Thinking about buying a foreclosure?

Come to my seminar at the Housing and Home Improvement Fair! I'll be there from about noon to 2, and the seminar is at 12:30PM. Check in at the NoMi booth for info.

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Join us at the 4th Annual North Housing & Home Improvement Fair!
www.northhousingfair.com
Saturday, March 21, 2009
10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
North High School -
1400 Knox Ave N
Your one stop shop!

Financial Counselors available all day!
How-to Seminars Resources for prospective home buyers
Talk with Contractors
Financial resources and education Resources for Home Improvement and Maintenance Resources for Re-Financing
Resources for Mortgage Foreclosure
Preventing Equity Stripping
Special Financing offers for those living in zip codes 55405, 55411, 55412 and 55430

Vendor displays will be available with reputable contractors, real estate agents, lenders and community resources to neighborhood residents.

This event is free and open to the public.

JOIN us for the following seminars presented by The NOMI Project:

Seminar #1 - Purchase Renovation:

~Imagine the future of YOUR home – overlook the “shortcomings” with a plan~ONE time YOUR loan; don’t charge the home improvement projects~Setting the stage; a timeline start to finish Purchase Renovation will be presented by Nicole Doran at 2:00pm -

Nicole Doran has been working in real estate for a total of 11 years. One of her passions is renovation financing. Nicole lived out her dream of renovating a home in the city; she knew before her real estate career that there is great power in community and economic development.

Nicole’s first home in the Jordan neighborhood of North Minneapolis was a purchase renovation. Not only has she been part of the revitalization of her community but, now she has a passion for empowering others to contribute in a similar way, through purchase renovation. She now lives in Willard-Hay.

Nicole is a Home Mortgage Consultant for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage and specialized in community lending including purchase renovation financing. Nicole is involved in North Minneapolis community and economic development projects. In addition, she is a masters candidate at Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs enrolled in the Executive program, “Community Economic Development”.

Seminar #2 - Buying a Foreclosed Property

~PREPARE-PREPARE-PREPARE! Assembling a team and marshalling resources
~EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED! What you will see and experience while shopping foreclosures
~NOW WHAT? Closing, technical issues, and what happens once you\'ve got the keys to your new palace.

Buying a Foreclose Property will be presented by Constance Nompelis at 12:30pm -

Constance Nompelis has been investing in real estate since 2000, when she bought her first vacant and foreclosed duplex in the Ventura Village Neighborhood. She has since bought and renovated both single and multi-family properties in Phillips West, Powderhorn, Central and Willard-Hay, and will soon begin a new project in Hawthorne.

Constance is also a Realtor with Century 21 Luger Realty, where she specializes in selling distressed, foreclosed and/or historic properties in Minneapolis. Five of the properties she purchased for her own investment were foreclosures, and she has sold numerous other foreclosed homes to her clients.

Constance has long been a proponent of connecting homebuyers to communities, and keeps up with activities, programs and individuals in a variety of neighborhoods across the city. She also serves as Housing Committee Chair in the Central Neighborhood, and is a board member of the Minneapolis Historic Homeowner Association.Constance blogs about renovation, preservation, and other local happenings and experiences both at http://thehealyhouse.blogspot.com and http://overnorth.blogspot.com. She currently lives in one of her renovation-project houses in the Willard-Hay neighborhood.

Hope to see you there!!

The Adventures of Johnny Northside... the MOVIE!

This is going to be awesome:

http://www.johnnynorthsidemovie.com/

OMG

I made an offer on another house today.

I'm not sure which scares me more: getting it or not getting it...

Okay, I'm back.

No pics yet, but for those of you who remember that this blog started out as a tale of my purchase/restoration of the cottage, I am pleased to announce that I am now also the proud owner of the dump next door!

(You can see a thin slice of its decrepitastic-ness in the picture linked above.)

And now for the surprising news: I am moving there - at least for a while.

By myself.

I am actually quite pleased to finally become a real Northsider!

Under $25,000 Home Tour

A while back I mentioned that there are a whole bunch of REALLY cheap houses for sale at the moment, many of which are located in North Minneapolis.

Remember? Very good.

Anyway, a couple of lovely gentlemen from Minnpost found this particularly interesting, and asked if they could see a few such houses. I obliged, and they made a video about it.

Here it is:

Minneapolis Advantage loan program

From the city web page:

"The Minneapolis Advantage loan program is a downpayment and closing cost assistance program to help rebuild the housing market in key neighborhoods that have experienced mortgage foreclosures.

The program offers a $10,000 zero-percent interest rate loan that is forgivable over five years to anyone buying a home in which they will live in these eligible neighborhoods (PDF). Additional assistance offered through neighborhood associations may be available to homebuyers purchasing homes in Harrison, McKinley, Folwell and Webber-Camden."

