The real estate market has picked up which is a good thing.  When I work with buyers there is always this one question. . .when they make an offer they want to know how long it will take before they get an answer from the seller.  Even though I am all knowing . . .I don't have a clue.  The seller could be on a plane or on a boat or have left his or her cell phone in the car as I some times do.  They could be in a court room or hospital room.  

In general when there is an offer we all do everything we can to keep it moving along.  Sometimes I there is an answer from the seller as soon as the seller gets the offer.  Other times the seller is available but they need to sleep on it.  If there is more than one seller it can get complicated.  

Sometimes the seller is waiting by the phone but his or her agent is out with other clients and is not answering the phone.  An offer on a home is very important but it isn't an emergency.  

How long should it take?  Not very long. 

 I have a rather large collection of photographs of front doors.  Some of the doors belong to houses but most belong to historic buildings and businesses.  If you have a home on the market and you would like to make a good first impression paint the door.

Red is a good color but if red is not the right color consider a fresh coat of paint or varnish or maybe a new door.   

Minnesota's unemployment rate reamins below the national average and has gone down.  Even though 'they' said the recession ended in mid 2009 it is finally starting to feel like it is over.  There are a lot of people who are still going through hard times but people seem to be more optimistic too.   My theory is that it is easier for people to have positive attitudes when they have jobs.   

Data from U.S. Bureau of Labor StatisticsLast updated: Jan 17, 2012, with commentary from me updated on February 1, 2012.

It is Friday and Fridays are for fun.  I continue to work on my big de-cluttering project.  My goal is to do a little each day.  I did not make much progress this week but the week is not over and I  did manage to clean off some shelves in my office and I found this lovely  dusty CD holder filled with old software.   I tossed the software and sent the CD case to the thrift store along with an old laptop case a camera case and some other "stuff"  that I have not used in a decade . . or ten years or something like that. 

Does or did anyone actually use the free copy of MS Works that used to come with computers? 

What do you have at your house that should have been tossed long ago?

Related Posts:

What to keep and what to toss out

Goodbye Makes The Journey Harder . . A Blast From The Past
More De-Cluttering
The Week Of Broken Things
Out With The Old And In With The New

Hogs ground hogs day.  I feel like celebrating the mild winter we have had.  It has been good for business and the heating bills have been significantly lower than last years.

In November of 2010 I wrote about the hole at 5th street and Wall and then last August I showed the progress  as the Lofts at Farmers Market rose out of the ground.  The hole was supposed to be filled with these way cool lofts but then the housing market crashed.  The city owns the project and it became an apartment building.  They start at $925 for a studio and go up over $1700 for a two bedroom. 

It is nice to see a building where the hole used to be and it is a great area for housing.  One block from the light rail and across the street from the farmers market in the Lowertown neighborhood. 

You can see the reflection of the roof of the farmers market in the glass.

It is a lovely building and it fits in with the historic architecture in the immediate area and looks so muh more inviting than a large hole with a chain linked fence around it.

These numbers are from a report that I got from the Saint Paul Association of Realtors.  They show a 47% average home price decline in St. Paul and a 36% decline in Minneapolis over the same period.  Median home prices in the metro area have declined by 33% since 2007.

I wrote this in January of 2008 and it came to mind yesterday when I was looking at a new listing  and I saw a picture of a beautiful Tudor style home and the agent listing it described it as a "classic colonial"  sometimes my peers make me cry.  

This architectural style was popular in the 1920s and 1930s and can be found throughout the metro area. The defining characteristics are half-timbering on bay windows and upper floors, and facades that are dominated by one or more steeply pitched cross gables. Patterned brick or stone walls are common, as are rounded doorways, multi-paned casement windows, and large stone chimneys.

The name Tudor  imitates English architecture from the early 16th century, and a much earlier medieval architecture.

I have had buyers over the years specifically request this style of home. On the inside they often have cove ceilings, rounded doorways, exposed wood beams on the ceilings, built in book cases and plenty of woodwork. I have not seen one without a fireplace, a large dining room and bay windows in at least one room. The steep roofs make for some interesting attic rooms.

These homes are more plentiful in Highland Park, part of  West St. Paul and in Minneapolis. 

Today may be the only day left to see the ice sculptures in Rice Park, downtown St. Paul.  It is going to warm up a bit.  Honestly most years we have some kind of a January thaw. 

The winter carnival is in full swing and no one has found the medallion.  As for today's clue the only thing I can think of that can be harvested from a watery field is wild rice. . . and we have a Rice park with a place to stay right across the street.  Not  trying to start any rumors . . . would they hide the treasure right in Rice Park? 

[Click on photo to embiggen]

 The Winter Carnival parade was cold.  I am just starting to feel my toes but it was alos good for business.  The bars are restaurants along West 7th Street were packed full of people all day.  We should have more parades. 

I have like a hundred pictures I think.  We sure not how to party.  

