Flowers blooming is not exactly breaking news but it is Sunday and just like the local papers I have to have some 'fluff'.  It is real estate related because peonies grow on my own real estate. This plant grew on my grandparents farm.  I don't know where it was before that but after that it grew in the yard of my childhood home. Now it is on the side of my house and blooms faithfully every spring. I will keep the tradition alive and perhaps give them to Dr. Boardman one day when she owns a home of her own.

by Erik Hare

Average home prices continue to fall, but it's hard to tell exactly what this means.  Before the market settles out, a lot of very cheap houses will sell in order to be renovated.  Is that what is going on?  What we do know is that the City of Saint Paul is attempting to get that process started and formulating some bold action.  It's possible that things are already moving forward.

A few months ago I  had a chance to hear Sheri Pemberton of Planning and Economic Development (PED) tell the Fort Road Federation what Saint Paul will do with the vacant and foreclosed homes.  The first order of business is to characterize the pockets of vacant and foreclosed homes into places where the market is still working, starting to falter, or has totally broken down. The latter is where you find empty blocks and houses being offered for $40k or less.  The strategies to deal with these are based on saving houses where the market is working and creating a new market where there is none now.

Saving houses on otherwise good blocks is a matter of finding homeowners that are willing to take a little bit of a chance.  Many of these properties just need a good renovation cycle, which is to say someone who wants to do them up right rather than a quick slam that will get them rented again.  We’re trying to break the cycles of bad renovation, rental, value increase, and foreclosure that have plagued some buildings for up to a hundred years.  That means we need the knowledge of how to do this and good constructions loans.  I hope to be able to convince the city that entorship from people like me is something the city can put together easily.

Construction loans are nearly impossible to come by right now, so perhaps Purchase and Renovation loans called 203ks need to be explored by the city.  This is where the city floats bonds to front the money to buy and renovate the home while a Supervisor or Coach watches the whole project.  That kind of money is hard to come by now, especially since municipal bonds have pretty high yields.  If the Federal Government does one thing to help cities, funding 203ks will help a lot

In places where the market has died, local organizations called CDCs (Community Development Corporations) will probably do most of the heavy renno work.  The Fort Road Federation had great success with the last major project it took on, the “Brewery Breakthrough”.  This was where the area behind Schmidt’s Brewery was completely re-do, with about 20 houses demolished, 4 moved, and several new townhomes put in their place. 

The City of Saint Paul is still putting together its plan for the next 5 years, but we can see where it will go.  We do have a lot of success in Saint Paul doing things well, so we have lot to pull from.  Between what we’ve done well in the past and some high quality PR telling people how great this city is, we’ll do well.

It is Friday and Fridays are for fun.  Some people travel for fun. I guess I do too but there is often a business reason for the trip . . and the fun comes later.

This particular plane was struck by lightening a short time after take off. There was no damage to the plane. There was a flight delay but it wasn't the airlines fault this time.  Air travel has gotten a bit more friendly in recent months.  On the last two flights I took they had free cookies, peanuts and beverages.  We didn't actually get any peanuts on the last flight becasue a passenger on board is allergic to them. I guess that is why they have peanuts if they had pretzels or chips they would actually have to serve them. No one eats the barely edible cookies so they don't actually have to give any of those away either. 

It still isn't real friendly. Like when they want you to be at the airport way ahead of time so you can sit around and wait and then they tell you there is a flight delay and they are sorry for the inconvenience.  I was once stuck in traffic and I got to the airport 45 minutes before boarding and they said I couldn't fly.  How fair is that?  I said I was sorry about the  delay and for any inconvenience. They did let me on the plane but it took a lot of convincing on my part and I almost missed it when security had to stop the woman in front of me because she had an ankle bracelet on that tripped the metal dector and they had to wait for a female agent and couldn't let any more passengers through until they were done.

I like to count how many times someone tells me they are sorry when I travel. It happens in hotels, restaurants, and airports.   I often take public transit from airports to hotels if I can because the only thing I am afraid of besides dust bunnies is taxi drivers. I have had some horrific experiences in cabs including one driver who could not find the airport.  I have never heard a taxi driver say they are sorry.

The rudest people I ever encounter at an airport are the people who sit in the information booths.  I rarely need information but occasionally I am not smart enough to figure the airport out.  It seems like the person in the booth gets very annoyed by people who ask questions.  Maybe I am not supposed to ask questions but I don't know of any other way to get information from the booth. 

As a traveler I make mistakes too. Like last week I lost my drivers license. No you don't want to know what happens if you don't have a photo ID, or if a small bottle of shampoo slips out of the plastic baggie and into your suite case or if you are very tired and it is late and you forget to take your laptop out of the bag. None of it is very pretty and when it comes to security no one says they are sorry except for me and I mostly mean it.

