St. Paul Real Estate Blog | All about St. Paul, Minnesota

I love a parade

by Teresa Boardman, on 28 January 2012

ice wall - Rice Park

It is Winter carnival time and I am looking forward to a weekend full of carnival events in addition to house hunting with clients and putting a new listing on the market. There are a ton of events this weekend. I plan on watching the parade and I will probably check out the ice carving contest in Rice Park. The winter carnival grand day parade starts at 2:00 this afternoon but the route is a little different this year because of construction downtown. The parade will start on the corner of Smith Avenue and West 7th and go east and end at 5th and Market street downtown otherwise known as Rice Park. The official map states that the parade will disperse on Kellogg Blvd., yet they show the parade route ending at Rice park.

Parade Route

If you don't know the area watch the signs because parking on the street requires a permit. There is a huge parking lot next to the Xcel center, and there is the Xcel center ramp and the ramp at the six street station.

0 Comments

Friday fun

What to keep and what to toss out

by Teresa Boardman, on 27 January 2012

It is Friday and Fridays are or fun. Life is a journey and along the way we accumulate a lot of stuff. This year I am taking on a 365 day project to de-clutter my home and I am making progress but sometimes I have trouble deciding what to keep and what to throw out.

Andrew

I found this photo in a drawer. It is of our son Andrew standing in front of the house the year we moved in. The picture is a treasure and I am thrilled that I found it. I never looked for it because I did not know I had it. The two houses behind his head were torn down in 1996 and I can see the stack from the old Xcel energy plant that was removed in 2008.

shirt

I want to toss or donate this shirt but a friend of mine is telling me that there are people who will pay for these vintage shirts. This is a knit turtle neck woman's size small. I will mail this shirt to anyone in the continental US who would like to buy it from me. I can accept credit card payments over the interent and will pay the shipping. One way or another this shirt will be gone by next Friday.

hawaii 365

I found this shirt in the back of a closet. I have not worn it in a decade or so. I am going to keep it and wear it but not until spring or summer. I had no trouble getting rid of the two bazilandy wire hangers I found in that same closet. They went to the St. vincent De Paul thrift store on West 7th street along with some clothes and a wire spice rack that I tried to pawn off on my daughter. She always was the smart one in the family.

After I got rid of the excess stuff in the closet I had room for my luggage which was sitting outside the closet. Luggage really should not be in a closet it should be on an airplane but that is the subject for another Friday.

What is hiding in the back of your closet?

House Hunting with Evernote

by Teresa Boardman, on 26 January 2012

evernote

I love Evernote. It is where I store my notes and those notes can be searched but thats not all they are stored in the cloud on the interent and on my computer and accessible from my iPad and my phone. I can store handwritten notes, and pictures and even audio notes. If I take a picture of a document with text on it with my phone and put it in Evernote the text becomes searchable.

elephant

There is a little graphic of an elephant on the tool bar of each of my web browsers that I can click and when I do it will clip web pages and I can store them in Evernote for future reference. I can gather all of the notes I need for a blog post or a presentation in an Evernote note book and then put it all together when I need it.

If you are one of my clients your file startes out as an Evernote notebook. I jot down the measurements of your home and add various documents to the note book. I can take pictures of receipts with my phone and add them and include a picture of the tree in your backyard that looks as though it is hanging over your neighbors fence.

When I need to look at my notes a document or a photo I can access them from most anywhere. If you are a buyer I have notes in Evernote they may say that you don't like yellow houses and list the neighborhoods you like.

Evernote is free but I pay $45 dollars a year for a premium account. With a premium account I can upload a gigabyte of data a month and I can do more. I can share a note books with others and more.

I think Evernote would make a great tool for home buyers hunters. Todo lists can be stored in it along with photographs of houses. The web clipper can be used to keep pictures and information of homes that are found on the interent and it can all be accessed through a mobile phone while out looking at houses.

0 Comments

Neighborhoods, Photos

January-ish

by Teresa Boardman, on 25 January 2012

hydrant

Swede Hallow Cafe

0 Comments

Local Market Conditions & home prices

Absorption rates

by Teresa Boardman, on 24 January 2012

I keep writing about how low the inventory of homes for sale is and it keeps getting lower slowly. There are fewer buyers and in most cases buyers can find what they are looking for. Todays buyers in general would rather wait than pay too much or settle for a home that isn't what they were looking for.

Some homes are selling very quickly but on average the homes that are currently on the market have been for sale for an average of 189 days. Housing is likely to be a topic of the presidents state of the union address this evening. Absorption rates are a calculation of how long it will take for all the homes on the market to be sold, or absorbed, at the current rate of homes sales. Absorption rates can change quickly. I love numbers and these numbers are in months, the data used came from the RMLS, (MLS) and is deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Sadly there are no guarantees in life. These are for the seven county metro area which is like the 13 county metro area except smaller and are for the last 30 days.

Anoka County 5 Months
Carver County 6 Months
Dakota County 5 Months
Hennepin County 5 Months
Ramsey County 5 Months
Scott County 5 Months
Washington County 6 Months

The numbers indicate that there is about a six month supply of homes on the market in the metro area which is a sign of a balanced market. it still feels like a buyers market. I will be interesting to see if home prices start to tick up a bit in the next few months.

For more numbers like these for St. Paul, MN please see Local Market conditions and home prices.

0 Comments

St. Paul MN

Don’t Touch

by Teresa Boardman, on 23 January 2012

It must be time for the Saint Paul Winter Carnival it is the only time when St. Paulites are asked to keep their hands off of the snow.

Please Don't Touch Snow Blocks

This snow block is in Rice Park and I saw one in front of Mancini's with a do not touch sign on it. The snow blocks are cool I get why people want to touch them. I love the winter carnival.

0 Comments

For the heck of it, Photos

I am Curating not hoarding

by Teresa Boardman, on 22 January 2012

Teresa Boardman (tboardman) on Pinterest

Uploaded with Skitch! - Pinterest boards - pin boards for collections

I spend a lot of time on the internet but as a Realtor, writer photographer and occasional software quality assurance tester of apps and web sites most of my work is on the internet.

Pinterest is kind of 2010 but it did not really gain traction until last year. I was able to mostly ignore it until a couple of months ago. Pinterest is about curations or collections or maybe a form of digital hoarding.

There are pin boards and users can pin, which is mostly about linking to photographs. There is a bookmark available for most browsers. Click on the bookmark and pin a picture. Pictures can also be uploaded onto the site but that isn't really what curation is about and we have Flickr for that. Pinterest boards can be collaborative so that more than one user can contribute.

I have several pin boards including one dedicated to porches. I have one that isn't shown here that I call "Red" it is pictures with red in them.

One of the reasons I am writing about this is that I think it would be a great place to collect decorating or remodeling for a home or it might be useful for house hunting. A collection of pictures of house styles and rooms that you like and can share with your Realtor so she has a better idea of what you like.

Looking at your own pin board may surprise you. My photography board has a lot of photographs of trees on it. I must like to photograph trees. I never really thought about it. Pinterest is social and as I follow friends and look at their collections I see a new side of them.

Pinterest is still invitation only but it isn't hard to find someone you know like even me who will send you an invite.

1 Comment