http://www.TwinCitiesUSA.com/agent_files/rpsAdmin/2011%20Annual%20Report.pdf

STEVE:  Hi.  This is Steve Westmark.  Thanks again for watching my video blog.  And this week, we’re going to do the second part of the Annual Report on the Twin Cities for 2011.  This part I’m going to talk about what’s going on in lender-mediated sales.  And what that means is sales that banks sold or the thing that you probably heard in the market called short sales.  That’s where sellers sell their homes and they have more in mortgage against it than what they can pay in the bank or gives the difference.

This first graph that I’m going to show you is in the area of distressed homes and to see a review.  And what you’ll see over the last three years, in 2009, 10, and 11 is that 50% of the sellers, 50% in the Twin Cities, were some type of lender-mediated sales.  And that is why we’ve seen such a price pressure on properties in the market.  If you’ll notice on the graph that in 2010 we were at about 10%.  And in fact, if you go back to 2004, we were down around 2% for lender-mediated type of sales where they’re bank owned.

This has all come about because of the decline in prices, because of the mortgage crisis that happened in our marketplace.  The next graphs I’m going to show you are going to show you what goes on in the median sale prices according to the different types of sale.  So for instance, the traditional sale.  The owner who just sold outright was not involved with a bank, was not involved with a short sale, in 2008, the median sale price was 224,000.

We have seen a decline in the traditional sale so that in 2011 it was 200,000, but it’s nowhere near the amount of value that dropped.  Wherein short sales in 2008, they were at 175,000 and in 2011, they dropped to 31,000.  So a much more significant drop in price, so that even between the 2010 price on the traditional sale, which was a -8% about and under the short sale it was a 12%.

Well, the last graph I’ll show you on the median sale price in the area of foreclosure.  And in foreclosures back in 2008, the foreclosure homes were at 135,000, and this year, the median sale price is 108,000.  We saw a decline of over 14% from 2010 to 2011 in the median sale price in bank-owned properties.  Now the last thing I want to talk about, and you’ll want to download on my website this whole report, it does by city both area overviews and area median sale prices.

So depending on the area you are in the Twin Cities, it breaks it down to Bayport, Arden Hills,  Chanhassen, Dellwood, Wayzata, Mound, Montrose.  Whatever the city you live in, you can see what’s going on in your city.  Now I’m just going to pick one city and I’ll just pick one that’s close to me like Eden Prairie and show you what’s going on in Eden Prairie.  In 2011, just to go back, total sales in the Twin City marketplace were 41,400.  In the city of Eden Prairie, they had 755% of those sales.  That was an increase of total sales for Eden Prairie last year of 11%.

The percentage makeup of the sales, 2.5% of the sales in Eden Prairie were new construction; 35% of them were townhouses; and 35% of the sales were some type of lender-mediated sale.  That’s either a short sale or a bank-owned property.  The days on market for the city of Eden Prairie was 156, and the percentage of the original list price to sale price in Eden Prairie was 91.3%.  So if a person was asking 100,000 for their original sale price, it was negotiated down to about 91,000.

The next thing you’ll be able to download and look at is the median sale price.  So for instance, in the area of Eden Prairie, over the last five years going back to 2007, in Eden Prairie the median sale price in 2007 was 135,000.  And this year, the median sale price in Eden Prairie was 257,000.  The change it shows from 2010 to 2011 was about 3% and from 2007, it shows about an 18% decline.

Now each area has a different percentage in how it was hit.  But then there are other specific areas that maybe our third or fourth-tier suburbs like Albertville or Andover, and so for instance in the area of Albertville, they saw in a decline of price over the past five years of 35% versus the 18% that happened in Eden Prairie.  Now this is why when I meet with sellers we go through the statistics.  We look specifically to their area, their type of property, whether it be townhouse, condo, single family, and then you also look to see how much of the properties are lender-mediated sales and how did that affect the value.

Now I hope you enjoyed the opportunity to hear about some of these things.  Do take the time to download the information from my website on these different areas.  You’ll find it very interesting.  And if you’d like to meet with me more specifically on your property, please give me a call.  Thanks so much and make it a great day.  Bye.

http://www.TwinCitiesUSA.com/agent_files/rpsAdmin/2011%20Annual%20Report.pdf

STEVE:  Hi.  This is Steve Westmark with Counselor Realty.  Thanks so much for watching my video blog.  Over the next two weeks, I’m going to be doing two videos on this report.  It’s the Annual Report on the Twin Cities Housing Market for 2011.  Every year, the Board of Realtors and our associations come out with an annual report, and it’s a fairly large report.  And I’m going to try to give you the highlights from this report.

The first group I’m going to talk about in this report is talking about the overall viewpoints of what’s going on in the marketplace.  What I’m going to show you here are some graphs that are going to give you some overviews of what’s gone on since 2007-2011.  The first graph I want you to look at will be the graph that going back to 2007 we had 41,000 sales.  And in 2009, we went up to 45,000.  Well, in 2009, what happened there, we had sales that occurred because of a tax credit that went for the full year.

And because of that tax credit, it bought a lot of buyers into the marketplace.  In 2010, we dropped down significantly because after the end of April of 2009, the tax credit went away and all of the buyers that were jumping into the market dropped down.  And so we only had 38,000 for that year.  In 2011, we went back to more of a normal market.  There were no tax credits involved, and we were right at about 41,000.  And in fact, when you look back to 2007, that was about what we had in sales when there were no tax credits at that point.

One great change that’s happened is the next graph.  And it shows the inventory of homes.  And it’s really a silver lining to look at going into the future of what will happen in 2012.  In 2011 at the end of the year, we had 27,000 properties on the market, and we’ve seen a consistent drop really over the last four or five years so that in 2011 we’re back to 16,000 in properties that are on the market.

Now if you go way, way back to like 2003, 2004, 2005, that’s about where our inventory levels were at that point.  That is a positive silver lining to look at for 2012 in that our inventory levels are down and our sales are going on at about 41,000 and I would expect that again for 2012 so that we will begin to see a beginning of a firming up of prices.  The next graph and the one after that are going to show you what’s going on in median sale prices and what’s going on in average sale prices.

Back in 2007, the median sale price or the median sale prices, that sale that’s the middle of all of the sales.  So half the sales in 2007 were under 225 and half the sales in 2007 were over 225.  Well, in 2011, you can see that we dropped over the years going to 195 down to 165.  And this year, we’re at 150.  So half the sales in the Twin Cities were under 150,000; half were over 150,000.  The average sale price, which is the next graph you’ll see, is back in 2007 our average sale price was at 175,000.

That’s taking all the sales, dividing it by the total volume we had, and the average sale price was at 275.  We dropped in 2011 down to 193.  So we’ve seen a significant drop in our average sale prices and in our median sale price.  What should happen in 2012 as far as my prediction is that we will see average sale prices begin to increase in 2012 and median sale prices begin to increase. 

That is because of going back to that last graph that we saw prior that our number of listings on the market is significantly less with a continued number of buyers going into the market to absorb our sales.  The last thing that you’ll probably just want to download off of my website here from my video blog is going to be the historic review. 

And what that shows is it goes back to 1980 to show what’s going on both in the number of listings processed, the number of sold units that happened, the average sale price, and it will also show the total volume of what has happened in real estate sales.

The amazing thing is that going back to 2005, that was the largest sales volume in the Twin Cities.  And since that time, we have seen a decline in the prices and in the number of units so that our total volume in 2011 was only 8 billion in sales, where our max in 2005 was over 16 billion.  I expect to see both average prices and possibly unit sales increasing slightly in 2012, which will begin the change of what we’ll see in our marketplace. 

