Bird Watching (of a Sort) It’s hardly scientific, but if you want a quick-and-dirty, statistics-free take on the Twin Cities real estate market, do what I did over the weekend: count construction cranes. Including Downtown Minneapolis, Uptown, and Lake Calhoun (what’s going on at the Calhoun Beach Club??), I counted easily a dozen such multi-story contraptions....Read More
Fast Friends at Lake Calhoun About a zillion years ago at The Punchline nightclub in San Francisco, I heard a hilarious bit by (a then unknown) Rob Schneider recounting the various usages of the word “Dude.” As in . . . #1. Greeting (“Dude!”); #2. Approval (“Du-u-u-de!”, upbeat); #3. Disapproval (“d-u-d-e,” in a low tone); #4. Warily,...Read More
Back to the Future – Housing Edition “One in five people in their 20’s and early 30’s is currently living with his or her parents. And 60% of all young adults receive financial support from them. That’s a significant increase from a generation ago, when only one in 10 young adults moved back home and...Read More
Technically, that headline is 100% accurate (and was too irresistible not to write). It’s just that the Kaplans in question were Sam and Sylvia Kaplan, who live in a townhome just off the Mississippi River (not the Kaplans who live in a Colonial by Cedar Lake 🙂 ), and who happen to be heavyweights in...Read More
Looking For a Realtor? Or (Lots & Lots of) Compliments? I heard about a prospective home Seller the other day who interviewed seven (!) Realtors to list their home (I wasn’t one of them). To be sure, the home was a multi-million dollar estate on Lake Minnetonka, but still — seven Realtors?? I’m sure that...Read More
The Virtue of a Simple On-Off Switch — and Manual Toothbrushes “Homes already have interfaces that are remarkably robust. Imagine, for example, how revolutionary the light switch would seem if until now we’d all been forced to control our lights through our smartphones.” –“Why I’m Not in a Hurry For a ‘Smart Home'”; The Wall...Read More