 It is Winter carnival time and I am looking forward to a weekend full of carnival events in addition to house hunting with clients and putting a new listing on the market.  There are a ton of events this weekend.  I plan on watching the parade and I will probably check out the ice carving contest in Rice Park.  The winter carnival grand day parade starts at 2:00 this afternoon but the route is a little different this year because of construction downtown.  The parade will start on the corner of Smith Avenue and West 7th and go east and end at 5th and Market street downtown otherwise known as Rice Park.  The official map states that the parade will disperse on Kellogg Blvd., yet they show the parade route ending at Rice park.

If you don't know the area watch the signs because parking on the street requires a permit.   There is a huge parking lot next to the Xcel center, and there is the Xcel center ramp and the ramp at the six street station. 

It is Friday and Fridays are or fun.  Life is a journey and along the way we accumulate a lot of stuff.   This year I am taking on a 365 day project  to de-clutter my home and I am making progress but sometimes I have trouble deciding what to keep and what to throw out. 

I found this photo in a drawer.  It is of our son Andrew standing in front of the house the year we moved in.  The picture is a treasure and I am thrilled that I found it.  I never looked for it because I did not know I had it.  The two houses behind his head were torn down in 1996 and I can see the stack from the old Xcel energy plant that was removed in 2008.

I want to toss or donate this shirt but a friend of mine is telling me that there are people who will pay for these vintage  shirts.  This is a knit turtle neck woman's size small.  I will mail this shirt to anyone in the continental US who would like to buy it from me.  I can accept credit card payments over the interent and will pay the shipping.  One way or another this shirt will be gone by next Friday.  

I found this shirt in the back of a closet.  I have not worn it in a decade or so.  I am going to keep it and wear it but not until spring or summer. I had no trouble getting rid of the two bazilandy wire hangers I found in that same closet.  They went to the St. vincent De Paul thrift store on West 7th street along with some clothes and a wire spice rack that I tried to pawn off on my daughter.  She always was the smart one in the family.  

After I got rid of the excess stuff in the closet I had room for my luggage which was sitting outside the closet.  Luggage really should not be in a closet it should be on an airplane but that is the subject for another Friday.

What is hiding in the back of your closet? 

Related Posts:

Goodbye Makes The Journey Harder . .

A Blast From The Past
More De-Cluttering
The Week Of Broken Things
Out With The Old And In With The New

I love Evernote.  It is where I store my notes and those notes can be searched but thats not all they are stored in the cloud on the interent and on my computer and accessible from my iPad and my phone.  I can store handwritten notes, and pictures and even audio notes.  If I take a picture of a document with text on it with my phone and put it in Evernote the text becomes searchable. 

There is a little graphic of an elephant on the tool bar of each of my web browsers that I can click and when I do it will clip web pages and I can store them in Evernote for future reference.  I can gather all of the notes I need for a blog post or a presentation in an Evernote note book and then put it all together when I need it.  

If you are one of my clients your file startes out as an Evernote notebook.  I jot down the measurements of your home and add various documents to the note book.  I can take pictures of receipts with my phone and add them and include a picture of the tree in your backyard that looks as though it is hanging over your neighbors fence.   

When I need to look at my notes a document or a photo I can access them from most anywhere.  If you are a buyer I have notes in Evernote they may say that you don't like yellow houses and list the neighborhoods you like.

Evernote is free but I pay $45 dollars a year for a premium account.  With a premium account I can upload a gigabyte of data a month and I can do more.  I can share a note books with others and more.  

I think Evernote would make a great tool for home buyers hunters.  Todo lists  can be stored in it along with photographs of houses. The web clipper can be used to keep pictures and information of homes that are found on the interent and it can all be accessed through a mobile phone while out looking at houses.

I keep writing about how low the inventory of homes for sale is and it keeps getting lower slowly.  There are fewer buyers and in most cases buyers can find what they are looking for.  Todays buyers in general would rather wait than pay too much or settle for a home that isn't what they were looking for.  

Some homes are selling very quickly but on average the homes that are currently on the market have been for sale for an average of 189 days.   Housing is likely to be a topic of the presidents state of the union address this evening.  Absorption rates are a calculation of how long it will take for all the homes on the market to be sold, or absorbed, at the current rate of homes sales. Absorption rates can change quickly. I love numbers and these numbers are in months, the data used came from the RMLS, (MLS) and is deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Sadly there are no guarantees in life. These are for the seven county metro area which is like the 13 county metro area except smaller and are for the last 30 days.

Anoka County 5 Months
Carver County 6 Months
Dakota County 5 Months
Hennepin County 5 Months
Ramsey County 5 Months
Scott County 5 Months
Washington County 6 Months

The numbers indicate that there is about a six month supply of homes on the market in the metro area which is a sign of a balanced market.  it still feels like a buyers market.  I will be interesting to see if home prices start to tick up a bit in the next few months. 

