I found this picture that I had taken last year of St. Anne’s in Uptown Hamel. It’s a beautiful church that is getting ready to celebrate its 75th anniversary next year!
For more information about St. Anne’s click here for the web site.
Having lived in California for 9 years over the past 20 years of my life, I am always interested in what goes on with California real estate. Before it was more of a personal curiosity, but now it’s about watching business trends.
As I have mentioned before, it’s important that we in Minnesota keep our eyes on what happens in California. While all real estate is local, media is national and when this turns around in California, the news about real estate will turn around. Watch.
Sales continue to rise rapidly in Southern California compared to a year ago. Remember, in August/September 2007 was the initial body blow from the subprime meltdown. Real estate came to a screeching halt and has been trying to recover since then.  Sales activity has been the highest all year in SoCal this past October. Go figure.
The real driver of course is foreclosures, bank owned property, and REOs. The banks are now aggressively listing the property below market value to quickly get rid of the properties. According to DataQuick, about 51% of all closed transactions were bank property.
I’ll discuss the new bank strategy in a new post later this week.
The National Association of Home Builders released it’s monthly builder confidence level reading.  It came in at 9. Yes, 9. That’s the lowest reading by far since the association began tracking this data in 1985.
Once all the builders start throwing in the towel, the bottom will be in.  While their confidence level shows capitulation, their actions do not. There is still too much new construction throughout the country including here in the Twin Cities.
Check out Calculated Risk for an excellent visual on the builders confidence levels.
