There are numerous varieties of fresh apples at the Saint Paul Farmer’s market which is open today. I like the chestnut crabs and the honey crisp the most. The apple orchards are open now and you can never have too many apples. I like to make applesauce, apple butter, and apple pie. I dry some apple slices too.
Apples are low sodium and have no added sugar. They are gluten-free with no high fructose corn syrup. They are also high fiber and apple pectin apparently or at least currently is good for rats and maybe humans too.
It is Friday and Fridays are for fun. If you walk in St. Paul you have probably noticed poetry on the sidewalk in random locations. I just discovered this one Hamline Avenue North of University.
Just for fun take a walk this weekend and choose a sidewalk that you have not walked on before and watch for poetry. To learn more about the poetry program use google and search “St. Paul sidewalk poetry”. I would provide a link but the city moves pages around often so leaving my site with broken links.
Moving isn’t as popular as it used to be. I know that older people are less likely to move than younger people are and our population is aging. Younger people are not moving as often either mostly because not as many are moving for jobs.
I’ll admit I haven’t moved in almost 30 years. I haven’t had a reason to move. We usually move because of some life event like getting married, or divorced or having children, becoming empty nesters, retiring, the death of a spouse or old age.
When I started in real estate I was told that on average people move once every seven years. Now it is once every ten years.
According to the U.S. census bureau moving is at a historic low.
In the chart, the median sales prices are averaged for each year. How high can they go? The average price of a two-bedroom rental is around $1300 a month, which is a couple hundred dollars a month more than payments on the median-priced home.
Even with all the technology, we have old school for sale signs still make the phone ring. People see my signs and they call and it isn’t always because they want more information about the house.
Sometimes people who are looking for the sellers call. They have all sorts of stories. One caller said he was from the census bureau but he had no way to back up his story. He figured he would just give me a call and I would put him in touch with my clients. He wanted to know if the sellers had moved and I didn’t answer that question either.
The callers ask for email addresses of the sellers and phone numbers and where they work and if they have moved and more. I would never tell anyone who calls anything about my clients. I have heard some pretty compelling stories from long-lost relatives but wasn’t tempted to blab.
I have on occasion passed the information along to sellers but in most cases when I ask the caller for his or her contact information they won’t give it. Sometimes callers want to know something about the neighbors and occasionally I get calls from law enforcement.
The sign with the phone number on it is there for two reasons, one is to let people know that the home is for sale and the other is to provide information (found in the brochure box) and a number that people can call if they have a question about the home or would like to see it. I can not give out information about the owners of the home.
Some of the calls I get are kind of interesting, with questions that really get me thinking. Phone calls are fine, that is why we put phone numbers on the signs. Just don’t expect answers if the question is about the homeowner or some complicated real estate question with details you don’t want to share. . . you know like when you are asking for a friend and can not give an address or any other details.
August went way too fast, and we are already into the double-digit dates of September. Home sales have started to slow in a kind of September way. Great news for those who want to buy a home this year.
The inventory of homes on the market is slowly creeping up but still very low by historical standards.
August 2018 Home sale numbers – St. Paul, MN
In the green shaded areas in the far right column are to highlight the fact that the average sale price was higher than the average asking price for the neighborhood and for the whole city on average.
We are also starting to see more price reductions. It will be interesting to see if September home sale prices in St. Paul are still higher than the asking prices.
The numbers used to create this report were exported from the NorthStar Mls, which is deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Once exported the data is imported into MS excel where it is gently sorted but never stirred.
The data includes single family homes, townhouse, and condos, located within the city limits.
