We did get some fall colors this year and there were a couple of days of sunshine which was nice because fall photos look best with a little sunshine. Here is a beautiful Maple tree I found in Boyd park on Selby and Farrington.

The local parks are great places to enjoy the fall colors. The Oak trees are not very colorful this year but they are pretty in Irvine park.

It is Friday and Fridays are for fun.  It was just four short years ago that I held the first ever virtual pumpkin carving contest. The rules were simple but most people couldn't follow them or they cheated or maybe a little of both.

The next year I said things would be different, but it was pretty much the same. People sent entries late, or to the wrong email address and there was the usual whining complaining and cheating.  The year after that I said things would be different.  They were not any different.

This year things will be different.  In the past the pumpkins had to be carved using the free paint program that comes with windows computers. Even though someone actually used the program to create a replica of the Mona Lisa most who entered the contest couldn't use the program at all and we got into the whole thing about the fruity computers that have a different program on them.

Times have changed so this year all entries  will be carved or  decorated would be more accurate using Picnik.com, you do not need a premium account and Picnik.com has a free version.  All you need is internet access and a web browser.  There will be a grand prize this year, a one year Picnik.com premium account. I used my account and of course my camera to create the photo in this post. . . and maybe a computer and a keyboard and probably my mouse but you get what I mean.

So here are the rules.  They seem really simple to me but I am willing to answer questions if you can't figure them out.  Just don't push your luck by asking more than one question.

1. Use the graphic of the pumpkin that I have provided.  Let me explain that a little more clearly, use the graphic of the pumpkin that I have provided in this post.

2. Upload the pumpkin . . one from this blog post but not one that is in the photo across the top and they are already carved.  Load it into Picnik.com and decorate it any way you want to.

3. Entries are due no later than 5:00 PM CST on October 29th. Send them to: teresa(at)TBoardman.com, it is always a good idea to remove the (at) and replace it with @.An entry is the Pumpkin after you have decorated it.

4.Entries will be posted on this blog on October the 30th. Readers will vote on which one is the best and people will cheat. The cheating part really isn't a rule but it will happen and you should be aware of it. I will do everything I can to make it so people can only vote once but chances are I will screw that up too. 

5.  The winners will be announced on October 31, 2009 because it is Halloween and because I said so.

Entries are limited to one for each contestant and I will accept the first 40 entries.

Kelley Kohler (AKA Housechick) doesn't have to follow these rules because her entries are always the best and  she does stuff differently.

Now for the fine print:

here it is. This is a seven point font and you need to read it very carefully. Anyone can enter this contest and not follow the rules and I probably won't follow the either. Enjoy!

I have been looking at a lot of numbers this week in an attempt to make sense of our local real estate market.  The downtown St. Paul condo market is unique, so I ran some numbers just for downtown. The data came from our MLS and is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.

The data is for a one year period from July of 2008 to the end of July 2009 so that I could get a years worth of data on sales and sale prices.  Some of the condos are new construction and there is a longer period of time between the offer and the closing and I wanted to get as much data as I could that shows actual sale price which is not  available until the sale closes. 

• 345 downtown condos were listed during that period with an average list price of 240K and an average sale price, for those that sold of 196,734.  The average asking price for the units that actually sold was $203,590.
• 130 of the 345 units that were listed during the period  sold and the cumulative days on market for those units was an average if 212 days. 

There are currently 145 units on the market and they have been on the market for an average of 232 days, with an average asking price of $271,713. Twenty three of those units are in some stage of foreclosure. 

There are a couple of things going on with these numbers.  Lower priced housing sells more quickly weather it is a condo or not and that has been true across the board in St. Paul for the last eighteen months.

The fact that only about one third of the units that were listed sold is somewhat alarming. It isn't unusual for condo owners to give up on selling and decide to find a renter.  Renting out a unit is always an option but as the owner occupancy rate in the buildings drop it gets harder for people who want to buy a unit in the building to get financing.  Units in some of the buildings no longer qualify for FHA financing and we are even finding cases where buildings do not qualify for most types of conventional financing.

. 

by G. Sax (@gsax)

I am worn out by words. Even Twitter posts feel too long. Oh, don't get me wrong: I love to write and speak and share and soapbox with the best of 'em, but I know when a good sshhh is in order.

I've already put in thousands and thousands of words this month—written, spoken, tweeted, texted, emailed, blogged—and I'm set to double that in the next week as I put the finishing touches on a real estate magazine of notable pedigree.

But this isn't a post about a magazine or a whinefest about the good fortune of being paid to write for a living. It's an opportunity to establish three. As in, three paragraphs to say I'm writing three captions for three photos that adequately represent three years of Saint Paul living after more than a decade of not. I often preach the "less is more" adage. This week I follow it.

Because city dogs have more fun.

Because some legacies shouldn't have to be explained.

Because cheese is as good here as it is in Wisconsin and California.

The title for this post should be where are the jobs?  Jobs and housing are tied together. 

The national unemployment rate is 9.5%.  The highest unemployment rate Minnesota ever had was 9.0% in November of 1982, according to the Bureau of Labor statistics, and the lowest unemployment rate was 2.5% back in 1999.  Life was good then, but it kind of ended shortly after 9/11/2001 at least in the high tech sector where I used to work. 

