[Editor’s Note: want to see what happend to this house? See, Fern Hill Flip] Where: 2641 Kipling, in St. Louis Park’s Fern Hill neighborhood What: 3 BR/2 BA; 1,678 FSF Asking Price: $165k Sold Price: $205k Days on Market: 3 Closed: 3/9/09 Forty thousand over asking price?? That isn’t supposed to happen in a market...Read More
Stock Buyers Strike . . . For Good ReasonWhen will the stock market finally bottom?Here’s a thought: it won’t be when P/E ratio’s hit some magic level, or market cap’s (capitalization’s) become tantalizingly low, or even when the housing market finally stops falling. It will be when Bernie Madoff is in prison, and he and...Read More
January Numbers: Down 7.7% According to the National Association of Realtors (“NAR”), pending home sales fell 7.7% in January. A home sale is considered “Pending” once the inspection contingency is removed, but before the Buyer’s financing is finalized and the title is transferred at closing. In a typical deal locally, the interval between a “Pending”...Read More
Where: 328 Burntside Drive, Golden ValleyWhat: 6 BR/5 BA; 4,407 FSFHow much: $369,900Last sale: $899,000 (3/8/07)Tax assessed value: $757,700 Just like not all stocks have dropped equally in a market now down more than 50%, not all homes or neighborhoods have suffered equally. In fact, one of the reasons why the Twin Cities overall is...Read More
December S&P/Case-Shiller: Minneapolis Down 18.5% The latest S&P/Case Shiller numbers (for December) are out, and to no one’s surprise, they’re dreadful: all of the nation’s 20 largest housing markets show decreases, from the merely bad (Dallas, Denver) to the shocking (Las Vegas, Phoenix). Minneapolis shows an 18.5% drop from a year earlier. Before you jump...Read More
Don’t Sell Your House to Your RealtorSelling your house to your Realtor is a bad idea for about 48 different reasons, beginning and ending with conflict of interest. That’s especially true if the sale is a “short sale” — that is, the home is worth less than the mortgage against it. In such cases, the...Read More