For more numbers like these for St. Paul, MN please see Local Market conditions and home prices.

 It must be time for the Saint Paul Winter Carnival it is the only time when St. Paulites are asked to keep their hands off of the snow.

This snow block is in Rice Park and I saw one in front of Mancini's with a do not touch sign on it. The snow blocks are cool I get why people want to touch them.  I love the winter carnival.

I spend a lot of time on the internet but as a Realtor, writer photographer and occasional software quality assurance tester of apps and web sites most of my work is on the internet.   

Pinterest is kind of 2010 but it did not really gain traction until last year.  I was able to mostly ignore it until a couple of months ago.  Pinterest is about curations or collections or maybe a form of digital hoarding.

 There are pin boards and users can pin, which is mostly about linking to  photographs.  There is a bookmark available for most browsers.  Click on the bookmark and pin a picture.  Pictures can also be uploaded onto the site but that isn't really what curation is about and we have Flickr for that.  Pinterest boards can be collaborative so that more than one user can contribute.  

I have several pin boards including one dedicated to porches.  I have one that isn't shown here that I call "Red" it is pictures with red in them.

One of the reasons I am writing about this is that I think it would be a great place to collect decorating or remodeling  for a home or it might be useful for house hunting.  A collection of pictures of house styles and rooms that you like and can share with your Realtor so she has a better idea of what you like. 

Looking at your own pin board may surprise you.  My photography board has a lot of photographs of trees on it. I must like to photograph trees.  I never really thought about it.  Pinterest is social and as I follow friends and look at their collections I see a new side of them.  

Pinterest is still invitation only but it isn't hard to find someone you know like even me who will send you an invite.  

 We have a nice little downtown with a mix of old and new.

The skating rink it new and the landmark center is old.

You can never have too many pictures of Mickey's diner. 

Downtown Minneapolis is pretty neat too. 

 It is Friday and Fridays are for fun.   The first post I wrote this year was about getting rid of "stuff".   I have been doing a great job getting rid of stuff and I am finding that I have a lot more than I thought I had.  For the most part I have been able to toss out, recycle or donate the items that I have been storing in various drawers, cupboards and closets for years.   I have been doing a little each day.  If I continue to take more out of the house each week than I bring into it I may eventually reach my goal of living in a clutter free environment.  

We start accumulating stuff at a young age.  Our parents and in-laws give us stuff  and then when our children move out they leave stuff and we buy stuff because that is who we are.  

It was hard to do but this week I actually tossed out my  collection of badges from various conferences that I have attended or spoken at during the past five years.  It was hard to say good bye to them all but it was time to let go.   

Sniff . . . 

What are you hanging onto?  

These are some treasures I found last weekend when I spent some time going through old files.  I found a treasure trove of marketing materials for projects that did not go as planned.   I have kept some of the marketing materials from the downtown St. Paul condo projects because they can come in handy for marketing ideas when I list a condo for resale.  

I did not have the heart to toss out the marketing pieces I found from the projects that were never built.  The builders would host these big open houses for Realtors with food and wine and they would answer our questions and send us on our way with marketing materials, business cards and price lists.  It seems like just yesterday . . .and it has been some time since I have been wined and dined by a builder. 

We do have plenty of housing downtown, 65 condo type units on the market, starting at a mere $35,000 and on up to 2.8 million dollars.  I have a wonderful unit at the Rossmor that we are running a special on this week.

 The first time I heard the term "NORC" was a couple of years ago at the West 7th Community Center.  I had to stop the meeting and ask for a definition.  NORC is an acronym for Naturally Occurring Retirement Community. 

NORCs are very real estate related and they are not planned communities. Rather, they evolve as people:

• Age in place. Many communities house residents who raised families there decades ago and never left. They strongly wish to continue living in their homes of long standing.

• Move into the community. A pattern of in-migration often brings seniors into age-integrated communities, typically in urban centers, where the seniors have access to amenities, culture, and other activities.

• Move out of the community. Out-migration, typically reflecting the departure of younger residents from rural areas, leaves sizable populations of older residents behind.

The challenges going forward are to provide services for seniors in these communities and some seniors who plan to age in place are not currently in senior friendly homes.  I see it as I deliver meals on wheels.  The elderly woman who can no longer do her own laundry because she can not manage the basement stairs.  Some 0f the homes are too large and cost too much to heat.   

Most younger home buyers do not think about aging and they never asume that the first home they will buy will be the last but it works out that way fairly often.   I have many neighbors who are in their 70's and 80's who have lived in my neighborhood for fifty years and have raised their children here. Heck some of those children purchased homes in the same area and live close by.

If you are a younger senior citizen and by that I mean someone under 70 years old there are volunteer opportunities available for you.  your church or community center needs your help with the programs like Meals on Wheels that serve the oldest people in our communities.