Thanks for watching my video this week, and listen to my video the next week where I’m going to talk more on other things that I found in our 2011 real estate in the Twin Cities.  Thanks so much.  Bye.

http://www.TwinCitiesUSA.com/agent_files/Assessment.pdf

STEVE:  Hi.  This is Steve Westmark with Counselor Realty.  Thanks so much for watching my video blog this week.  Coming in the mail, either you’re getting it or have gotten it, is your property assessment that’s coming out for 2012, which will affect your 2013 taxes.  Many people look at those and then just kind of throw them away and don’t think much about it.  But it does have an effect on how much you’re going to pay in your taxes.

For instance, it varies somewhere about 1.2 to 1.5% of your assessed value of what you’ll pay in taxes.  So if it’s on a $100,000 assessment, the tax could be from 1,200 to 1,500.  And if you have a property that is over-assessed, and that is one of the things that we’ve run into over the past few years is that our property values in the early 2000s kept going up, up, and up and the cities kept assessing higher, higher, higher.  And now with the decline in values, the cities are not keeping up with their assessed market value.

And so today I want to talk to you about how you can get your taxes in line with a property assessment appeal process.  The assessment appeal process happens basically this way.  You will get something in the mail that comes from your city.  The city gives what they believe is the assessed market value.  You need to make a determination is that a fair market value or have they over-assessed it.  Many cities have and I’ve met with clients where I’ve helped them through the process to get their property reassessed.

So that if in fact you have a property that’s assessed at 600,000 and the current sales are only showing 500, you go to the city and ask them to reassess it.  And that is the first part of the appeal process.  You go into the city or you may hire a representative like me to go into the city and appeal the process and say I believe that you’ve over-assessed my property.

And what I do in those types of situations is I’ll bring in a sale or multiple sales that have happened somewhat like yours in the period.  And what they look at is the November of 2010 to November of 2011 to determine what your assessed value for 2012 is, which will affect your 2013 taxes.  I hope that’s understandable.  Now if you go to the city and the city doesn’t agree with you and I don’t agree or we come to a conclusion that they haven’t been fair in looking at that, you can take it to the Hennepin County Board of Appeal and Equalization.

And we’ll scan this in to you.  This happens to come off of the Minneapolis city’s website that explains the appeal process.  But you appeal to the Board of Appeal and Equalization.  And generally, once you get there, it’s either appealed and you get the property value the way you want it, or if they don’t do it properly, you have one more appeal and that’s where you appeal to the Minnesota Tax Court.  Now if you have a property that’s 300,000 assessed or less, it goes to the Small Claims Division and is a very simple process.

If you have an assessed value of 300,000 or more, you go to the regular division of there.  And that can be used for any type of property type, whether it be a residential property, which I’m basically talking about, or commercial, or industrial, or those types of things.  If that is not acceptable, and I’ve never seen anything go beyond that, but I know people have dealt with this and this is where you probably get an attorney involved. 

And that’s where you own the IDS Center, somebody feels it’s worth $100 million and the last sale is 50 million, you’re going to take it to the Supreme Court and ask for a fair judgment on the property.  Well, that kind of gives you an overview of the property assessment appeals process.  As you get those, if you see something that comes to you in the mail and you don’t think that it’s right, you can either do it on your own or you can call me and we help for a small fee. 

We’ll walk you through the process and we would like to participate in the tax savings of 25% in the next year taxes and then you get what goes on in savings in the years after.  Hopefully, that’s been a very interesting thing to you today and helps you understand the appeals process for your real estate taxes.  Make it a great day.  Bye.

Cyberstars 2012

Surviving Your Serengeti – Stefan Swanepoel

                7 Skills to Master Business and Life

1. Wildebeest – the dominant species of the area. The tenacity of never giving up.
2. Lion - the killing machine, a plan, a strategy, with focus. Strategic! The Tactician.
3. Crocodile – enterprising, independent, creative, determined, industrious, entrepreneurial. Enterprising.
4. Giraffe- gentle, quiet – the glue that keeps a company together. Graceful – good natured, compassionate, gracious, caring.
5. Mongoose – risk taker, he seeks out change. Risk Taking – courageous, confident, venturesome, resourceful – the Explorer
6. Cheetah – the fastest and most efficient. Efficient and effective. Efficiency- effective, focused, agile, resource, maximize. The Proficient One
7. Elephant – communicate, empathy, understanding, sharing, good listener – Communication – The Conversationalist

You can go on line with an app to take a test to see what animal you are?

Now what?

1. Discover your skill
2. Master your skill
3. Survive your Serengeti
4. Understand others – learn their skills
5. Thriving – succeed

Mobile Trends

1. Tech Trends – Look for mass adoption of, ubiquitous & universal products that are omnipresent, thereby creating continuous, and connectivity to everything.

5 billion phones were sold in 2011. Proliferation of personal information that anyone can know.

Only 210 million TV’s

`Global connectivity

“It’s a fundamental shift in society as a whole”

Mobile life, health, payments, learning, real estate

2. New generation of people that don’t know the past generation thought
3. Apps – 2008 – 500 apps, in 3 years 300,000apps
4. Mtagging- coding system   - anyone, anywhere, anytime, anything, anyway
5. Three top innovations – Dynamic grids, Intelligent Sensors, Automatic integrating device
6. Three top challenges – Global mobile virus,” Always on” generation, Pervasive privacy
7. Top three shifts – Mobile advertising surpasses web advertising, Mobile currency replaces physical currency, Permanent connectivity totally redefines business
8. Top 3 opportunities – A new era of knowledge, Emergence of “everyware”, Redefining the home buying transaction

www.retrends.com

Brenda Wade, Ashton Gustafson, Rob Levy, Sue Adler

Buyers’ leads from the web start looking 12 months out. Must build drip campaigns that last for at least a year. Then it is call, call, call, & call. They require numbers on the lead form. Have to make at least 5 calls.

Ashton is using Tiger Leads and then putting into Real Pro Systems. The lead comes and then it is what you are going to do about.

Organic SEO – you do it through content with community sites. Doing video along with the community pages. A community page of a community page. He put four videos on the each community. Predefined searches, neighborhood information.  www.roblevy.com

Stealth sites – a new system to make the SEO, a sub host of the domain. Any Realtor can use a Hud home. Take a picture on your own.  Adding video to your email drip campaigns.

Lead generation of Tiger Leads – great pictures and great maps.

New custom website for Sue Adler www.sueadler.com . She is using boomtown and a mobile app from diverse solutions. Google generation does not want to talk to someone. You need to come to being of help to them.  They don’t want to be sold, they want to be helped.

What you show them stuff that they can’t find online. Charts and information that is greater than what you can generally find on the web.

Leads coordinator – 10% is paid – call coordinator to keep making calls. One lead – 3 calls a day for 3 days to get a live person.  They want to see houses. They want freedom to search.

Focus on basics to follow-up with expireds, having a plan, accountability

$500 prelist on taking listings. Cushioning the blow to listing of taking a listing.

Taking the Military Specialist Designation

Consumer Electronics Show – iTwin, remote access Sans Cloud; OlloClip -3-1  iPhone Lenses; Pentax Optio WG1 camera

Free Mobile Property Listings App – Sven

Community Video Tours –

iRig Mic- a mike that plugs into your iPhone and then post

iPad Presentation buyer and seller presentation – have Sven send

Zite.com news portal that lets your push to Twitter, LinkedIn

Apps – prompster pro, easy release, mint.com, flipper (cash flow), open home pro

Print media – The Week – upper end marketing all over the country

Action plans – 60 of them, make them as flow charts. Plans for listings, closings, prelist, post-sale, broker open house, and open house – make them as you run into something that would be a system.

Fiverr – what you can get done for 5 bucks

Wayback machine – Google it

Go Pro Hero 2 – video for interviewing – it is about $350.