Loan applications will be accepted starting May 5!

This is an awesome opportunity.

Holy Cheap Houses!

A quick search on MLS Matrix this morning reveals that North Minneapolis currently has:

470 homes for sale listed UNDER $100,000;

234 homes for sale listed UNDER $50,000;

and 36 homes for sale listed UNDER $25,000.


This is mind-boggling.


Here's a photo of one from the third category:


I think it's pretty cute... especially considering the fact that it's about the price of my first decent (used) car.

So much for nobody wanting homes over north

Yes yes, I knowwwwwww, if you read the Strib or surf the web or talk to just about ANYBODY on the street on a given day about real estate, I KNOW they will mention the foreclosure rates in North Minneapolis.

Yes yes, mm-hmm. Indeed.

We've all heard... From Old Highland to Victory; from Willard-Homewood to Webber Park, there's a bootload of inventory, and price has crashed like some overweight ice-dam in a torrential spring rain. We've seen the google-maps, with their bazillion merging red dots.

But wait - let me tell you something you may not know:

In the past couple of months, I've gone shopping with several buyers in North Minneapolis. While we found the very inventory we expected, we also found something else: fierce competition.

Ye gads!

You mean somebody ELSE actually wants these homes? Not just us crazies?

You bet.

In fact, in the past week and a half, one particular buyer of mine (bless her poor, disheartened soul) has encountered multiple offer situations on no less than FOUR CONSECUTIVE HOMES on which we've written offers.

Coincidence?

Bad luck?

I think not. In fact, I think that as aggravating as this may be for my clients, it actually points to something very GOOD.

I think we're on the rebound...

Letter to the Editor of the Star Tribune

Just in case they don't publish it, I'll rant it out here too. So THERE, Strib!

Re: Foreclosures take a toll on North Minneapolis

Dear Editor:

When was the last time that the Star Tribune published some good news about North Minneapolis? Honestly, the doom and gloom is becoming tiresome. Furthermore, it's discouraging to those of us who live and work on the Northside, and are making a difference.

I feel sorry for good people who lose their homes to foreclosure. At the same, I am perplexed by the overwhelmingly negative and one-sided presentation of the situation. Specifically, why is no one talking about the fact that stabilizing (or decreasing) home prices make homeownership more accessible? When was the last time you could buy a four-bedroom home for under $100,000? Now they are readily available, all over North Minneapolis, and in some parts of the South side as well.

This is a buyer's market, and I sincerely hope (and believe) that savvy individuals will take advantage of the low prices and abundant supply. Many of the foreclosures in this city, as the article noted, are the result of careless landlords' speculative investments. Now is the time in which families can take those homes back and give them the care they deserve. This is how we build community, and it IS happening in North Minneapolis.

Crossing the Great Divide

Up until today, when I googled North Minneapolis, I consistently got this link at the top of the page. For those of you too lazy to click on it, it defines the area as "an African American neighborhood" and contains a big photo of a graffitied building with some folks loitering on the corner in front of a grocery-tobacco shop. Nice.

Thankfully, today's google search resulted in Positive Perceptions at the top of the page.

North Minneapolis gets a bad rap, but there are a few people working on changing that. It's going to be a tough road, considering the fact that this section of town has been slathered in stigma for my entire life, which -let's just say- represents a fair amount of time.

First of all, it's not a "neighborhood." North Minneapolis in fact contains at least 15 distinct and recognized neighborhoods within it. The term "North Minneapolis" simply describes an area, to the northwest of downtown, not to be confused with Northeast, Southeast/University, Downtown, etc.

Second of all, I want to just come right out and say that a big part of the metro area's distain for North has to do with the notion that black people are concentrated there. Sorry, but I believe that. Nobody wants to say it... but most of Minneapolis is whitebread. The suburbs are essentially whitebread. There is still a LOT of prejudice around these parts.

Having said that, I will now admit to a bit of predisposed thinking myself. For example, I never really questioned the idea that most of our metro's black people were over North. So much so that the first few times I went to work on my new house and saw a white person walking their dog or getting in their car I was like "Oh look, a white person! How novel!"

As an aside, the feeling was something ambiguous, and akin to my reaction to Americans when I was living abroad. I was curious about them, but not sure if I really wanted them around, since they might well embarrass me.

Anyway...

The whole point of this is that I, a life-long South-sider, just bought a house over North. I am going to renovate it and live in it, at least for a while. So, I thought it might be interesting to chronicle the experiences.

Who knows? It could be boring as shit. Or maybe not.

I trust you will let me know...