Mary and Mark Gores Prior Lake Real Estate Blog

The number of housing starts increased in September to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 658,000 units, according to a recent report by the Commerce Department. The agency reported that U.S. housing starts increased 15 percent from the previous month and 10.2 percent from September 2010. Single-family home starts, which make up 70 percent of ...

It is absolutely true that mortgages were too easy to get a few years back and now it is also true that lenders have, in my opinion, gone way overboard in what they are verifying and documentation they are requesting.  It is not impossible to get a loan and the media seems to be playing up all the negative news regarding mortgages.  I ...

Existing-home sales got back on an upward path in November, resuming a growth trend since bottoming in July, according to the National Association of Realtors®. Existing-home sales, which are completed transactions that include single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, rose 5.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.68 ...

The general public still seems to have some confusion when I have to explain to them that the tax assessed value of their home does not signify actual market value.  Sometimes it is close, but rarely can you rely on it to give you a good value for your home should you decide to sell it.  I don't want to go into detail as to ...

Zillow.com is a national website aimed at sharing information to help those in all facets of the real estate marketplace.  Zillow's core function is its "zestimate" tool where prospective buyers and sellers can type in an address and immediately see what the price should be for that home.  It will also tell you tax ...

We will never know when we are officially at the bottom of the real estate market in the Twin Cities until we are 6 months passed it.  That's just the nature of the data.  However, I've recently stumbled on to some data that shows if we aren't there now we are close enough. The data I collected is for three 12 month periods ...

This question undoubtedly comes up with every client we work with.  Even buyers ask what percent of list price can they offer on a home.  Unfortunately, there is no magic formula that gives us a predictable answer every time.  There are just too many variables; the biggest of which is how accurate the list price is to begin ...

In a word...Sorta?  I've been getting this question a lot recently so I thought I would dive in to the numbers to explain where things are at with flipping in Prior lake and Savage.  In 2009, I was able to identify 5 homes in Savage and 7 in Prior Lake that were obvious "flipped" homes.  The average sales price of ...

I stumbled upon an article today by Tycoon Report proposing 4 ideas to fix the housing mess.  In it they bring up 4 ideas they think might help to fix the housing mess we are in.  I certainly agree that what we are currently doing is not working very well and different ideas need to be explored.  I particularly liked the ...

Thursday, September 10, 2009, 10:42am CDT Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal - by Sam Black Staff Writer  The median home sale price in the Twin Cities was $175,000 in August, down 12.5 percent from a year ago, but continuing its run up from this spring.From March 2009 through August, the median sale price has grown from $154,125 to ...