Virtual assistants – join me with virtual on the desk top, went international. $6 per hour.

Google business apps – using checklists

Google alert your top 50 referral services

Target marketing – high end 4 place piece to 8000000 assessed value, expired mailing to people, staying focused on fewer.

Google voice phone number – then got call ruby.com to answer your phone for you and where to direct it to. Send message to voicemail, text, or email.

SEO - youtube.com and blogging with 12 blogs a month, using word press. Post video on youtube.com and linking it back to your website you will go in higher SEO.

Predictive analytics – smart prospecting – Real Agile.  They did do some focusing on the short sale type where you look at when they bought, what the mortgage is to look for short sale.

My CyberOffice – collaborative with a team of technology. Water cooler breaks. eLearning Lounge

Paperless Pipeline – working to be totally paperless.

Juice pack power station – mophie – amazon.com

Main gear – helps you to develop a computer the way you want it.

10 days of pain – converting internet leads, after 3 to4 listings that they look at and then have them sign in. Emails send that is about them.  Then send houses according to what they were looking for.

LinkedIn released cardmunch app

Simple life – book – a great book for life balance – Tom & Art Raner

Learning the functionality of VOIP system service. Most come with.

Sparkpeople is an app for weight loss

Knotes is an app as way to personalize how you interact

Drbott.com

Pole Pixy – put your camera on a pole that gives you elevation for your photo

Price bracket email by saying properties above and below

Secret homes – put your listings that are before you put on before on MLS

SkySlope – document storage- digisign is part of it – Debbie Yost

Berkeleyside – photo by doing a 3^rd party

Google analytics to look at address and see where they come from

Setting a graph showing days on market compared to list price

Don’t be a Realtor commodity

Facebook webinars – it costs $99 per month

Appzilla2 – an app you should look at

Sign and send – you can take your finger and sign

Mkp.org – New warrior training adventure

Powerful questions – can bring clarity, provide a paradigm shift, support integrity, identify core values

What do you want me to continue doing? What do you want me to stop doing? What do you want me to start doing?

Listing presentations -  In an ideal world, what would your sales process look like? What are you looking for in a Realtor? What of anything I’ve said or not said that would make you feel uncomfortable listing with me?

Buyer questions – Which house will align best with our family goals? Which house will nourish our family best?

Daily questions – What am I willing to do today to support my goals? What am I grateful for? What will nourish my soul today?

Additional powerful questions – What is my body telling me? What do I already know that I have forgotten? What is the core of my fear? Anger? Jealousy? Who can benefit from a kind word? What 3 things do I most want to complete today? This week? This month? This year? This lifetime?

For short sale have the buyer apply with the lender that is short sale. Low appraisals and problems from lender side streamline themselves.

Animoto – professional videos for virtual tours

Listings2leads.com

Emailmeforms.com – to make a form

Talkatone – connect your google voice, text and call for free, call and text from our iPad, protect your privacy, save on your minutes and text

Form Tools PDF – go paperless, import pdfs and create templates, sign form, email form

GoDocs

AnyMeeting.com

Plaxo and snagit for cards

Gretchen Papineau, Terry Moerler, Peter Richmond, Seth Dailey

Get the people into your office

1. Find out their needs and then do the consultation.’
2. They are not a real buyer until they come in the office, let me tell you how I work, come into my office for 15 minutes to show some tools, setting expectations with the customer.
3. Buyer consultation with both buyers, parent, lender and yourself
4. Things to have in the consultation – get to know them, buyer questionnaire, www.readytobuysmart.com ,do the DISC, funnel  approach, reverse for when do they want to move. Managing the buyer’s expectation of lending, showings and the like, working with a wish list, learning the DISC with each customer then learning to communicate with them how they want it, you need to see if you are going to be able to control
5. When you have a difficult client that doesn’t work, you find the proper referral person for the customer.
6. Use statistics to help buyers make proper decisions –
7. Asking for the order – tell me the top 3; yes, no or maybe list; analysis of what is working.

Pat Wattam, Char MacCallum, Sven Andersen, Shane White, Paul Lewis

Setting Seller Expectations – Home Selling Manual – Char

Listing Plan that is an Action Plan

Automated email plan – 10 campaign emails that remind them of the unique things that you do.

Using all the photos the MLS will let you.

Photos are sooooooo important that we do marketing!

Virtual staging –virtual staging by ilaria bario

Tag them in a YouTube in the video of the house. Need to confirm that seller agrees.

Photography – Paul makes a very strong effort with sellers for photos

John Morley, Char MacCallum, Tim Burrell, Dawn Thomas, Darrell Isaacs

LeadingAgent.net –CRM , making a system

There is nothing you do that you can’t use drop box

Fathomcafe.com

Workflow automation – working your plan

Google docs

Closing checklist differ – REO, Short Sale, Traditional

Shane White, Chip Neumann, Pat Wattam, John Morley

Chip uses Quantum Digital for his career book. He does it all in one book for buyers & sellers.

Chip does a lot of pictures – he puts on power point to just show them but doesn’t give out

Shane is staying front of seller after you take the listing. Getting information to them as automated as possible, listing hub for them, email Realtor.com reports, finding things that gives them the info that relates to their property. Touching the seller by showings, emails, mail, calls. Works with absorption rates to help find the proper market position.

John – effective listing digital presentation. 

1. Initial phone call
2. Home Tour (Team member does)
3. Prelist book they look at before coming in
4. Home Consultation
5. House sale management (Manage the market with housing coordinator)

Pat – Her listing presentation

1. Marketing bag with treats
2. Send electronic version of prelist
3. Prelist package – making it colorful  ( Her and the team, market plan, family)
4. Personality of getting the listing is by having enthusiasm about their house.
5. She works to get the listing that day, but seems that she needs do good follow-up

Dawn Thomas – whatever your profile with consistency. Your content, your branding, your look.

                Blog- from word press

                Yelp – Dawn works really hard at building her image. She sends out a letter to buyers and sellers.

                www.SiliconValleyandBeyond.com

                Keep your business hours off so that when people search from other parts of the world, without            hours you get stuff over the world and different time zones.

Beth Jaworski, Chip Neumann, Sven Anderson, Tammy Hines

Send hand written card – it is really unique

Send floral arrangement –

Leave chocolates when video/photo

Send sellers a weblink of all the websites to look at listing

Color coded dates of an office calendar as well as calendar in Outlook

Constant contact maintained with client

Take your Yelp & LinkedIn and ask them to rate you

Move day – send 2 pizzas and soda

CMA’s to buyer and buyer orphans

Thank you letter when you get the listing

Drip campaign with videos for buyer – Real Pro

Chip is very plan directed – he has been very creative in using multiple plans

Cheryl  Scott Daniels, Brenda Wade, Shane White, Seth Dailey, Stephanie Evelo

Dropbox –

+google –Docs, voice,

Obeo – virtual tours, can redecorate like virtual tour

Umail – transcribes your voice mail into an email that you can then forward – YOUmail

Life scribe pen  - take notes and it records at the same time – Live Scribe, need a special pad, that turns it into a PDF

Join.me –

Sanebox.com – it is like googles priority email

Evernote – communicates to phone and computer,

Soundnote – unlimited reporting, it great for recording, record listing presentations, record notes from seeing the house. Audionote – much like soundnote that you can put into dropbox. Mentalnote –

Keyboard for iPad – Origami – you can get at the Apple Store

Dr.bott – purchasing Apple stuff

Newtrent.com – Battery boost or go to Radio Shack

4s iPhone – location reminders – go into reminders to tell you when you are in a location

PDF printer –

Charger device from Brookstone 4 way power charge – it is multiple

Personal apps to followup after closing – truxmaps

Snapshot postcards –

Sketchonline – floorplans

My fitness pal – App

Kryptonote

Nellisgroup.com/listing-agent-selection                                buyer-agent-selection   homesearch       solutions

Gotowebinar –

Apps – Prohdr for photos; colorsplash ; dermander- ; withingscale;

Chevy Volt is the perfect techie tool.

