by Erik Hare

Memorial Day is many things.  It’s our first holiday since New Years, unless you get time off for Martin Luther King Day.  It’s a day to honor those who died fighting for our nation, a sacred day first marked at the end of the Civil War.  For many Minnesotans, however, it is more than anything the start of summer.

Summer is a lot of things.  Soon, the kids will be out of school and can start the process of forgetting everything they learned this year – which takes about three days.  It’s a time for picnics and patios, eating outside just because you can.  The yard probably needs a bit of help, and Memorial Day is the traditional day when even the most cautious among us feels comfortable planting tomatoes in the belief that there will not be a frost after the season.  It’s a season of hope, fun, and generally not having to think about stuff.

REALTORS are especially busy this time of year since most people like to move in the summer.  They make most of their money over the summer in the same way that squirrels store up acorns to help them get through the long winter.  So if you don’t hear from Teresa right away keep in mind that she’s probably as busy as the squirrels you see running around your yard for the first time since autumn.

We have a lot of festivals coming up to provide plenty of excuses to just hang around outside.  June 7th is Grand Old Day, along Grand Avenue, the largest annual festival of street eats and outdoor music.  There are many others throughout Saint Paul, proving to people that come for the Winter Carnival that we do know when it’s the right time to throw a big party – anytime!

Summer is a wonderful season to visit Saint Paul, especially since the alternatives aren’t so great.  It’s when we get things done, hang out, and organize elaborate festivals just because we can.  It starts right about now, too.  Enjoy it!

Have a great holiday weekend. I started a little early on the weekend thing but will be back by Sunday.

The photo is of the Wabasha street bridge and was taken from Raspberry Island.

 
The red line on the chart above shows the number of homes that were listed for sale through the Regional Multiple Listing Service (MLS) each week since the beginning of the year.  The blue line shows how many homes had offers made on them that were accepted by the sellers during the same week. Some of the homes have closed and some have not. Pending sales and listings are a metric used to measure the health of the real estate market.  Real estate is local and these numbers are for St. Paul Minnesota.

There are a couple of weeks where there were more offers than new listings and for the first time in a long time the number of offers hit the triple digits a few times.   We have had many weeks where we hit the triple digits for listings but not for offers.

A few months ago I wrote about how in 2007 the trend lines were going in opposite directions. The number of listings was increasing and at the same time there were fewer offers on homes. Now the lines are meeting and the blue line is at a steeper pitch than the red.  The number of listings has been leveling off while offers increase.

There are about half as many homes on the market in St. Paul as there were last August of 2008, and slightly fewer than there were in April of 2009. The inventory of homes on the market has been decreasing for months, fewer are being listed and more are being purchased. 

What does this all mean? I have some theories. lets just say that there are people who want to sell and can not and there are people who are a couple of months behind on their mortgage payments who are exploring their options.  There will be more foreclosures and that will bring the inventory up. Will there be enough buyers to absorb it or are we just seeing a little spring buying activity fueled by pent up demand, tax incentives and oh so low interest rates?

For more local monthly numbers see local market conditions

by G. Sax

In the Twin Cities this week, the heat is back with a vengeance. Yesterday was the hottest day in the metro in nearly two years. Such heat causes head fog, and I was all loose noggined about what I was going to write about for today.

At one point, I was going to call today's offering "Pot Poury," and I was just going to spew a potpourri of themes I've written about for the last several months:

Last night's softball game, my jogging routes around St. Paul as I prepare for my Grandma's Marathon adventure next month, or hardcore local real estate topics. Bars. Bouncing. Baseball at the St. Paul Saints home opener. Plenty of repeatable themes as we embark upon a new season.

But then I had a cold glass of milk, took an hour-long nap, and decided to go with a late-breaking story that plays on my interests in media and why I think a place like the St. Paul Real Estate Blog is every bit as media relevant as the Sunday paper or the afternoon drive-time radio broadcast.

KARE-TV, the local NBC affiliate, announced that 20-year veteran anchor and reporter Rick Kupchella will leave the station in June to pursue his own outside media content interests.

His reporting style was somewhat abrasive to me, but he seemed to attack his job with zeal. Being an investigative journalist didn't always mesh perfectly with the intangibles the couchbound want from their talking head. I'm sure he's a genuine, talented guy and all, but I often struggled to see through a layer of TV smarm myself. I don't pretend this is a fair assessment. It's an opinion.

Which is what blogs are awesome for in that they can be a good grounding point for local news AND opinion. Hey, just like a newspaper or a talk radio show. And less like local TV news, which relies heavily on good makeup and clean clothes on one side, and on fast trucks and powerful cameras on the other.