I always have cameras with me when I travel. They are like a pacifier. If I can look out the window and shoot a few I won't cry much. It is too bad that I missed a shot of that lightening bolt, it all happend so fast. . sorry about that.

Have a great weekend and stay in St. Paul, I know I will.

Last month I wrote about absorption rates for the seven county metro area. For Ramsey county and St. Paul the absorption rate is less than five months.  That means at the current rate of sales if no more homes were listed the current homes on the market would be absorbed or purchased by buyers in less than five months.  Absorption rates were much higher last year and the year before when the inventory of homes on the market rose and home sales dropped.

Currently in downtown St. Paul the absorption rate is slightly over nine months almost double the absorption rate for the rest of the county.  Average cumulative days on market for the 136 condos on the market is  around 206 days and the average list price is $288,344.  Since the beginning of the year 27 units have sold for an average price of $211,000 and were on the market for an average of 230 days.

Much of the housing in downtown St. Paul was built in the last five years.  it is very common for sellers to owe more on the units than they can be sold for.  There are still new units available in several buildings and some of the new buildings that were being planned are not being built.

There are some bargains downton and there are also some units that seem to be a bit over priced. Amazingly there are not all that many foreclosures and because the housing is all in buildings there are no registered vacant properties either. 

by G. Sax

I read this blog's comments. Most are interesting and expand upon the conversation. In yesterday's post about porches, there was a comment from a reader named "Bubble_Up" about local housing prices.

The comment didn't have anything to do with porches, but it was cool to see something about Case-Shiller. We have an informed community here, which is good for those of us who like to contribute to the conversation.

So I thought I'd shelve my quirky, neighborhoody banter this week in favor of a chat about the S&P/Case-Shiller Index, the de facto national housing report that reporters flock to.

I'm not interested in debunking Case-Shiller, which some real estatees try to do, including the National Association of REALTORS®. Case-Shiller isn't the real estate devil. It provides a decent snapshot of the American housing market.

The indices were developed by economists Karl Case and Robert Shiller. The 20 largest metro areas are measured using a repeat sales pricing technique to create data pairs; data is collected on single-family home re-sales. The report is produced by Fiserv Lending Services, and many of the indices are managed by Standard & Poor's. (click here to view them)

The Twin Cities took a media beating because of Case-Shiller yesterday. Bubble_Up brought this to our attention with a quote from the St. Paul Pioneer Press: "The report found that home prices in the [Twin Cities] metro area plunged 6.1 percent between February and March, falling back to a level not seen locally since September 2000, according to Case-Shiller." (read full article)

I work in real estate PR, so I took a bunch of calls on Case-Shiller yesterday. The report got the basics right…prices are down here, there and everywhere.

But the increase in Twin Cities foreclosure and short sales activity over the last year wasn't really noted in the first wave of media reports. As the day wore on, we were given a chance to explain our "record decline." More than half of all home sales in the Twin Cities in the first quarter of 2009 involved banks. In April, banks were still in on 46 percent of sales activity, often at deep discounts in already-low price ranges. This drags regional median prices down.

We're backtracking on price, but you're not likely to get a traditional home sale (one with a real person behind the sale and not a bank) at 2000 or even 2002 prices. We're still in tricky waters, for sure, but the situation is more complicated and more localized than Case-Shiller covers.

Foreclosures are selling rapidly and inventory is shrinking. Next year at this time, Case-Shiller may be reporting that we've had record month-over-month increases. And we may be explaining that the increases are statistical anomalies.

In closing, I'm a big fan of porches. I look forward to many summer nights on my front porch listening to Twins games on the radio, waving at neighbors, and watching the sunset wash the Cathedral in shiny orange pinks. All in screened-in luxury!

This is my annual porch post. I know I write on this topic once a year because for me a porch is a qaulity of life issue and just got done cleaning the porches and putting plants, and furniture on them.  This isn't my porch it is Laurel's over on St. Clair near W7th street.  Sometimes I have to explain porches to suburbanites and I describe them as decks with roofs that are not always in the back of the house.  I use my porches often.  If I am feeling anti social I sit on the back porch which is just outside of my office, I work there sometimes too.  If I am feeling social I sit on the front porch. My neighbors are outside a lot more this time of year and we actually talk to each other.

Maybe I should explain talking too.  The best kind of talking is when people get to see each other and they don't have to use the internet or a cell phone. It doesn't happen very often but when it does it can happen on the front porch.

Porches are social and they make houses look friendlier and more inviting. That is why i explain them every year so that people will remember how important they are.

Fort Snelling National Cemetery  over 400 acres, and more than 176,567  graves.