Matchgeocode – maps

Magicplan – floorplans –take multiple pictures around thehouse

Comicbook – takes your pictures and turns it into a comic book

Dropbox – it is a life saver, have all your files in one place

Nitropdf –

Bose – plays off the iPod- SoundLink

Photoappstransfer

Email stationery – 4 separate stationery

STEVE:  This is Steve Westmark, Counselor Realty.  Thanks for watching my video blog.  Today, I’m inviting in Jane Hampton.  She’s with Accessibility Design, and she helps people with their housing design ideas.

JANE: Yes.  Nice to be here, Steve.  Thank you for inviting me.

STEVE:  Jane, I’m glad to have you on my senior series talking about how we can help people in their housing decisions as seniors.  Explain a little bit about what your company does in helping seniors with accessibility.

JANE:  Steve, thank you for asking that question.  At this day and age, we have an awful lot of seniors across the United States that are reaching that point when they are thinking about doing something with the house.  They’re facing senior issues, be it a little bit of back pain or possibly a stroke, or something of the sort, and their house needs to accommodate them.  So what we do at Accessibility Design, we’ve been in business for 20 years meeting the needs of the public as they go through life.

So therefore, we start our services out with some consultation and assessment of their home and what their needs of the future might be.  And then we begin the design process, putting things on paper, showing design ideas, and then helping transform that house so they can stay put.  Aging in place is our target.

STEVE:  Many times I’m called out by a senior and they do have some issues and they’re trying to decide what to do, whether they should stay in their home or buy a one-level townhouse or a condo.  But they love their home so much they’re trying to decide what to do.  What do you do to help that senior or the seniors along with I assume their children?

JANE:  Mm-hm.  Good questions, Steve.  Most of the time, it is the children that call us.  The parents might be 65 and older, but those individuals that reach out to us are saying, “Help me help my family” help my parents in this case.  So what do, again, is to wrap our arms around the entire family.  And we become a guide for excellent decision making.  We explore solutions. 

They could be staying in their house and tweaking it.  It could be using your services and going and looking for another home that might be more cost effective to remodel and purchasing that and remodeling it.  It could be building a new home.  Or in some cases, the right decision might be finding a senior condo or a facility of that sort, purchasing it, and then tweaking it.  They’re all viable solutions and it all depends on what is necessary.

STEVE:  Well, Jane, I know that there’s a lot of choices for people to look at as they’re going through their project and there’s a lot of things that need to be managed, like even walk-in tubs or you know all the different things.  How do you help people through that process?

JANE:  The process can be very involved, and I don’t mean to put too much emphasis on this, but in this day and age there’s an awful lot of new products on the market, new contractors who want to get in and help people, and my heart goes out to the people, the families that are trying to find the right decision makers to help them.  At Accessibility Design, we’ve been in business for 20 years and we are the design and project managers. 

We guide the ship.  We build a team of not only interior designers, product recommendators—if that’s such a word—and product specialists, project managers, occupational therapists, and architects.  So we come in at the very beginning and we find the right solution, be it architectural, widening a door; be it introducing a product, be it a grab bar or an elevator; or simply maybe teaching a person how to do something different.  

A walker going straight through a door might be wider than if we can teach them to go sideways.  So in tweaking this we can maintain access, safety, independence, and of course beauty.  This is their home.  This is how we raise dignity.  This is how we have life.  Right?  So now we come up with the right plans and then we put it out to bid.  And then we go into the vendors; and we go into the contractors; and we do this purposely to separate the design from the excellent hammer swingers and the fantastic product vendors.

By doing so, we can get the best of both worlds and a high level of counsel and fiduciary responsibility and excellent decision making.

STEVE:  Well, Jane, it’s phenomenal what you do, and how’s the best way for people to get a hold of you to talk about this?

JANE:  You can reach us many different ways.  Phone is always preferred because I can get a better feeling for your situation.  And phone number is 952-925-0301.  And then we have a wonderful very informative website with photos of our projects as well as bios of all of our team.  And that’s AccessibilityDesign.com.

STEVE:  Thank you.

JANE:  Thank you.

STEVE:  Hi, this is Steve Westmark of Counselor Realty.  Thanks so much for watching my video blog.  Today, I’ve brought in Bonnie Clark from the Twin Cities Senior Housing Guide.  Welcome, Bonnie.

BONNIE:  Thank you.

STEVE:  Well, Bonnie, I ran into you in a seniors group that we belong with networking and helping seniors with their housing situations.  And you do this terrific guide on housing.  Tell us a little bit about what goes into this Senior Housing Guide and how does this help seniors in their choices.

BONNIE:  Well, the Twin Cities Senior Housing Guide is a listing of all the senior housing in the 11-county metro area.  It includes everything from totally independent housing where there would not be any services—although you might bring services in on your own—to memory care and residential care homes that people would need assistance available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The book does not include nursing homes, however.  If you wanted information on nursing homes, I would suggest that you call the senior linkage line, and the number is in the book.  The book is comprised of grids that list everything county by county.  And then there’s also an index where you can look up a property if you want to.  And it does have a few resources and information actually stated in your own home.  It also has information on reverse mortgages.

STEVE:  Well, many times, I’m meeting with seniors or I’m meeting with seniors and their children and they have a lot of questions about this.  I may even bring this magazine.  But what are some of the things that maybe you can do to help the seniors or the children in their choices and directing them?

BONNIE:  Well, I do direct service.  So if you ever have a question you can certainly call me.  But one thing you need to ask yourself is how much can I afford to spend on housing.  You’d be surprised the people that don’t know what their exact income is.  But you need to sit down and figure out what you’re exact income is and how much you can afford to spend on housing.  And then secondly, what services do you need?

You know, be honest with yourself.  None of us want to admit that we’re getting older or that we might like some meals or might need some help.  Nobody wants to admit that.  But be honest with yourself because you want to find the right place for yourself, and if you can’t stay there, and you can’t bring in services, if you get set in one place, then that means another move.  And that’s probably the third thing to think about is what happens if I need more services and they do not offer it?  Am I willing to move again?  So probably those three things.

STEVE:  Well, I think this housing guide is just great opportunity for people that are looking at senior housing.  How is the best way to pick this up or get it in the hands of people today?

BONNIE:  Well, the book is free at libraries, senior centers, some real estate offices.  Counselor Realty.  They could pick one up here at Counselor Realty.  But probably the best place though is senior centers.  Libraries tend to run out of them.  They can also call me.  I do send the book out, but I do charge a nominal fee if the postage is high.  But if they call me at 651-690-3141, just make sure if I’m not there to leave a message and I’ll call you back.  But I’d be happy to send one out.  But I do charge a small fee, whereas if you just pick it up, it is free.

STEVE:  And Bonnie, thanks so much for coming in today.  You have such a great product here, and it’s so helpful to seniors.

BONNIE:  Thanks.

STEVE:  Thanks so much for coming in.

BONNIE:  Thanks for having me.

STEVE:  Hi, this is Steve Westmark.  Thanks so much for watching my video blog this week.  This one of the items that I have in the area of senior housing that I wanted to talk about, and today I brought in Steve Garver to talk about reverse mortgages.  Welcome, Steve.

STEVE G.:  Thank you, Steve.  Thank you for having me today.

STEVE:  Well, Steve, when people hear reverse mortgage, a lot of people don’t really know what that is.  Can you explain simply what a reverse mortgage might be and how a customer might use that?

