Update: A Call to Reduce the Speed Limit on Cty Rd. 116 Medina
So far 45 people have signed the petition to ask the city of Medina to work with Hennepin County to reduce the speed limit on County Road 116 between Hackamore and Highway 55.
More signatures seem to come in daily. Thank you for your quick response. I will present these to the Medina City Council on October 3, 2006.
Minnesota Ranked 43rd in U.S. for Home Price Appreciation
For those of you who love reading statistics, you’ll love this report from the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight also known as OFHEO.
This is a large report, but you can see the ranking of Minnesota on page 11 of the report. Minnesota is 43rd in overall price appreciation in the U.S. for the period from July ‘05 - June ‘06.
The report also has a number of other interesting items about the U.S. housing market. The important thing to keep in mind is that housing is a local issue. We might be heavily influenced by the media that resides on the coasts, but our market is certainly different than what’s found in New York, Boston, or Los Angeles.
Best Deal in Maple Grove - Lennar’s Bonaire Development - Wayzata Schools
Perhaps you’ve heard about some of the discounting and incentives many builders are using to encourage buyers to buy their new homes.
Lennar has now dropped the price of this Kensington model to $559,900 with Lennar’s incentives. It is located at 6338 Troy Lane, Maple Grove and is in the Bonaire masterplanned community. (The home is still priced at $589,900 in MLS). The home is scheduled to be completed in October. It has 4 bedrooms up along with a bonus room and has nearly 3100 finished square feet on the main two levels. Other similar homes are currently priced at $630-$640k. One home that is now on the market, sold one year ago for $666k and is now for sale for $689,000. It looks like it’s the same house that Lennar is selling now for $549k with the exception that the yard is complete and it has a deck.
It’s not often we see deals like this, but Lennar has a “take down” schedule where they need to have homes sold by a certain date in order to keep the project moving as planned. If you are looking for a home like this and are a shrewed buyer, you could wait to see how close they are getting to scheduled completion and take advantage of the discounting. Of course someone else might jump in front of you on this as they might feel it’s a great deal at the given price while you might have waited for further discounts…but that’s what makes a market!
Twin Cities Building Permits - Lowest Level in 7 years.
Builders continue to slowdown their building projects in the Twin Cities. The Builders Association of the Twin Cities publishes building permit statistics each month. The total value presented does not account for land and lot costs. Here’s the full press release.
By reviewing the permit numbers below, you can see that the builders aggressively ramped up production the past several years. The 2006 permit numbers are the lowest we’ve seen in the Twin Cities in at least 7 years.
As the builders slow down their building they are continuing to burn off their existing inventory of spec homes. This will help the overall real estate market as these key areas finally come back in to balance. We’re not there yet, but progress is being made when you see that the builders are reacting quickly to limit their exposure.
According to the Builders Association of the Twin Cities, “actual permits, planned units, and total value statistics for the first 35 weeks in each of the past eight years are as follows:
2006 – 5,492 permits, 9,402 units at a value of $1,878,004,244
2005 – 6,672 permits, 11,410 units at a value of $2,079,336,395
2004 – 7,447 permits, 12,191 units at a value of $2,165,316,415
2003 — 7,100 permits, 11,830 units at a value of $1,937,292,835
2002 — 6,875 permits, 11,002 units, at a value of $1,737,166,415
2001 — 7,138 permits, 9,891 units at a value of $1,572,829,730
2000 — 7,954 permits, 10,957 units at a value of $1,593,748,702
1999 — 8,099 permits, 10,965 units at a value of $1,484,550,433″
Medina Demographic Information
This site has a good snapshot of the City of Medina and the demographic profile of its residents.
6.0% Interest Rate for 30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage
With so much doom and gloom professed by the main stream media regarding the U.S. housing market, no one is talking about the fact that mortgage interest rates are back to 6.0% for a 30 year fixed! This is a fantastic rate and we are again near 40 year lows.
While the housing market has absolutely softened, it’s my belief that the media is causing undue anxiety for buyers as they continue to pump the bad news about housing sales. Remember, “if it bleeds, it leads.” The media knows it can get more viewers on television if they lead with real estate stories. Newspapers and magazines know they can sell more copies if they have big stories on the demise of real estate.
