Spring comes to St. Paul

I know I complain during the winter about being cold and having to show houes when it is "I can't stand it" below zero, but there are many reasons why I love living in St. Paul, and spring is one of those reasons.

In the spring the grass turns green again and people come out and walk or ride along the bike paths.  I get to see my neighbors again.  The shipping seasons has started so I can hear the boat horns again too.

In the spring the tables and umbrellas come back outside.  We like to eat outside.

People plant flowers every where.

I grow flowers every where.  These are the tulips in front of my house.  

The trees are getting leaves on them and everything looks wonderful.  I guess the landmark center always looks wonderful. 

Saturday Night in St. Paul

Quiet down along the river.  Too early in the season for those wonderful moon light cruises.

The Ordway is packed.

There is a Minnesota Wild game going on at the Xcel center and a large roof top tail gate party on the parking ramp.

The local bars in and around downtown are packed. 

Fun to walk around on a Saturday night and take pictures. Now that the weather is warmer the streets are full of activity again.

They don't build them like this any more

St. Paul Cathedral, St. Paul, Minnesota.  I never get tired of photographing this building, both inside and out.  Built in 1905, Emmanuel Louis Masqueray, a French architect trained at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, was selected to design what we know today as the fourth Cathedral of Saint Paul.  The church is made of Granite stone from St. Cloud, MN

The Cathedral's most prominent feature is a 120-foot-wide dome made of curved steel beams, covered with a clay tile surface and overlaid with copper. A copper-clad lantern, approximately 30 feet tall, sits on top of the dome. From the base to the very top of the lantern, the Cathedral stands 306 feet tall.

I am working on getting some more pictures of the interior.  They don't allow tripods so it has been tough to get good shots in low light. 

Como Park Conservatory

Another great place to go on a cold day.  The fern room is not a good place to take a camera because it is so damp inside.  Not a cold damp but a warm damp, which is nice because we have enough cold here in Minnesota.  The McNeely Conservatory at Como park is free.  They ask for a $2.00 donation.  It is a great place to go anytime but during the cold winter months people tend to linger.

The plant is called "little wart" funny name for such a beautiful flower.

Painted daisies.  

Pictures and Numbers

An unusual photo essay even for me. I did not have to drive far to get the pictures and they are not pretty pictures. They are pictures of dispair, and of urban decay. There are more pictures like this each month.

There are currently 1624 registered vacant building in St. Paul, MN. The number goes up every month, and many of them are in foreclosure. Of the 2009 single family homes currently on the market 716 or about 36% of them are in some stage of foreclosure. Many of the homes that are in some stage of foreclosure that are on the market are vacant but not registered , many do not have for sale signs in front of them .

The data used to determine how many homes are on the market in various stages of foreclosure came from the MLS. Since listings are not categorized as foreclosures much of the data had to be gone through manually looking for phrases like "bank owned", "corporate owned", or "subject to bank approval".

Banks can not sell real estate. They do not have the staff or the know how. My clients make good offers on the vacant properties and have to wait so long for a response that they move on. The homes remain vacant.

First time home buyers who would like to live in some of the vacant homes can not get financing for them. This is only the begining. It will get much worse before it gets better.

Now I have new neighbors in St. Paul who own property here but live far away. They are not responsible property owners. They are banks, they can't sell real estate. I watch as our housing stock decays under their ownership.

Also see The Man on the West Coast
When the Bank is the seller

Birds of the Skyway

Downtown St. Paul has about 5 miles of indoor skyways connecting the buildings.  In the wonter when it is cold out and I want to go for a walk without freezing I head for the skyways.  I only wish I could bring my dog with, she would love it. 

Walking in doors might not seem like fun but it is.  Here is some of the wild life that can be found in the skyway between the trade center and the  children's musuem of Minnesota.

Not all of the skyways are open on Sunday so the trick is to not get stuck in a dead end and have to turn around or go outside to get to the next building.  Some of the skyways are heated and some are not.  Some are full of people and others are empty.   Most are well lit and much more pleasant than walking out side in the cold.

Property Marketing with Flickr Toys

If the word "Toy" is involved I am all over it.  

The picture for the magazine cover is of a Murial in the lobby. 

A Mosaic of the pictures I have uploaded into Flickr.  Check out Flickr toys.  The loft is for sale.  The price has been reduced to $129,899.