Blogs don't seem as shiny new as they did a few years ago, but the best are enduring and getting press credentials and being a worthy resource for the newsworthy. And over the last few years, I'm getting as much of my "news" from blogs and social media as I am from newspapers and TV. Probably more, because news aggregators like Yahoo! and Google fill in other blanks by the time I get to the late local news.

Some lament the nationalizing of the news and the disappearing status of the local newspaper, radio, and TV news. I say evolve already. Newspapers are no longer the most convenient option. Talk radio can be painfully repetitive. And there are no less than four Twin Cities TV stations stating the same news items each night at the same time.

Meanwhile, I'm getting hyperlocal newsbits from around the city every minute from unfiltered resources without commercial interruption. I don't lament this. I think it's a revelation.

A home seller sent me an email asking a question that I have been asked before leading me to believe that others might have the same question.

The seller is looking for a new home and wanted to know if he has to use the same agent that is selling his home to buy a home.

He has a contract with a Realtor to sell his home but that does not mean he has to use the same agent to help him purchase a home. The contract is a listing agreement. Unless the seller signs a buyers agreement with the agent he can work with any agent.

Usually sellers do use the same agent for the sale and a purchase and usually the arrangement works out well, but not always.

The best agent is the agent who knows the neighborhoods that the buyer is interested in and an agent who likes to work with buyers, and who has experience working with buyers. 

As for choosing an agent some listing agents do not make very good buyers agents, and I have known buyers agents that mostly avoid listing homes.   Ask questions, and no a contract with an agent to list your home is just a contract to list your home.  A buyers contract with an agent is a separate agreement. It used to be that all agents represented the seller.

Most people do not buy or sell too many homes in their life time and the rules and laws change during the years or decades between transactions. The Minnesota Attorney generals office has the best consumer information about buying and selling real estate. The home buyers handbook  and the home sellers handbook.

News about the economy is everywhere.  I am bombarded by it from the TV and the newspapers and all over the internet.

In the last couple of weeks I have been reading that we have hit bottom and things will get better.  I want to believe it but I don't.

Activity has picked up in the housing market but the prices have gone down, there are too many foreclosures and there are two many people who want to sell but can not because they owe more on their homes than they can sell them for.

Yesterday I learned that yet another one of my neighbors has been laid off and I see so many for rent or for sale signs in the vacant store fronts and office spaces around town.

Local restaurant owners tell me that business has been down. and I notices signs in front of businesses offering "economic incentives".

I am no expert but I am not seeing any signs of improvement in the economy.  I don't think my neighbors are either. 

As for the housing market it is what it is.  A good time for buyers if they have a good job and are in a position to buy a home. A bad time for sellers unless they have equity.  Many of the sellers do not have enough equity to accept the low ball offers that buyers are making and buyers will only buy if they think the home is a bargain.

by Erik Hare

I read the news today, oh boy.

It’s not as though I spend all winter hunkered down in my house.  It’s the contrast with the lively green smell of spring and the warm sun laying on my shoulders that stands out.  Sure, I get out whenever I feel like it any time of the year, but I feel like it a lot more these first lilac scented days of Spring.

I walked down Seventh just to be on the street and see what was happening.  I met up with Tom out in front of his bar, and he asked me what I thought of the tuckpointing on the bricks.  It told him it looked great, but what it really looked like to me was care and commitment and maybe a touch of love.  That’s a good sign of spring.

I saw Carl riding down the street on his monster 3-wheeler bike.  I waved to him, and he waved back – not that we know each other, but everyone knows Carl.  He took his mind off of the hunt for cans and bottles along the street just long enough to say hello with the turn of his wrist.  I knew that one of the most reliable signs of spring is to see Carl peddling with purpose down West Seventh.

Down around Chris and Rob’s one of the brothers Dubnecay was standing outside.  I’m never sure which one is more likely to be there, so again I just wave.  I’m recognized as a customer, so I get the wave back.  He was changing the sign out in front, or perhaps just staring at it long enough to make sure that it still made sense.  It looked like serious work, more serious than work, and I left him to it.

A bit further and I was past St Clair.  Ali was working the convenience store that was getting a big makeover.  What was once some rough wood with peeling paint that spelled out neglect better than any one word in English could was becoming a bright BP station.  It’s easy to hate chains most of the time, but when things look this good in comparison the people doing the work cannot be hated.  I thanked Ali for what’s been going on, and his forced smile drifted down with his gaze.  Yeah, it wasn’t your call, but it’s gonna be good.

From there I waited for the 74 bus to fetch my kids at school.  That was the real nature of my mission before I stretched it out with a walk down West Seventh.  I did this because I wanted to.  It’s not just spring, after all, but a streetscape full of people who work hard because they care about things.  That’s as invigorating as the new season budding out.