (300 bonus points) post is going to be sticky at the top of the community page. 

Sponsored pages already have summary (unfortunately, with limited word length).  Is the featured post going to be below that?

Then there's going to be a space reserved for 3 most recent featured HL posts, described as:

If a community has a featured hyper-local post, that community will automatically have a 'Featured Real Estate News' section created on the community page. The community will then display the last 3 featured posts for that area.

Are there then going to be ordinary, non-featured posts dealing with the area? How many of those are going to show?  For how long back?