There will be pockets of problems across the U.S. and even here in the Twin Cities, but it’s hard to imagine real estate prices coming down much across the board.
The media has pronounced the death of real estate before. It also seems that it was just 4 or 5 years ago when the media said the consumer was tapped out and that they had maxxed out their equity. Granted, more people have used their home equity during this cycle to buy consumer goods and vacations, so does this mean we’ll see big drops in the median sale price? Call me a skeptic, but I don’t see it.
Now this does not mean that home asking prices shouldn’t come down. I think they should. If sellers and their agents would set a realistic price out of the gate, more buyers would be interested in their property. Now is not the time to overprice your property even by 4-5%. You should be priced just under the market if you want to sell.
Met Council: Twin Cities to add one million people by 2030
The Met Council has released it’s latest report on growth projections for the Twin Cities metropolitan area. They are now saying we are still on track to grow the 7-county metro by one million people by the year 2030. While that sounds like a lot of growth (and it is) it was only a year or so ago they were saying we would be adding one million people by the year 2020.
Lennar: 92% of Land Deals Renegotiated
Finance and Commerce published an article on September 7, 2006 entitled, “Big builders Backpedal as market softens.” In the article, Jerry Lagro, Land Acquisition Manager for Lennar stated that they have renogiated 92% of their land deals in the past year! That’s incredible and unprecidented.
It’s amazing how fast the land market changed. It was only a year ago that WCCO and KARE 11 were reporting land selling for $250,000 to $300,000 in Maple Grove. This of course was right at the top of the market for land. Since then, builders across the nation have been walking away from millions of dollars in options money that they had used to secure property for future development.
The fact of the matter is, land prices are more volatile than housing prices. Because land is the ultimate in leverage, when business is going well for the builders, they can afford to pay a premium for the land. When everyone wanted $800,000 houses, builders could afford to pay $200,000+ per acre. Now that builders want to build homes in the $600,000 range, land values will have to come down signficantly.
It will be interesting to see how the land owners respond. If someone could get $2 million for their land one year ago and they take $1.5 million for it, no doubt their friends and neighbors are going to say they gave it away.
A Call to Reduce the Speed Limit on County Road 116 in Medina
A Call to Reduce the Speed Limit on County Road 116 in Medina
Date: September 18, 2006
To: Medina City Council, City of Medina, Minnesota
Given the continued commercial and residential development in Medina between County Roads 101 and 116 and Highway 55 and Hackamore, ever increasing numbers of teenagers will be riding their bikes along County Road 116 in order to get to work at many of the businesses that are going in at the Target development.
The number of cars traveling on County Road 116 continues to increase as drivers from expanding communities in the northwest suburbs use this road rather than I-94/494. Additionally, the Bancor Group is proposing to develop the property adjacent to the Medina Golf and Country Club on the east side of 116. This proposed development has 48 twinhomes and one single family home. This will add to the traffic on 116. A 55 mile per road running in between Foxberry Farms and the Bancor Group project doesn’t make sense. It is a quality of life issue and is becoming a serious safety issue.
We, the undersigned, request that the City of Medina work with Hennepin County to reduce the posted speed limit on County Road 116 between Hackamore and Highway 55 to 45 miles per hour.
Sincerely,
John Murphy
P.S. If you would like a copy of this in a Word document so you too can sign your name to this, please send me an e-mail. I will bring this up during the open forum session of the Medina City Council Meeting on October 3rd, 2006.
New Development Proposed for Medina - 48 Twin Homes by Bancor Group
Foxberry Farms residents have recently been invited to discuss this development with members from the Bancor Group, a local Twin Cities development company.
If you recall, the Bancor Group was involved in the development of Wild Meadows in Medina.
It’s expected that these will be very nice twinhomes that they develop along the east side of County Road 116 adjacent to the Medina Golf and Country Club (formerly Rolling Green). There will be one detached unit for a total of 49 units to be built.
The meeting with the Bancor Group will take place on Wednesday, October 4th from 7:30 - 8:30pm at the Medina Golf and Country Club.
It’s been rumored that LeGran would be the builder for this development. Perhaps we’ll find out on October 4th who the builder will be.