• Tweet
• Email
• Sharebar

• Tweet
• Email

by G. Sax

I was going to promote the 2009 Minneapolis & St. Paul Home Tour this week, but something even more timely came up that nudged the MSP tour to the epilogue. I'll give the tour some love at the end of my regular weekly Wednesday rant here at the SPREB. Spreb? I don't know if I like that. Sounds like a sound I would make if I were coughing with water in my mouth. Note to self: Acronyming the St. Paul Real Estate Blog is a bad idea.

Yesterday I was hanging out with the mayor of Minneapolis, R.T. Rybak, in an empty house with an assortment of wild-eyed strangers. Well, we weren't exactly hanging out. It was an arranged press conference, and Rybak and several other Minneapolis mucky-mucks—including Minneapolis City Council President Barbara Johnson, Minneapolis City Council Member Don Samuels, and others—unleashed a PR flurry about Minneapolis Advantage, a city-funded home mortgage loan program that provides $10,000 forgivable loans for 200 homeowners eager to live in designated program neighborhoods hardest hit by foreclosure.

Applicants must occupy the loan-encouraged Minneapolis home for at least five years in order to get the $10K clean-slated. The bulk of the eligible neighborhoods are in North Minneapolis and near-South Minneapolis. If you're serious about setting roots in a neighborhood that could use your passion, this isn't a bad gig. Combine this money and the $8,000 federal tax credit for first-time home buyers, and you've got yourself a real nice start toward homeownership in Minneapolis.

So, of course, being a St. Pauli Boy, I was curious…does St. Paul have such a program? It's not quite a free $10,000 (neither is the Minneapolis offering), but St. Paul's CityLiving Home Programs have special assistance loans available for qualified home buyers to buy and for homeowners to make improvements. Now, I admit, I haven't dug journalistically deep into the CityLiving programs, but they seem sweet enough to make some links to: City Living | City Living A

There was a lot of rah-rah at the Minneapolis press conference, complete with invocation of the American Dream and a special thanks for REALTORS®, "our salespeople on the streets." Some of it bordered on soupy (as in sales), but when Advantage loan recipients and long-time North Side residents started speaking at the podium alongside the mayor, awesomeness ensued.

Takeaway: A positive response to the Twin Cities foreclosure problem and urban cavities is underway. It takes a village (or two).

Gossip: The mayor said he put his house on the market today.

Epilogue: The free, self-guided Minneapolis & St. Paul Home Tour, which will feature 60 open, interesting homes in lively, interesting city neighborhoods—39 in Minneapolis and 21 in Saint Paul—opens Saturday, April 25, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m., and Sunday, April 26, 1:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m. regardless of weather conditions. Cost: Free. More Info: www.MSPHomeTour.com.