STEVE G.:  Steve, great question.  A reverse mortgage is giving a senior the ability to access the equity in their home and do that without incurring mortgage payments.  And the qualification is simply are you 62 or older and is this your primary residence?  And there are no restrictions on how you’re going to use that money that you’re accessing from your equity.

STEVE:  So Steve, how do people use a reverse mortgage?  I’m sure there’s multiple ways that they can do it.

STEVE G.:  It’s as varied as the number of people that knock on the door, Steve.  And it really comes down to you either use it as a refinancing tool or you can use it as a purchase tool.  And the question with purchasing is: Where are you going to age?  Are you wanting to age where you’re at or somewhere else.  And what the reverse mortgage was doing is given the senior the opportunity to be able to have options in where they want to age.  They may say, “Well, I really want to age in place and they want to use it as a refinance too.  And in that situation, are you using it because one of earliest ones was “I’ve got to have this safari.”  And she took her safari at the age of 72.

And it could be to the opposite extreme where maybe they’re facing foreclosure and they’re using the reverse mortgage then to take away that threat of losing their home and anything in between in terms of maybe it’s to put funds into a loan that will help their kids, the grandkids go to college.  It could be that they want to have that second home, and this provides the opportunity to have that second home and not have any mortgage payment associated with it.

STEVE:  I’m sure there’s a lot of curiosity both of the senior and maybe even the senior’s children about how these work?  Do you have a counseling process and how does that counseling work?

STEVE G.:  Steve, great question.  What’s important for that consumer who is considering a reverse mortgage as a financial tool for themselves is to get enough of the right information to make the right decision in their best interest, and that starts typically with me and informal consultation.  We’re going to set down.  We’re going to understand where are you, where are you trying to go, and is this a potential financial vehicle that will help you find a solution to your problem or your challenge or your need.

And secondly, once we’ve reviewed that then the next step is a formal consultation with a counselor certified by FHA.  That’s an individual who understands this product also extremely deeply and very well and also then is going to look at not only the reverse mortgage.  Are there other options available for that senior that they’re aware of and they can share with that senior?

STEVE:  So as a person goes through this, there’s obviously trusted advisors that they have involved in this process.  What are some of the advisors that maybe a person would have involved in that decision process?

STEVE G.:  Steve, that’s an excellent question also, and I start out when I’m doing my initial consultation, I will ask if they have children that they would like to have present, trusted advisors that they would like to have come in and join them as we’re discussing reverse mortgages and how it might be a solution for them.  And it’s simply reaching out and saying No. 1, the realtor is a great potential person to have present. 

And I also encourage that they have a banker or a CPA or an elder law attorney or financial planner.  Who are the people that they would like to have to help them and advise them and not coming directly from me?

STEVE:  Well, thanks so much for coming in today, Steve.  As you can see, there’s a lot to this, but it’s also a great alternative for helping seniors.  What’s the best way for people to get a hold of you to talk about reverse mortgages?

STEVE G.:  My direct number is 612-636-9578.

STEVE:  Thanks for coming in Steve.

STEVE G.:  Steve, thanks for having me.

Hi.  This is Steve Westmark with Counselor Realty.  Thanks so much for watching my video blog.  I’m going to update you on what’s been going on in the Twin Cities real estate market through the end of November of 2011.  The most current pending sales show that we’re up by about 31% over last year at this time, and that’s over the last three months.  And you’ll see that on this chart.

The next chart I’m showing you is showing the inventory of homes, which is a really positive indicator of what’s happening in our marketplace.  We in fact have about 20% less listings today than we had on the market last year at this time.  What that is doing is it’s beginning to firm up the inventory so that you’ll see that currently we’re at about 20,000 listings.  At the peak of our marketplace in 2008, we had over 30,000 listings.

The next chart I want to show you is the closed sales and comparing what’s gone on in the past years as well as comparing against other months.  You’ll see in the closed sales in 2009 in November there were 4,000.  In 2010, there were 2,500.  And in 2011, we have moved up in sales to 3,000.  As you look at year to date, you’ll see that there have been 37,000 sales compared to 34,000 sales in 2010.  So we do have an increase in the market in the number of unit sales that have happened.

The next three charts I’m going to show you all have to do with pricing.  The first one is showing median sale price year to date.  You can see that the prices increased in 2010 slightly and that so far in 2011 we’re down by about 10.3%.  The next chart is the average sale price, which shows that in 2009 we were at about an average price of 200,000.  Then we increased by about 6% in 2010.  2011, we’ve dropped back to 195,000.

The last chart that you’ll see as far as values and I think is a really good thing to look at, is the dollar per square foot.  That in fact in 2009, we were at $105 a foot; 2010 we were at $105; and this year we’re at about $94 a foot.  I believe that what we’re going to be seeing going into 2012 is kind of a natural easing into some kind of increase in pricing versus what we had seen in 2011.

The last chart I’m going to show you is the area of distressed sales versus the traditional sales and show you what went on in November of this year.  In 2009, we had less bank owned and less short sales.  And you can see that over the last 2010, 2011 that our bank-owned sales were about 30% and that our short sales are increasing slightly in percentage points from 11% to about 13%. 

The strength in our market that’s going to have to happen, and we hope to see as we go into 2012, that the beginning of the lender-owned will become less and that the short sales will begin to have a turnaround so that our traditional-type sellers will not be affected in values as much by that type of housing.  Make it a great year in 2012. 

Look forward to our update at the end of January where we’re going to talk about the whole year in advance and in fact will be broken into two different sections to really explain what happened in 2012.  Make it a great day.  Thanks.

Hi.  This is Steve Westmark of Counselor Realty.  Thanks so much for watching my video blog this week.  I’m really excited to announce that I was able to add onto my website seven specific consumer videos that were done by David Knox [00:14].  They’re all free for you as a consumer to go and look at.  And in the coming weeks, I’m going to have you meet with David Knox and know what he gives as far as an overview of each one of those.  But let me just give you what the seven videos are.

One is how to price your house to sell.  It’s an excellent video on helping people determine how to price their house right.  The second one is preparing your house to sell.  In preparing your house to sell, we’ve said in our marketplace here, it’s a price war and a beauty contest, and learning how to stage your house is a way to help sell it better.  Third one is a short sale option, and we’ve talked about short sales in the past, but he does a great job in talking about what short sales are all about. 

The fourth one is selling your house for sale by owner.  Some people want to do that type of thing and it does explain to you how you can do it by owner, and sometimes about 20% of sellers are able to do that and you can learn how you could do that.  The fifth one is expired listing, and it explains to people who have had their home on the market and didn’t sell how do you experience success your next time around so it doesn’t expire.  Then the next one is selecting your real estate agent, and it shares with you how do you go through in choosing a real estate agent that’s best going to work for you in the situation that you’re in. 

And the last one is the eight steps to buying a home, and this is especially good for the first-time homebuyer helping them understand what goes into the process of purchasing a house.  Take the time to look at the link that I put on this website here or on my blog and you’ll be able to go and see those.  And if you’d like to see a preview of any one of them, you can look at it; put your name, e-mail address, and phone number in; and you can watch any of them for free.  Well, make it a great day, and thanks for watching.

STEVE:  Hi, this is Steve Westmark of Counselor Realty.  Thanks so much for watching my video blog this week.  Well, this is Christmas week and as we go all the way through to the next Monday, we will have celebrated Christmas on Sunday.  And I just wanted to wish you and your family a very, very Merry Christmas.  Make it a blessed time.  Make sure that you enjoyed your family and how ever you celebrate these holidays, just make the time to bless them, spend time loving and caring for them. 

And for me and my family, we will be celebrating the birth of Christ, and we’re so grateful for that gift that came to this world.  And I just wish you a very, very good Christmas week and thanks for watching.  Bye now.

