Twin Cities Real Estate Blog

A perspective on the Minneapolis/St. Paul housing market

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Category: Opinion

Water Conservation – Cities Thinking Backwards?

27 June, 2009 (22:10) | Community Issues, Energy Efficiency, Info for Sellers, Opinion | By: Aaron Dickinson - Edina Realty

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!The Star Tribune had an article today discussing how the Metropolitan Council is pushing all cities to encourage water conservation.  The paper profiles Minnetonka and their efforts to curb usage by dramatically increasing water rates for excessive usage.  While [...]

Jim Cramer: Housing Market Has Bottomed

17 June, 2009 (06:40) | Community Issues, Foreclosures and Short Sales, Info for Buyers, Info for Sellers, Market Stats, Media, Mortgage Rates, Opinion | By: Aaron Dickinson - Edina Realty

Jim Cramer on Tuesday’s show stated that we’re at a housing market bottom nationally (article).  Below is the video of this segment.

While time will tell if Jim Cramer is right, on a local level I’m not ready to call a housing market bottom.  I do believe however that foreclosures have price-bottomed in our market.  Unfortunately I [...]

4.5% Interest Rates Hurt Housing

10 June, 2009 (12:28) | Community Issues, Info for Buyers, Info for Sellers, Market Stats, Mortgage Rates, Opinion | By: Aaron Dickinson - Edina Realty

In the last two weeks we’ve seen interest rates on 30 year fixed mortgages move from 4.5% to 5.5% (or higher) that’s a big OUCH.  This full interest rate point swing has meant that almost overnight, buyers lost well over 10% of their buying power.  Another way to look at it is housing just got 10% [...]

What Does “Not Disclosed” Mean Anyway?

8 June, 2009 (05:35) | Foreclosures and Short Sales, MLS Compliment & Criticism, Opinion, Personal Experiences | By: Aaron Dickinson - Edina Realty

Over 40% of the sales in the Twin Cities currently occurring are foreclosures or short sales, what we at MAAR call “lender mediated sales.”
The RMLS of Minnesota recently revised their fields regarding foreclosures and short sales (after a year of much confusion over the old fields) and we now have separate fields for in foreclosure, [...]

Twin Cities Real Estate Rollercoaster

3 June, 2009 (11:21) | Community Issues, Foreclosures and Short Sales, Info for Buyers, Info for Sellers, Opinion, Personal Experiences, Useless Ramblings | By: Aaron Dickinson - Edina Realty

Betsysoderlund wants the emotional roller coaster that is the Minneapolis real estate market to be less like the cork screw and more like the flume. – @betsysoderlund
This Twitter post last night sums up what many people in the real estate market are feeling right now.  Things seem to be going up, down, left, right and [...]

I’m P*ssed Off At Some REO(Foreclosure) Agents

19 May, 2009 (07:00) | Community Issues, Ethics, Foreclosures and Short Sales, Info for Buyers, Opinion, Personal Experiences, Useless Ramblings | By: Aaron Dickinson - Edina Realty

I try to behave myself, I try to keep my emotions tempered so that my opinions can be read and understood without coming off so harsh that people click away before they finish reading.  Well today I just don’t care.  This is a list (though not comprehensive) of the reasons that I’m sick and tired [...]

Twin Cities Multiple Offers Multiplying

1 May, 2009 (05:30) | Foreclosures and Short Sales, Info for Buyers, Info for Sellers, Market Stats, Opinion, Personal Experiences | By: Aaron Dickinson - Edina Realty

Ok so I’ve already discussed the surge of multiple offers this year… in fact I just talked about it two weeks ago.  In just the last two weeks I’ve seen even more examples of multiple offers and they are now becoming the rule on properties priced well.  In just the last 2 days I’ve had [...]