St. Paul Real Estate

I'll bring a flashlight

A few weeks back I noticed that the flashlight I carry in my car was missing.  I use it a lot in the fall and winter when I am showing buyers houses. The evening that I discovered it missing I ended up using the light for the video camera built into my blackberry as a flashlight. It was a poor substitute but it got us though a dark house.

Usually when I make appointments to see homes I am notified if there is no power but not always.

There are occupied homes with electricity where the seller doesn't  turn the lights on. A totally dark house does make an impression on a buyer . . not a very good impression. 

There are some safety issues with dark houses too.  I would imagine that home owners insurance would cover any injury but as a home owner myself I would hate to see someone hurt on my property due to my negligence.

Turning every light on is not environmentally sound but leaving a few on, like a light in the front of the house and one inside the door is the neighborly thing to do.  It says I care, and welcome to my home.

Yelp Your Local Flavors

by G. Sax (@gsax)

Wednesday morning, feeling refreshed and perky for a new day rising. Then it hits me—why am I so refreshed after a Tuesday night? Oh, crap! Forgot about the blog! Missed my deadline! Scribble, scrabble, scramble, scrum! What to write about, what to write about!

But no. I'm not an exclamation point kind of guy, and today's offering is one of my easiest and most obvious to date. Instead of writing about Saint Paul late last night, I was reading about Saint Paul.

A few weeks back, I wrote about the wonderfully addictive Foursquare and how I'm using it to add to my enjoyment of my home city (and now several others). T is playing. Erik H is playing. They seem content with their mayorships of various West Seventh haunts, but I'll see them check in around town from time to time, and this is oddly gratifying to me.

There's another exceptionally fun site to explore on iPhone app and website alike that I've mentioned a couple of times before, and if you haven't tinkered with it by now, you really should. It's called Yelp, and it has brought user-generated restaurant reviewing to a new level. Because why? Because the obvious key to city exploration is fun. It's fun to go to both new and familiar places, and it's fun to participate in a conversation about these places.

Having an opinion is a great thing. A lot of cool people around town have been willing to share their opinions, and I enjoy them just as much as I do any magazine review. Some are vapid, but the great bulk of them have some real thought and energy behind them. But stop listening to me now. I missed my deadline. Enjoy these offerings from Yelp, and then get in there and give your sixpence none the richer.

St. Paul 101 Primer by Kendra P
Midway/Frogtown by Dan S
Groveland, Cathedral Hill and Highland Park by Dan S
The Best of St. Paul's Restaurants by Jackie L
Xcel Energy Center Dining by Beth F

Follow Public Works . . . snow?

The photos was taken a couple of months ago at Como Park Conservatory. I am in denial when it comes to the whole winter thing. After all we really didn't have a summer and the November started in October and now it seems lie we are having our October in November. It possible that we will have our December in December which means it could snow.

I think we are better off here in St. Paul, than our Minneapolis neighbors are when it comes to snow emergencies. For those of you who may be reading from warmer climates snow really isn't an emergency here it is kind of normal but they call it an emergency when they need to plow but cars are on the street.  In Minneapolis they let people park one side of the street or the other.  That makes sense it is hard to park on both sides of the street. People get confused over which side they can park on when. It wouldn't be fair though it I didn't mention that in Minneapolis they plow the allies but here in good old St. Paul we take care of them ourselves. 

Here in St. Paul we have night plow routes and day routes and snow emergency routes. The snow emergency routes get plowed first and then is  day and night routes depending upon the time of day. I guess isn't that simple either but the city has numerous notification systems to notify residents of snow emergencies and that they need to move their cars. Now you can follow St. Paul public works on Twitter, stpaulpublicw and I hope they are not tweeting while they are driving the trucks with the plows.  I think it is one of the cities better ideas and maybe people will re-tweet when they see the snow emergency notification in their twitter stream.

Lets hope that we really had November last month and that December never comes but it it does make sure your car is in the right place at the right time.

St. Paul Home Sales By Neighborhood October 2009

 

This month I decided to include a extra graphic with numbers for the city for 2007 and 2008. The numbers on the chart above are for home sales in the city of St. Paul, by neighborhood for the Month of October 2009.  The data used is from our regional MLS system and is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.  I take the data and export it into a spread sheet.  There is some chance for human error but not much because MS Excel does all the math.

Prices have bobbed up and down this year. They have been higher, this year but not much and they have been lower. In general home prices have trended upward, these prices look about the same as July and August of this year.  They took a slight dip in September but they were the lowest at the beginning of the year.

What I keep noticing in these numbers is that number of homes on the market keeps going down. The number of new listings is about average and the number of pending sales are down from the last couple of months which makes sense because there are fewer home sales this time of year.  The number should be even lower next month. I think many anticipated that it would be higher in October because of the first time home buyers tax credit. I suspect there were a few more pending sales in October that have not been marked pending in the MLS but it still won't be a huge month for St. Paul Home sales.

I think the prices are remaining stable and going up a little because of the lower inventory, and probably because of the tax credits for home buyers.  There are still homes that don't sell and are taken off the market and I still meet would be sellers who owe more money on their homes than they can be sold for.  Those sellers are holding off.

Here is what the month of October looked like for October 2007 and 2008:

The number of homes on the market was much higher two years ago and last year too. The number of pending sales were also higher and the average sale price was higher both years. In general the real estate market has shrunk both in volume and in value.

