Dear person in their twenties,

It is wonderful that you got that new job and were able to move out of your folks place a mere eight years after you graduated from college. I know you will be turning 30 this year and you have accomplished much in your short life.

Your parents love you, we always have and we would do most anything for you and we probably have and we are very proud of you.

There is one thing that you need to know. We are not being honest with you about something. We have kept a secret from you all these years, and it has nothing to do with auntie  Sue or that one incident a few years back at the water park. We know you did not do that on purpose.

We want to tell you that we are very tired of the boxes and storage bins in the basement and the bike, sports equipment and roller blades in the garage. We understand that you also regret having purchased that tacky piece of furniture that you bought the first time you moved out but left stored in the basement this last time you moved out. We hate it too, and yes you may move back in that is true, even though we had the locks changed and you know the secret about the back door, you will find a way, but I suspect you won't want to use the furniture as you seem to hate it so.

Even though we love you and would do most anything for you we don't want to provide storage for your stuff anymore.  We would like to use our basements and garages and attics for something else now. We have our own tacky furniture that needs to be stored and most of our closets are over flowing as we have not moved in years and have not had any place to put anything in decades.

It would be heavenly to be able to walk to the washer without tripping over something and honestly the furnace and water heater have always wanted  a room of their own, they watch and wait silently as the stuff piles up around them.   Last time we had a repair man here he couldn't even find the furnace, I guess he wasn't much of a repair man.  I never saw him leave the house, he may still be down in the basement looking for the furnace, I guess we don't know for sure, but hope not because they charge by the hour. 

Please come over for dinner tonight.  We promise to cook something you really like, and buy a couple of bottles of wine, or maybe you would enjoy a beer instead.   Bring a friend or significant other and a moving van. We will even front you the cash so that you can rent it. After dinner kindly remove your stuff. Don't make me have to write this twice.  I may be old but I am still your mother and even though you are bigger than I am I can still kick your butt, or at the very least make you feel guilty.

Thanks, your loving mother.

PS if you read this after the garage sale please accept my apologies, I know I should have sent a text message but for some things 140 characters are not enough.

Oh and while I am at it I would not mind being a grandmother some day. I saved your crib and pookie your stuffed rabbit just in case.

I wrote a post about this a couple of years ago about what for many years has been a derelict structure on the Mississippi River, in the river park.  The elevator and sackhouse are on the national register of historic places and have sat vacant and in ruins until late last summer.  It looks wonderful now. I read a few years back that it is being converted in to a restaurant and interpretive center.  I looked in the windows and all I could see is one huge empty room.  There are some informational type markers just out side of the sack house.

According to the architecutre firm of MS&R, the project is called "City House".  I am trying to find out when it will  open and have not walked the river path for a couple of weeks to check on it. I don't know anything about the restaurant.  This project has been on the boards for a long time and there has been little information about it.Maybe there has been information but it can't easily be found.

by G. Sax

On "The Late Show with David Letterman," Dave asked Governor Jesse Ventura, "So which is the better city of the Twin Cities, Minneapolis or St. Paul?". To which Ventura responded, "Minneapolis. Those streets in St. Paul must have been designed by drunken Irishmen."

Under a barrage of criticism from various Irish entities and St. Paulites alike, he apologized for what he said. I  thought it was a hilarious thing to say, and I'm from St. Paul and I'm Irish. But I'm also Polish and French and Swedish and German, so my mixed blood has had to endure plenty of good jokes about lightbulbs, surrender, and accents over the years.

It was a "lighten up" moment for St. Paul, and we failed. Is there really so much difference between the Fightin' Irish of Notre Dame and the Drunken' Irish of St. Paul? Okay, okay, don't get all riled up. Stereotypes are bad. I'm on your side.

But, seriously, about the streets. I almost feel bad for out-of-towners and people from Minneapolis. Without a GPS device or in-vehicle access to Google Maps, getting around is guesswork. And I'm not just talking about the angled streets and parkways. Even the grid streets are perplexing.

The image at the top of this post is a map of my life until about the age of 17. I grew up on Norton Street. It was one long city block, and that was it. My neighboring streets to the east and west also appear to be capped at the north, but waitaminnit. What's that in the northwest corner of the image. Mackubin inexplicably continues.

As I got into my driving years, I realized that Arundel wasn't done with its bad self either. In fact, each of these streets picks up and leaves off several times heading north and south, running into various dead ends and bodies of water and magically picking up after the interruption.

A street called Chatsworth is chopped into at least a dozen pieces as it marches north from West 7th (also known as Fort Road and 5). Here, I made a map link so you can see for yourself.

Erik Hare mentioned the Jesse flap in a good post about St. Paul street design. Both Teresa and Erik have mentioned Donald Empson's The Street Where You Live, which is an exhaustive guide to street names in the city of St. Paul.

A few years ago, I went to the Landmark Center in downtown St. Paul to hear Don talk about his book, but I showed up a little late after going on a tour of the Summit Brewery.

At the event, there were free buckets of chilled wine and even more Summit beer.

It was irresistible.

I really wanted to talk to Don, who was hanging around and taking one-on-one questions, but I never got around to it. Because, well, I'm Irish.

The company then turns around and sells your name to someone like me so you can be my lead. That means I call you or send you emails advertising my most excellent services. 

I say people 'like me' because I don't buy leads.  There is one web site that has 'top agents' on it.  The way an agent gets to be a top agent on that site is by paying for it.  I looked up the top agent for St. Paul, Minnesota and found that the agent has never sold a home in St. Paul.