STEVE:  Hi, this is Steve Westmark.  Thanks so much for watching my video blog this week.  This week, I brought in a gentleman who has been doing winterization of houses for over 30 years, and it’s Don Houlding of United Real Estate Services.

DON:  Good morning.

STEVE:  Don, I’m going to ask you questions about winterizing of a home because homes with plumbing can have problems.  Why should a person have a home winterized as they leave for a period of time?

DON:  Steve, I’ve learned over the years as a licensed plumber that homes can freeze up in Minnesota’s cold weather without ever even having the heat fail.  I do recommend to my customers even when they call and say, “You’re not going to do the job” have somebody winterize the property.  They need to be protected in case that damage occurs because when a pipe bursts in a home and the water’s on, the damage can be catastrophic.

STEVE:  Houses that aren’t winterized and have a problem like that, sometimes you’ve told me that people should really check their houses for insurance.  What are the things that they look for in their insurance or they need to ask their insurance agent?

DON:  Absolutely, it’s critical to call an insurance agent and find out if the home is vacant for more than 30 days will their homeowner’s insurance remain in force.  If the home is vacated for more than 30 days, it’s very common that the homeowner’s insurance actually cancels, and there’s no advance notice of that.  So people leave thinking that even if there is a problem they’re covered when in fact, they’re not.

STEVE:  So Don, I know you’ve run into some problems in the past where a house wasn’t winterized.  What have you found as far as some of the costs that have happened and the downsides that could occur?

DON:  Well, Steve, in the 30 years I’ve been doing this, the most difficult thing I still run into is to walk into a home where the pipes have broken and the water was left on.  The damage can be to hardwood floors, to carpeting, to floor joists.  Sheetrock becomes soaked.  I’ve seen it fall off of basement ceilings.  Windows become frozen solid, and it takes weeks, sometimes months to dry the home out.  The expenses run into the tens of thousands of dollars to put all of that back together again.  And then it’s difficult to say that everything is back 100%.

STEVE:  So in a nutshell, Don, what happens when you go to winterize a house?  What are the things that you do that helps the house get winterized?

DON:  Well, the first thing we do is turn the water off at the source.  If there’s a water heater, we remove it.  If there’s a well, we turn the power off to it.  All of the plumbing is drained down, hot and cold water.  We do add non-toxic antifreeze into places where water would collect, usually things like toilet bowls, traps, drains, dishwashers.  That way there’s a little bit of water left, but they do have antifreeze in it, so it won’t freeze if the heat does fail.

I do install a temperature alarm in the houses that I winterize so if the heat fails, we still want to get in there and get it fixed even though the plumbing’s protected.  It’s structurally hard on a home to let it freeze.  So we need to get out there and take care of that furnace and get it going, and we don’t frost on the walls and ceiling.  That’s pretty much in a nutshell it.

STEVE:  Well, thanks so much, Don, for coming in today.  And what’s the best way for them to get a hold of you to get work done?

DON:  I can be reached in my office.  Phone 651-452-5261 or I’m happy to be e-mailed at urescodon@aol.com.

STEVE:  Great.  Thanks, Don.

STEVE:  Hi, this is Steve Westmark.  Thanks so much for watching my video blog this week.  I’m going to kind of update you on what’s happening in the real estate market with the statistics that have come in through the end of October and what’s going on in our marketplace in the Twin Cities.  As you look at the pending sales that have gone on over the last 90 days, you’ll see that in fact our sales are up by about 35% over last year.

So as you look at this graph, it’ll show with the bolder line on top how many sales have been going on compared to last year at this time when it was a much weaker market.  And we’ll continue to see a stronger market because of the strength of our marketplace going into 2012.  The second chart that I’m going to show you is showing what’s going on in the inventory of homes.  And the inventory of homes also has a positive thing going on in our marketplace in that our inventory is about 16 to 18% less than where it was last year.

So there’s fewer sellers having to compete as the buyers have begun to increase.  The next chart that you’re going to see is where it shows the makeup of the percentage of the sales and how it’s affected our marketplace.  That in fact, over the last three years, 60% of the sellers are traditional type sellers; 30% are bank-owned sellers or foreclosure; and 10% are short sale.  And until we start seeing a change in that, we won’t start seeing the changes in the area of prices firming up.

So the last two graphs I’m going to show you are what has gone on in the median sale price and what’s gone on in the price per square foot market.  And what you’ll see in the property types is that in single-family homes we’ve had about an 8% drop in the last year; in townhouses, about a 14% drop; and in condominiums, about an 18% drop in the median sale price.

The next chart that you’ll see if the chart that shows the price per square foot where in the single-family it is about a 9% drop; in the townhouse and twin home, about a 13% drop; and in the condominiums, about a 12% drop.  So we need to see a stronger market.  The stronger market will come about by having a lower inventory, which we’ve already seen and also seeing a little bit of the health coming back in more buyers in the marketplace. 

I look forward to giving you a survey coming into January of what happened in the whole real estate market in 2011, but have a very good day and thanks for watching this update.  Have a great day.  Bye.

STEVE:  Hi, this is Steve Westmark, Counselor Realty.  Thanks for watching my video blog this week.  I’m going to give an update after statistics have come in through the month of September and kind of show you what’s going on in our Twin Cities real estate market, also adding some new charts that will give you some new concepts in how we can look at the real estate market.

The first one I’m going to show you is what’s called Closed Sales Chart.  And you’ll see compared to last year in 2010 we had 2,800 sales in September, and this year we had 3,500.  Now remember part of the reason why the sales were lower last year was because of the tax credit ending in April.  So when you look at year to date compared to last year, we’re up about 4%.

So we’re pretty much about the same kind of real estate market as 2010.  The next chart I’m going to show you is called the Median Sale Chart, and you can see here what’s gone on in the differing areas.  The median sale price for single-family homes a year ago were at $185,000 and now are at $172,000.  In the townhouses, the median price was at $140,000 last year, and now it’s $120,000.  And condominiums last year were at $124,000 versus $102,000 this year.

But then the next chart that you’ll look at will show you the different types of construction status.  You’ll note that the traditional home sales still have dropped slightly by 9%, but new construction has gone from a median sale price of $239,000 up to $280,000, a 17% increase.  The next chart I want to show you is where you look at dollar per square foot.  And as you look at the screen, you’ll see here there’s a variation in each one in dollar per square foot, both in single family being down by 9.2%, townhouses by 12.9%, and condominiums by 12.4%.

So we continue to see the downward pressure in the marketplace even though these interest rates continue to be so strong and low in the marketplace.  The next chart I’ve shown you in the past is Housing Affordability, and that is a mixture of both interest rate and price range of houses.  As you saw from the most recent charts, you’ll see that the prices have dropped maybe 8% to 10% in the Twin Cities over the last year, but now we’re looking at interest rates at 3.5% to 4% for a 30-year fixed mortgage.

And that’s why you’ll see in 2009 we were at 199 housing affordability.  We increased by 9% in 2010.  And then in 2011, we’re at 237 for housing affordability, which means the buyers with their median income, that they can buy more house for their dollar in today’s marketplace.  The last chart I’m going to show you is a new chart that just came out showing the makeup and percentages of the types of sales that are going on in the marketplace.  The first chart shows the traditional sale.

Now that’s a type of owner who is not underwater, is just selling his house as a traditional sale, and you can see that over the last three years we’ve been hovering about 60% of traditional sales.  Now normally in the 2004-2006 market, it was more like 90%.  And so we need to see the traditional market become stronger.  What you’ll notice in the lender-owned market is that over the last three years 28% in 2009, 30% in 2010, and back to 28% in 2011.