Where is this loft? Downtown St. Paul Map

Basic Info:

Taxes: $406
Association Dues: $130 - low monthly dues cover all untilities.
Air Conditioning: Central
Parking: Surface lot

About 550 Square feet of finished living space.  Gourmet kitchen has marble counter tops, all new appliances, and a large window.   The unit has exposed brick and timber, large windows, ceramic tile floors, and 11 foot ceilings.  New renovation, formerly apartments, but originally a carriage factory.

More Pictures of Downtown St. Paul

To see this unit:  call Teresa at 651-216-4603 or email: Teresa(at)Tboardman.com

Connecting at Real Estate Connect

I really enjoyed Inman's real estate connect conference last week.  Here are a few of the highlights.

Our own Carnac from Connecticut, trying to get a little information from Jonathan Washburn for her next post.  Jeff Crobett, AKA Xbroker enjoyed the conversation, and so did I.  Watching Linda in action was a lot of fun and now I can't wait for her next post.

I got to meet Kristal Kraft in person.  She is amazing.  One night, between parties, we went out on a photo tour of Times Square and I got a picture of Kristal doing what she loves to do.  

Oh and I guess Jeff Turner was there too. :)  He doesn't talk as much as he used to but he twitters a lot. 

I have more pictures and some take aways from the conference. The conference was wonderful, I learned a lot and have more to share.  Part of the reason I wanted to attend this conference is so that I could meet some of the friends I have who live inside my computer and I met many of them.

Residential Real Estate Summit

This is a Minnesota thing.  

The Residential Real Estate Summit, on January 16th, right here in Minnesota at the Earl Brown Heritage Center.  Not too late to register and they have put together a great program. They have applied for 4.0 continuing education credits and have put together a nice program:

Covering end-of-year regional market statistics, projections for the new year, changing business models, the new real estate consumer, generational marketing, emerging markets, the "f" word (foreclosure), new lending laws and new construction updates. Four hours of continuing education credit are pending.

 I will be speaking in this conference, on a panel about cross generational communication.  

I will also be giving a presentation at this years spring expo, an annual event put together by the local boards of Realtors.  This years event will be held in April at the River Center in St. Paul.  They have a great program put together, as soon as they publish the details I'll write a post and link to the registration information.  My part of the program is about blogs of all things.  It will be an overview of how it all works and why blogs are so important to use as Realtors.  

I'll be at the connect conference this week.  If you are attending please say hello, I love meeting Active Rain members!

Active Rain - 2007, and beyond

I did not have time to include Canada in this but will as soon as I have time.

Active Rain is about member generated content.  Without the content there is no Active Rain.  I thought I would take a look at who we are and where we live.  The number in, or near each state represents the number of Active Rain members in those states.  The red numbers are to highlight the states that have more than 2000 members.

Since membership varies from state to state the number of points needed to be number one in each state also varies.  Of the 63,000 + members only a small percentage participate by writing blog posts on a regular basis.  This is true with most social networks, about 1% of the members are active. 

I was asked to pick what I thought are the 12 best posts of 2007.  I can not do that because  I would have to read every post made this year to pick the ones that I think are the best, and then it would just be my opinion.  Chances are there is someone out there, like you, who writes amazing posts that I have never seen.

I was also asked to share some thoughts about Active Rain and am honored to do so.

Active Rain has become a school of sorts and for some of us even a kind of laboratory where we can experiment with new ideas.  In the past several months I am noticing that people that are new to real estate blogs are imitating some of the best bloggers.  By doing so they seem to shorten the learning curve and have successes sooner.  The very best examples of real estate blog posts can be found on Active Rain for those who know where to look.

We all learn from each other and that is what makes belonging to Active Rain a good thing.  I would encourage members who have not started a blog to do so.  If you are not sure of what you are doing make the posts members only. It really is a great cahnce to learn about how to write a blog. 

I wish I could predict the future of Active Rain.  It is likely that membership will grow.  New members join every day and some of the long term members stop writing, but we find each other on social networks all over the internet.  I have made so many friends on Active Rain and those friendships have moved outside of the network and continue to grow. 

Active Rain has become less of a social network in the last year and more of a go-to place for real estate information.  I see the trend continuing in 2008, with more of us branching out and joining social networks, while the bloggers who are writing the real estate content continue to join Active Rain and participate at a higher level.   

 It is each members participation that makes Active Rain what it is.  To those who participate a regular basis thank you for being here.  Have a happy and prosperous 2008 and please keep writing.