Finding a top agent off of one of those web sites might not be the way to go.  I am not sure what a top agent really is but I think it is very important to work with an agent who at least knows the area, and that might not be the agent who paid to be the top agent.

The way the referral services work is some of the charge a monthly fee to agents so they can be advertised on the site.  Other sites 'capture leads' and then sell them to agents. I pretended to be a seller and used one of those web sites that promise a free home valuation. I was contacted by an agent a couple of months later and when I checked I found that the agent had not previously worked in my neighborhood at all.

There are some ways to find the right agent.  One way is to ask friends, neighbors, co-workers and family members who have used the services of a real estate agent and ask for a recommendation.

My email in box has plenty of email in it advising me that there are companies who have a lot of buyers and are looking for an agent in my area to work with them.  The emails are starting to sound desperate. All I can say is if you are a buyer and are looking for an agent it seems like those lead generation companies already have more leads than they can handle, at least that is what they put in the emails they send me.   Consider contacting an agent directly to help the lead generation companies out.  Home buyers who do that won't become leads.

The data used to make this table was complied from the data in the RMLS (regional multiple listing service), it is considered reliable but not guaranteed. The numbers are for all residential, single family homes, including town houses and condos listed in the in the city of St. Paul.

It looks like we had more activity in June as far as home sales as we have had in previous months and the inventory of homes on the market has gone down again. Of the 1667 homes currently on the market 1177 of them are listed at less than $200,000 and 413 are listed for less than $100. Of the 389 homes that actually closed 161 of them were in the 100 to 200K price range, and 133 of them were priced below 100K. There wasn't much action in the higher price ranges or as much inventory.

Homes have become more affordable and there are bargains out there.  We are seeing some changes because of changes in the appraisal rules and standards. It has been harder this last month to get financing and we are seeing more cases where the home appraises for less than what the buyer offers. In some neighborhoods there are so many foreclosures that it is hard for both Realtors and appraisers to find comparable properties to use for pricing. 

Prices have gone up slightly for the 4th month in a row. Buyers and sellers are asking if we have hit bottom.  I wish I could answer that question. For buyers who are sitting on the fence all I can say is that it has been several years since homes have been as affordable as they are today and at the same time interest rates are low and there is the $8000 tax incentive that expires at the end of the year. 

The median sale price for all of the homes sold this year, year to date is $97,500.  For last year the over all median price was $187,275. 

For more charts, numbers and graphs, which I know you all love. See the local market conditions category.

by Erik Hare

Most people think Minnesota is a pretty flat state for a good reason – most of it is.  Yet there are the rolling hills of the “Driftless Zone,” which the glaciers missed in Southern Minesota.  We also have the majestic Lake Superior shoreline of tall cliffs.  But we can’t forget the bluffs of the Mississippi River that start in Saint Paul and define the town – not for the great beauty of them, but because they are why Saint Paul is what it is.

It all starts at the end of the last ice age, when a tremendous amount of ice melted and rolled south.  A great valley was carved by this river which had its top at what we now know as either Cathedral Hill or Yorg’s Bluff on the West Side.  Over time, the glaciers finally melted and all that was left to feed the river was the rainfall that makes Minnesota so fertile.  The river retreated into a much narrower valley and became the Mississippi of today.

The floor of the ice age river that still exists is often known as the “Downtown/West End Shelf”.  It’s about 70 feet above the Mississippi itself, but the uncarved land of all points around it is another 70 feet or so higher.  The result is a rugged land that seems like a strange place to build a city.

The reason that Saint Paul is here, however, can be traced to these bluffs on the Mississippi.  Practical  navigation on the great river ends roughly at Fort Snelling, where the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers converge.  Above that there just isn’t a lot of water, which is why Josiah Snelling stopped where he did to build the fort in 1819.  In practical  terms, it’s one end of America.

The high bluffs at Fort Snelling are good for building a fort, but not much use for a city.  The closest place to the end of navigation on the Mississippi where there was a break in the bluffs, meaning you could easily get down to the river, was at the Upper Landing.  In the 1890s, Saint Paul was built from there.  This is what we now know as Chestnut Street, and the Lower Landing was just downriver a little bit.  All together, it was the last place you could build a working city on the Mississippi, at least until it was dredged.

The river was dredged, and eventually Minneapolis became possible.  Perhaps not all technology is a benefit, after all.  But Saint Paul was already well established, and continued to be the place where the great wealth of this land was shipped out to the rest of the world.  The railroads came in and built their tracks along the Mississippi, using clear, flat swampland along the shallow river.  Gradually, fill along the banks made everything we see down on the “flats”, creating a third distinct level for the city.

The bluffs themselves are often hidden by buildings and concrete, but they can be seen in many places.  The picture above shows the bluff just below Kellogg Park in Downtown, one of the best preserved natural bluffs in the heart of the city.  These bluffs are not only beautiful, they are why we are.  Saint Paul always has been a city defined by the bluffs of the Mississippi.

Demolition of the xcel energy high bridge plant continues. We can hear the jackhammers and heavy equipment from up on the river bluff. The stack was removed in June of 2008.  It seems that they are taking the rest of the building down one brick at a time and making a mess too.

I put my camera on the tripod and got out my remote, climbed into the chair only to discover that the camera's "auto off" function had kicked in.  Got out of the chair, changed the setting and tried again.  Proving once more that 'do it yourself'  isn't always the best way to go.

The chair is much bigger than I thought and I think a different camera angle may have worked better, but mission accomplished.  After all of these years I have a photo of myself in the green chair, and for some reason a bruised knee . . not pictured.