February 2016 - Page 4 of 5 - St. Paul Real Estate Blog

Local Market Conditions & home prices

January home sales by neighborhood

Posted on February 8, 2016February 5, 2016by Teresa Boardman

I just love numbers, especially on a Monday morning. Here are some numbers for January 2016 home sales by St. Paul, Neighborhood. Real estate really is that local and as a homeowner myself I like to know about sales in my own neighborhood. The data used to make the chart below was gently extracted from the NorthstarMLS. It was then imported into MS Excel where is was sorted and never shaken. Data from the NorthstarMLS is deemed reliable but not guaranteed . . and as we all know there are few guarantees in life.

chart — Saint Paul Home sales January 2016

I have written about this before but every time I look to see the number of homes for sale in St. Paul I see a new low for the number of homes on the market. 606 is indeed a new low and has me wondering how low we can go. To have a healthy real estate market we need to have more than 47 closed sales in a month. In a good month for home sales we would see at least 300 homes newly listed.

Home prices continue to rise in spite of threats of rising interest rates. If you would like to sell your home please contact me. I will give anyone who sites this article a 25% discount on my fees.

For more local home sale numbers see Local Market Conditions & home Prices.

St. Paul MN

Permit Parking and You

Posted on February 7, 2016February 4, 2016by Teresa Boardman

It is true I have to have a permit on my car to park in front of my own house. Each permit costs $10 a year and we have one for each car and a couple of extras for guests and repair trucks. Before permit parking we had people who work at the local businesses taking all the parking spaces and that made it super hard for all the people who park in our neighborhood during the hockey tournaments to find a space.

There are 25 areas in St. Paul where parking permits are required. If you really hate the idea of paying for parking you might want to look for “parking by permit only” signs while house hunting.

We get a notice in the mail every August with an order form so that we can order new permits by mail. There still isn’t a way to order them electronically but maybe some day there will be. If you need to buy permits you can go to the Traffic Operations offices at 899 Dale Street North in St. Paul.

There is a Grand Avenue and Victoria street permit area but I don’t think there are any spaces on Grand that require permits. That would be worse than parking meters.

Friday fun

There is no place like home

Posted on February 5, 2016February 4, 2016by Teresa Boardman

It is Friday and Fridays are for fun. I am sure most people in St. Paul have heard of the Saint Paul Winter Carnival but have you heard of the Autonomous Snow Plow Competition? Yes there is such a thing and people, like me even, stand around and watch it. The idea is to create a machine that will scoop up snow. They are like snow removal robots. The races are timed and I am not sure who this years winner is/was but that isn’t the point. Watching it makes me feel good about the future and the young people who are involved in the design and deployment of these robots that have such an important mission.

As you can see I wasn’t the only one out there on Sunday morning watching. There was indeed a carnival like atmosphere.

I didn’t eat any cheese curds or drink any hot chocolate but I did buy a bag of kettle corn for the walk home.

Foreclosures

Foreclosures are down

Posted on February 4, 2016February 4, 2016by Teresa Boardman

We all know foreclosures are down. That is old news. They were alarmingly high for awhile now there are fewer but too many and there is help. Maybe 2016 will be like 2015 and we will see decreases each quarter.

Click on graphic to make it huge and super easy to read.

Good news for local real estate

Posted on February 3, 2016February 2, 2016by Teresa Boardman

“Minnesota created the most jobs in 2015. The state boasts a 3.5 percent unemployment rate and more than 40,000 jobs were added last year alone, with the largest employment gains centered in education and health, leisure and hospitality, and professional and business services.” – Gallup

Booming job markets lead to booming real estate markets. Lets just hope that the jobs pay well enough so that people can actually afford housing and parking.

1 Comment

Local real estate numbers

Posted on February 2, 2016February 1, 2016by Teresa Boardman

Real estate is local and that is why I publish home sales and prices by St. Paul neighborhood each month. Here are some numbers for home sales in St. Paul over the last 12 months. I tried to answer the questions that I get asked the most often. 97.6 and 99.4 are the average percentage of the original and final list prices paid by buyers for homes. I highly encourage buyers to do their due diligence. If a home is over priced by 10% please don’t pay 99.4% of the asking price.

The home sellers I work with always want to know how long it will take to sell their home. The numbers provided are averages.

real estate numbers — St. Paul real estate

Happy Ground hogs day!