For those who would like to go live in warmer climates but would need a job the unemployment rate is higher in the sunbelt, except for New Mexico where it is the same as it is in Minnesota. Most of the jobs in Minnesota are in the Twin Cities Metro area, as is most of the population of Minnesota. Young people leave the small towns and farming communities and come to the cities for employment. North Dakota has an unemployment rate of around 4%. Maybe they will let people from the Twin Cities who need work telecommute. Unemployment is also lower in Iowa but higher in Wisconsin.

As for some advice on how to find a job in Minnesota you find a job here the same way that you find a job any place else, by networking.  Sending resumes out to major employers is a waste of time.  It is all on the internet now and they can screen people out faster than ever, and have a much easier time ignoring most applicants.  You won't find many jobs in the newspaper either, people don't advertise in the papers much.  I found an article on the Bee Hive  about which industries are hiring.  Health care, Law enforcement, and something called 'green construction' are the top three.  I also found a report that has the outlook for employment in Minnesota.  it is published by the state department of economic security, Personally I have never had anything like economic security but I suppose some people do.  State employees that make  those PDF's that they publish online probably have some job security.

I can't just post graphs and charts two days in a row so I am including this photo of the showy lady slipper, our state flower, or is it the state bird?  I forget which. I took the photo almost a year ago but I think they still look the same.

The numbers on the chart were calculated using data in the RMLS, for St. Paul, MN for all single family housing including townhouses and condos. The numbers are deemed reliable but not guaranteed.

Normally I do a week by week chart so the ups and downs can be seen each week.  This chart goes month by month.  What I was trying to figure out is why our inventory of homes on the market continue to drop when home purchases still lag behind listings.  It seems like the inventory should continue to grow because so far this year there have been 5072 new listings, and 3215 went into the pending status which means they got offers on them that were accepted by the sellers. 

Out of the 3215, 2874 of those offers resulted in closed sales. It is very possible that more of the homes that received offers in say September, just have not closed yet which would account for most of the gap between the pending and the closed.  It usually takes about thirty days from the time both parties agree to the terms of the sale until the sale actually closes. Some of them Will not close, most often it Will be because of problems with the financing and the appraisal. Those homes often go right back on the market.

there are also 2020 homes that were listed but they were either taken off the market before they sold or the listing contract expired.  Some of those homes were put back on the market and are either still on the market, or have pended or closed.   The inventory of homes on the market continues to drop so I am going to suggest that a large percentage of those expired and canceled listings have not been sold and remain off the market.  I believe there are sellers who want to sell but can not and the most likely reason is that they are asking too much for the home.

Overall homes sales for the same period  are ahead of what they were in 2008 and in 2007, and we are up about 15% from last year. The average sales price is about 22%  less than it was last year. Part of the reason is the large number of foreclosures on the market and the banks started having what amounted to a fire sale and has now become a street auction last fall.

For buyers there are fewer choices and the most desirable homes are selling very quickly.  Buyers still seem to think that the home they want will be around for awhile and that has not been the case for the last several months. 

For traditional sellers I promise if the home is priced right it will sell quickly.  Unfortunately how much a seller owes on a home or how much money they 'need' does not affect the value of the home and should not be reflected in the price.

by Erik Hare

“Fitzgerald loved, hated, and was obsessed by St. Paul.”
– Charles Baxter, author and U of Minnesota Professor

F. Scott Fitzgerald is probably the best known of Saint Paul’s many favorite sons in the arts.  His fables chronicling the Jazz Age have been lauded by critics, readers, and English teachers throughout the world.  The most famous of these, “The Great Gatsby”, is often chosen as the greatest American novel.  What gave him this clear, concise voice of his time?

Deep inside of him, Fitzgerald was always a Saint Paulite. Born in 1896 into a middle class Irish family with a few old money roots, he was able to make his way to college “back East” at Princeton.  The taste of an upper class world of easy money hooked him hard, but he could not shake off his roots.

The feelings of inferiority that came from “being the poorest boy in a rich boy’s school” were never resolved by Fitzgerald, and probably led to his becoming an alcoholic.  Saint Paul was everything that was good and decent to him, but he always felt it had to be left behind.  His ability to see the flappers and the Jazz Age from a view inside yet apart comes from this terrible conflict.

When he was 24 he returned to Saint Paul with his wife Zelda, and began his writing career. Their relationship was difficult, at best, as Zelda’s developing schizophrenia played off of Scott’s incredible drinking habit.

In 1992, the city of Saint Paul first discussed putting up a statue of Fitzgerald in Rice Park (pictured above) A very old woman who was a neighbor on Portland Avenue as a young girl told the Pioneer Press of the late night drunken shouting matches between Scott and Zelda that woke her up.  True to Saint Paul fashion, Fitzgerald was only honored after this woman (and everyone that knew Scott and Zelda) had died.

Eventually, Scott hit it big with “The Great Gatsby”, and could afford to live in New York and Paris and wherever he saw fit.  He was restless when he was away from Saint Paul, and drank even harder. Never being able to duplicate the fame that “Gatsby” brought him, he died after his second heart attack in 1940 at the age of only 44.

Leaving Saint Paul was a big part of what made Fitzgerald immortal, but it ultimately used him up as a writer and killed him.  This was his home, and he made it clear to the world in the elegiac final chapter of “Gatsby:

“One of my most vivid memories is of coming back west from college at Christmas time.  … we caught the site of old acquaintances and the matchings of invitations: “Are you going to the Ordways’?  The Herseys’?  The Schultzes’?” and the long green tickets clasped firmly in gloved hands.  And last the murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate.”

“I see now that this has been a story of the West after all – Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we all possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.”