So that has remained as bank-owned properties about the same percentage.  And that last one of makeup of sales is what is called the short sale, which I’ve talked about in the past.  And that’s where owners have gone and put their homes on the market, sold them to a buyer, and then approached their bank to approve of doing a short sale and forgiving them a portion of their mortgage that they owe.  And you can see that it’s gone up slightly from 8.5% up to about 11.3% in this year’s makeup of sales.

That kind of gives you an update on what’s going on in the market.  It’s going to continue to be a good market with great rates, great prices, and for buyers a wonderful time to take opportunity in purchasing a home in the Twin Cities.  Make it a great day.  Bye.

STEVE:  Hi, this is Steve Westmark.  Thanks so much for watching my video blog.  Generally, on my video blogs, I’m talking about real estate.  And the only thing I’m going to be talking about in real estate today is about your house that you’re going to be spending your Thanksgiving in.  This last Sunday, the church I attend did a service called a Blessing Service where they had people come forward if you wanted to and be blessed 

 And as I sat and contemplated in that service, I thought about this Thanksgiving time that we’re going to be coming up on, and the time when you have family around you and the dinner table and the time that you could be thankful, but also give a blessing to your family.  Whether it be your children, your grandchildren, blessing your parent, blessing your spouse, take this time to make a great Thanksgiving to your family, but also, reach out and bless them by just looking at them and telling them how much you appreciate what they are and what they mean to you with no expectations on them other than just loving them and blessing them. 

Have a great Thanksgiving, and thanks for watching.  Have a great day.

STEVE:  Hi, this is Steve Westmark.  Thanks for watching my video blog this week.  What I’d like to talk about is a fall/winter market and what to be able to expect as both a home seller and a home buyer.  In the fall market, you’ll find that the total number of unit sales happening November through the month of January is usually about 20% less in the number of buyers that purchase compared to the top months of April, May, and June.

Those are our three biggest months.  So many sellers feel with less buyers out looking in the marketplace to take their properties off the market.  And so that does happen with the holidays.  And we do find that the amount of properties on the market compared to that same time is 20% to 25% lower.  So the mix mainly stays about the same.  But what I do find in the marketplace is because there’s fewer buyers out looking by 20% and the sellers that are out there that really must sell, the seller works very, very hard at finding their price position for the buyers that are in the marketplace.

And so we find some of our best pricing in real estate over a year period of time in that November, December, January period of time.  So as  buyer in the next three months, if a couple of things remain the same, number one interest rates remain at this excellent rate of 3.5% to 4%, and sellers work to position their properties at some of the best prices, you’ll find your greatest affordability in the next three months.

I hope that gives you a little bit of an insight into what a fall/early winter real estate market is like.  Make it a great day, and thanks for watching.  Bye.

STEVE:  Hi, this is Steve Westmark, Counselor Realty.  Thanks for watching my video blog this week.  This week, I’m bringing in Brad Nyberg with Quality Radon to talk about radon and how to deal with it.  Welcome, Brad.

BRAD:  Thank you.

STEVE:  Many times, I have buyers who want to have a radon test done with their inspection, and what is that inspector looking for and what does it mean once they’ve done a radon test and it comes back with whatever readings it has?

BRAD:  Well, initially, the inspector is going to place a radon test device most often electronic in nature and so it’s a data-gathering machine.  It gathers radon data hour by hour and minute by minute and will present the inspector with a graph, a table and an average of radon levels throughout the test.  What the inspector is trying to ascertain is what are the levels of radon gas on the property; are they excessive; are they moderate; are they low; and should action be taken.

STEVE:  Well, I know there’s measurements that come out.  There’s something like a 4.0 whatever.  Why don’t you explain a little bit about what these measurements mean and what changes are going on in the marketplace with that.

BRAD:  Certainly.  Currently, the EPA’s action level is 4.0.  What that really means is an amount of radiation per liter or volume of air.  And at 4.0, the EPA has said that that is a level that’s not acceptable and 3.9  is really a passing grade.  Well, what it really comes down to is how much radiation to you want to be exposed to.  Now that standard has been in place for over 20 years, and it’ll be changed in the next couple years to be 2.7 or less.

And so ideally, you want your home to be as low as reasonable, as low as possible.  And so the 4.0 level came out to be what is achievable for a radon mitigation system.  And the World Health Organization has come out two years ago this month with a recommendation that all countries reduce their acceptable levels to 2.7 or less.  Now to give you an idea of what that really means to a person, what is the risk of cancer for example due to radon exposure?

Well, if you lived in a basement environment.  Minnesota.  Basement bedrooms are quite common.  Maybe you have a basement bedroom and you were downstairs let’s say for the sake of discussion purposes 24 hours a day at a reading of 3.9, that’s the relative equivalent of smoking 7.8 cigarettes per day, so darn near half-a-pack-a-day smoker.  Now Minnesota’s a high state.  They’re the fourth highest in the nation.  So the average home here has a reading of 5.4.

Well, at 24-hour exposure, that’s 10.8 cigarettes.  You really double the number to find out what your exposure equivalent risk of smoking would be to your lungs.  We find homes in Minnesota that are as high as 120 and average 5.4.  Some as low as 0.3, 0.4 without a radon system.  The good news is they all can be corrected.  So the highest reading we found recently is 120 in Stillwater, Minnesota, and that was a couple of months ago back in August.

And we brought that down to 0.5.  So what it really means is that a radon system is very successful at reducing radon gas in a home.  We talk to many buyers and consult the buyers and tell them if you like the house, that’s a house you want to buy, not to worry.  It can be fixed.

STEVE:  So generally, what happens is when I have an inspection the radon thing comes back at a higher than good level, I give Brad a call and I have Brad go out and do radon mitigation.  So Brad, when you do radon mitigation, what are you doing?

BRAD:  Well, Steve, what we’re doing is installing what’s referred to as a sub-slab depressurization system.  Quite literally, it is a vacuum system from the ground into the house.  So the inspector measures the issue.  The issue is radon gas in the air.  The real problem is there’s radon gas building up under the house, seeping into the house, and thereby exposing the owner, the occupants to radiation.  So what a radon system really is is quite literally a customized vacuum system for the ground under the house.

What happens is in most cases is we come in, we cut really a 5-inch hole through the concrete slab in the basement, normally in an unfinished area—utility room, laundry room, storage room—and ideally next to the attached garage.  So we cut this 5-inch hole through the slab, removing about a 5-gallon bucket or so of material.  So now we have a little pit we created under the slab.

We’ll insert a 3-inch PVC pipe into the opening, reseal the concrete so that it’s airtight around the pipe, then route that pipe up along the foundation wall, run through into the attached garage, run that pipe up along the garage wall to the attic of the garage, mount a very high-quality radon blower upon that pipe, then have that pipe exit out to the roof.  You’ll apply flashing and insulation materials and caulking and sealants.  And we also do a nice job of sealing cracks and openings in the slab of the basement floor and seal the sump cover.

So we power that system up.  The fan’s going to spin.  It creates a vacuum in the pit we created, and that vacuum causes the majority of ground gases—be it methane, moisture, radon, what have you—to that point of collection and it’s discharged outside where it quickly dissipates.

STEVE:  As you can tell, Brad is really knowledgeable on radon and helping people deal with this circumstance.  So what’s the best way for people to get a hold of you, Brad, to have radon mitigated on their home?

BRAD:  Well, the best way to call me is by phone, 612-521-3580 or actually, I love e-mail because then I have the information in front of me; I can respond quickly.  And so my e-mail address is Bradradonman@gmail.com.

STEVE:  Thanks.

