It is Friday and Fridays are for fun. I do love my camera but I don’t get to play with it very often these days. I have a large collection of photographs that I call urban hardware. They are mostly pictures of fire hydrants and valves. This one is on the side of the Market House building on Broadway street in downtown St. Paul. It really caught my eye because of the rust on it and I think rust is very photogenic.
It is not unusual to sell a home and buy another and end up closing on both on the same day while moving out of one and into another. It happens all the time and it usually works out. It can get really complicated if the home you are selling is being purchased by someone who is also selling their home.
Possession is generally written into the contract and it is best if the new owners get possession immediately after the closing but that isn’t always possible. It is especially important that parties communicate with each other and work out compromises. It is also a good idea to avoid using phrases like “you must” or ” I have to have”.
There really is no “must”. Both parties need to agree.
Things are happening downtown. There are a few new apartment buildings and a downtown Lund’s grocery store and the newly refurbished Union Depot, the new green line and soon there will be a new baseball stadium.
Condo prices took a nose dive during the housing market crash and the great recession. With the housing market in much of the country still recovering it is hard to tell how much of an impact all of the new amenities downtown are having on condo prices. I will say that there are not enough condos on the market in the downtown area right now.
Using some of my most excellent software and data from our MLS I put together a sale price history for a downtown condo:
Prices hit bottom in 2009 and then again in 2011 which was the year we hit the very bottom and at that time the unit would have been worth about the same amount that buyers paid for it in 2002. By the end of 2011 prices were starting to climb again.
Here are some number for all of downtown for the last decade:
Here are some numbers for 2014 home sales. We don’t really have any average houses in St. Paul but I was able to average information about the the homes that were sold.
Median sale price in 2014 = $157,000 Median sale price in 2013 = $143,000
Home sales were down from 2013. 3558 Vs 3255 in 2014
The average sale price in 2014 was $192.410 up from $175,237 in 2013.
The median days on market for 2014 was 53* which is a few days more than the 48 day median in 2013.
The highest sale price was $1,780,000 for a home on Summit Avenue and the lowest was $10,700 for a fixer upper on Grotto street.
The homes that sold in 2014 had an average of 1.85 bathrooms and 2.95 bedrooms and had an average of 1576 square feet of finished living space.
Real estate is local. For more local numbers please see Local market conditions & home prices. If you don’t find the number you are looking for call or write maybe I can help.
*I am using CDOM (cummulative days on market)
I think numbers are a wonderful way to start the week. I just love real actual data. This data was gathered from the NorthstarMLS and is deemed reliable but not guaranteed. The numbers represent all homes, including townhouses and condos but excluding rental and commercial property within the St. Paul city limits which were sold by a Realtor® in the month ending 12/31/2014.
The housing market is still recovering but we did make some progress in 2014. The median home sale price in December of 2013 was $132,000. The median home sale price in December of 2014 was $155,000.
Once more the inventory of homes on the market is low. We have far fewer foreclosures and there are still people who would like to sell but who are upside down on their mortgages. Last year I was able to sell a few homes where the owners had just a little equity.
Typical for december new listings and the number of homes on the market are down. Sales were slightly better than November’s numbers and prices were up in December from November. Could be that old supply and demand thing going on.
Real estate is local. For more St. Paul real estate numbers please see Local market conditions & home prices.
When the weather gets really cold I like to walk indoors. Instead of joining a Gym I park my car by the Xcel center and pay for an hour. I walk at a brisk pace from to the Union Depot in lowertown and then back to my car using a different set of skyways so I end up making a loop. An hour is a lot of time to walk a couple of miles but there are obstacles and I often stop to take pictures.
Did you know that in the window on the skyway at Cray research there is a Cray-1 supercomputer. It was a supercomputer used in the mid 70’s. I suspect the phone I carry is more powerful than this machine but in computer years the 1970’s are ancient times when computers were huge and cost millions. The Cray in the picture weights 10,500 pounds. The man in the picture is Seymour Cray . . I guess he was named after the computer? 😉
Cray Inc. is located in downtown St. Paul in Galtier plaza.