For more local numbers, because real estate is local go to the Local market conditions link

A day in the life

The Pioneer press has an article in today's paper about local blogs:

A Day in the Life: Who is Minnesota? Look online at some blogs to find out.

It is an honor to be included in the article. I know a few of the other blogs and bloggers, and look forward to reading the rest.  There are many local bogs of local interest on a wide range of subjects.  Read the article and check out the local blogs.  They are listed in the order that blog posts were published around the local bloggoshere on October 28, 2009

 

Squirrels

by Erik Hare

One of the fun things about living in a well forested city like Saint Paul is the urban wildlife that lives around us.  No, I don’t mean the creatures that frequent the bars and Wild games, although they can be fun, too.  What’s fun are the creatures that live among us, often right outside our windows.

Irvine Park is right next to Downtown, but we have our share of small animals that we share it with.  Every once in a while a fox or a deer wanders through, and falcons and merlins patrol the air.  The raccoons tend to stay in the storm sewers until late at night, their masked faces peering out when we least expect them to.  But in a neighborhood marked by many hundred year old oak trees, we have acorns all over – and a lot of squirrels to scamper around gathering them for the winter.

This is the season to watch the tree rats do their thing, and since they aren’t all that afraid of people the kids get a pretty close view of their squirrelly lives.  They’ve had their ups and downs over the years ilke all of us, but moreso. 

A few years ago, the neighborhood supported a squirrel population so large that there were little gray rodents in just about every attic and tree.  But something happened to them in 2006 shot through the population like a fierce storm.  It seems that it was a sickness, or perhaps it was a really bad winter for squirrels, but whatever it was left the squirrel population of Irvine Park almost completely destroyed.   There was a spring without any signs of movement out in the trees and through the lawns of the park, without the warmth without the energy of the little guys that came out to tell us that it was safe to head out and enjoy life again.

It didn’t last long.  A new batch of squirrels moved in, possibly from Rice Park via the Science Museum.  They were smaller and a bit friendlier, but what mattered most was that they were very healthy.  What we all noticed is that they had a tendency to turn out a few pure black squirrels that stood out in a way that we could follow one little bundle of bounding energy, as if it was our own pet.  One of them, a particularly little guy with sleek black fur, has spent his entire squirrelly life in our yard growing up and getting on with  his seriously silliness.  He’s easy to spot, as shown in the picture here.

We named him “Pinky” because when he first came out of the nest he didn’t seem to be all that bright, coming right up to us as if humans were no threat at all. Apparently, this happens a lot when squirrels first go out on their own, but our little guy eventually figured things out.  We’ve watched him grow up and now become rather round on acorns in preparation for Winter.  He also loves the crabapples but only eats a little pumpkin from Halloween, and seems to have made a nest in the Catalpa tree in back. 

Pinky may not think of himself as our pet, but we keep an eye on him.  In the mornings we often see him bounding through the backyard, always looking happy to be up and greeting another squirrelly day.  It’s an inspiration to see the little thing that once thought we were his friends look so energetic and happy.  A bit of wildlife makes the urban forest come alive and helps us to feel awake every day, and nothing does this as reliably as our little black squirrel.  We’ll have to see how he makes it through the Winter.

Of course, we have no idea if he’s really a “he” or not.  We may find that out next spring.

About Thursdays Post

I have been busy, not unusual for anyone who works full time. On Thursday I had a post that just showed some interior photos.   It is a test post and I do that sometimes.  I have noticed in my flickr account and on my blogs that photographs of home interiors and exteriors get more clicks over time than other photos do.

People like to look at them.  Unless you have a job like mine chances are you don't see the interiors of a wide variety of homes on a regular basis.   This is where I could go on a tirade about the really crummy photographs in our MLS but I won't bother if you are looking for a home you have seen plenty of them.  Now I am noticing that some of the photos are taken with cell phone camera's. That helps my business and my sellers so from my point of view it is a good thing.

After about a week I will check on that post and see how many times it was viewed and how often someone clicked on the photos. I am kind of a geek and I track all sorts of numbers.  I am not afraid to experiment either so that I can learn from people who read this blog.  For today I have an exterior shot. They have the Alexander Ramsey house all decked out for the holidays and it made for a photo op.  There are some holiday events at the Ramsey house too. 

 

You won't find holiday light in these decorations, they keep it traditional.  The tree inside is traditional too but I don't think they light the candles on it often.

An unusual Friday

Usually Fridays are for fun and I guess today will be fun at some point but for now I have to interrupt my regularly scheduled nonsensical post for News. The big news today is that congress has extended the $8000 first time home buyer tax credit until April 2010 and they have added a  home buyer tax credit of $6500 for those who have owned a home and lived in it for five consecutive years, when they buy another home.  Hard to write but to put it in simple words if you sell your home and buy another you may be qualify  for a tax credit.   I will write more about this next week. Everyone will write more about this next week, as it has not been signed by President Obama yet but he may do that today. Here is a link to a pdf that does a great job explaining who qualifies for the tax credits.

I have already received some emails from clients and other wanting to know if the tax credit will have a positive effect on the housing market. I think it will at least for a short time. Sadly many of the folks who come to me who want to sell their home have not lived in it or even owned it for five years so they will not be able to take advantage of the tax credit.  The people who may be interested in buying the homes that I have on the market right now may be eligible for one of these tax credits and that should help. 

 

It won't rain this weekend so it might be a good time to go to some open houses.  Some have suggested that it might be a good weekend for yard work.  I like the yard part of that idea but not the work part so much.