STEVE:  Hi, this is Steve Westmark.  Thanks for watching my video blog this week.  This week, I want to talk a little bit about stucco and the problems that can happen with stucco.  As I meet with sellers who own a home with stucco, we have to deal with the situation has there been problems or are there currently problems with the home with stucco.  Now homes have been built through the years going back way before the 1900s where they had the stucco exteriors and really had no problems with stucco up until recently.

And some time in the 70s, early 80s they started changing how we insulated and did things on homes and how we sealed up the walls.  And as the walls got sealed up with stucco on the outside, the houses didn’t air out the way they used to coming through the walls.  And so you started getting moisture inside the walls.  And so what I recommend to sellers and to buyers who are buying a home with stucco that’s built from 1980 or after is they get a stucco inspection.

And in future weeks I’ll have a stucco inspector come in and talk at what they look at.  But what they’re looking for—and then they’ll get into the specifics—is moisture that are in the walls.  And if there is moisture there, has it created mold or has it caused rotting in wood or different types of things like that?  From that point, if we find that those things need to be corrected, when I meet with a seller, I suggest that before we even put the property on the market that we bring a mold mitigator or a stucco mitigator in to deal with the moisture problems.

And sometimes, it has to deal with changing of insulation, correcting of wood problems, correcting of window problems that happened from that.  And I’ll also have a stucco mitigator in the coming weeks come and talk about how they go through mitigation.  The sad part in some of the stuff with stucco is that if it was done improperly, especially in the 90s there were problems with it in the codes that were put out by the state of Minnesota, there have been things to have to correct the stucco that have run from $50,000 to over a half a million on some of the larger homes.

But many times, these stucco problems can be dealt with on homes with less than $10,000; $20,000; or $30,000.  But they do have to be dealt with and it does have to be corrected.  Hopefully, this has given you a little bit of insight into problems with stucco.  Watch in our coming weeks as we talk about having stucco inspections and then stucco mitigation.  Thanks for watching this week.  Make it a great day.  

STEVE:  Hi, this is Steve Westmark.  Thanks so much for watching my video blog this week.  I decided to bring in a roofer that knows lots about roofing with a company in Hopkins called Grussing Roofing.  And this is Guy Grussing.  Welcome, Guy.

 GUY:  Hi, Steve.  Thanks for inviting me.

STEVE:  Guy, people ask me when do you go ahead to replace a roof.  What are things that people need to look at or what do you have to look at to help them determine when they need to replace a roof on their house?

GUY:  That’s a good question, Steve.  Generally, as a rule of thumb, roofs generally last around 20 years.  If it’s around 20 years, telltale signs of the roof will be signs of aging.  You might be losing shingles; granules may be falling off.  Some of the shingles might be curling or cupping where they’re raised up and just looking old.  And that’s a good time to get your roof evaluated to see if it’s time to replace.

STEVE:  There must be good times and bad times to put new roofs on.  What are the best times to put a new roof on your house?

GUY:  Well, Steve, that’s a real good question, and there’s two different seasons.  You have a summer season and a winter season.  In the summer—generally it’s best to put it on spring and fall.  Sometimes in the summer when it gets really hot days, the shingles can get scuffed because the asphalt gets really soft from the temperatures and walking on it.  And as far as when it gets too late in the year, generally late November, December when the snow starts flying, shingles will get brittle.  If you walk on them, they can crack.

It’s hard to work with and it’s just the quality of the craftsmanship just isn’t there when the temperature drops and the people are working on the roof.

STEVE:  We have buyers that go out and look at properties and we see roofs that have a certain type of algae or some type of darkness on the roof.  What causes that and how can that be corrected?

GUY:  Steve, what causes that is algae growth that grows under shingles and it wasn’t a really big part of this area until about 10 years ago.  Since then, the shingle manufacturers, the new shingles, a lot of the designer shingles they’ve incorporated with granules, copper, and zinc that actually wash when it rains and kills the algae growth on it because it has become such a bunch of a problem. 

It’s more of a cosmetic problem, but if you do have it on your roof right now, there’s roof cleaners that have a bleach compound that you put on the roof.  You just spray it on, let it sit for five minutes.  Then you take a hose and rinse it off and that will kill the algae growth.

STEVE:  Of course, in Minnesota we have a lot of storms and with those we get hail.  How do you help people deciding how to deal with hail damage on their roofs?

GUY:  Steve, the best thing to do is when you first start with a roof is to look at soft metal.  Anything that’s aluminum is a good way to determine the size of the hail and the damage.  Before you even get on the roof, you can look at the gutters and downspouts and see if there’s denting in them.  And then if you have aluminum fascia, see if there’s any denting on that.  If there is any denting, there’s a good chance that there might be possible damage to the roof.

When you get on the roof, what you’re looking for are circles or kind of a round circle where the granules are actually removed where the hail has impacted the roof, knocked the granules loose, and you’ll see asphalt.  And determine whether they’re new or old.  If the asphalt is black, then it’s a newer hit and as it grays and gets dirty over the years, that means it’s an older hit.  And you look for that, and the insurance company will determine how many per square feet, usually anywhere between 5 and 15 before they will replace the roof.

And if you do see some damage like that, it’s good to have a roofing consultant come out and then call your adjuster to get the final approval for the roof replacement.

STEVE:  Well, Guy, thanks so much for coming in today.  He obviously has a lot of knowledge.  I know his dad was in roofing and he’s gained all the insight from him, but how’s the best way for you to be contacted to talk about getting a roof on someone’s home?

GUY:  I can either be contacted by phone at 952-935-0557 or Grussingroofing.com.

STEVE:  Hi.  This is Steve Westmark of Counselor Realty.  Thanks for watching my video blog this week.  Well, I’m going to kind of give you an update on what’s been going on in the real estate market through the end of August of this year.  And you’ll be able to see also from some of these charts what’s even gone on into September.  The first chart that I’m going to show you is the pending sales.  And on the pending sales, it shows in the last three months this year versus last year.

And you can see that our unit sales are up by over 40% over last year.  But remember, last year at this time we had gone through the tax credit earlier in the year, and that’s part of the reason for the strength of the sales.  But that’s a very positive thing going on in the market, and it’s continuing to have a sales pace somewhat like 2008.  The second chart that I’m going to show you is called the Inventory of Homes for Sale.

This is also another positive thing that’s going on in the market.  In past years, our inventory got very, very large.  And with that larger inventory, we ended up having more days on market for properties and also just a longer period of time in order to sell the house.  So you’re going to see that currently we have 23,000 homes on the market where last year at this time we had 30,000 homes. 

So with good strong sales going on, which are kind of at 2008 sales levels, which were average, but then the inventory dropping, we’re seeing a better marketplace this fall and hopefully should be some firming up in prices.  But the last thing I’ll show you are three different charts.  The three charts are median price, average sale price, and price per square foot.  And on the median sale price chart, what you’ll see there is that in 2010 at this time, we had 171,000 and in 2011 we’re at 152,000.

So we’ve seen about a 10% drop.  And in the average sale price chart, it shows that in 2010 at this time in the month of August we were at 211,000 and currently we’re at 195,000.  The last chart that you’ll look at will be the price per square foot, and you’ll see that the average price per square foot in 2010 was at $106 a foot and today we’re at $94 per square foot, which are about 11% less.

So as you look at those charts and see what’s going on in the prices, we’ve seen the prices drop somewhere between 7% to 11% over the last year.  What we’re seeing though is that it’s kind of evening out and we’re kind of bumping along at the bottom of the market.  Our greatest hopes in the real estate market in the Twin Cities is the strength of jobs.  If we can see the job market change, and of course you’re hearing that throughout the media, that will bring consumer confidence into the marketplace.

And with these phenomenally low interest rates, it turns out to be just a great time to be buying for a buyer in today’s marketplace.  Thanks for watching my update this week and make it a great day.