You may be hearing some buzz on the recent book called The Big Sort . It’s by Bill Bishop with Robert G. Cushing and it’s about how we Americans are selecting to live in neighborhoods that socially, politically and economically mirror ourselves. And it’s a pretty recent phenomena - just over the last 30 years.

I first heard about this book in an article in the Economist and later on Public Radio. At first it seems really innocuous - I mean, why wouldn’t I want to flock with my birds of a feather?

But what the data say happens when we don’t circulate outside our cultural norms are prejudicial misunderstandings, political extremism (as in states, counties and cities identified by stark primary colors) and - as we’ve experienced more and more in recent years, legislative deadlock. (This read made me feel better about sending my children to a more segregated school this fall - but that’s another post.)

And it’s not just political wonks and college professors that have taken notice. It’s even going on in marketing the Twin Cities. Mspmag.com put out an edgy-looking relocation magazine last fall called, You Are Here.

It provides a handy sidebar to tell you the numbers of Democrats vs. Republicans per neighborhood. If you’re interested in the guide you need to contact the magazine directly or the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors for a copy as you’re not going to find it at Barnes & Noble or on the web. (Update, MAAR says they only sell to members, but they may be able to spare a copy or two. Please email them at  info@mplsrealtor.com.)

And to be straight up, I write for the OTHER big relocation guide in town, Twin Cities Living.

Thanks Jon W. for emailing me about the bad link!

Lucie B. Amundsen is a shelter writer and contributing editor to Cabin Life Magazine. She writes about the Twin Cities from the Twin Ports and will be attending the Minnesota State Fair this weekend to get her annual fill of seed art.

For the past month or so we’ve stuffed all our moving boxes into our tiny attached garage and lived in denial. Honestly, we’ve just been spent by the whole process. But somehow we found motivation when my parents called to say they were driving nearly two thousand miles to visit. Ekks!

So we posted all the boxes on this great site called freecycle.org. It’s a giant network made up of 4,566 groups across the globe - so there’s bound to be one in your area. People post items available for free to keep good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer and membership is free.

We had responses quickly and I’d say we got rid of 90% of our cardboard. It’s nice to think that someone will get some use of it and we now have a garage for fall.

Of course, it’s also a great place to FIND your boxes. We scavenged a lot of our moving boxes from our local liquor store, but at the frantic end we did end up buying some from the local UPS store - it cost a small bundle. So with a little pre-planning, you can save some green and be green, too.

If keeping it earth-friendly during your move is important to you, consider going with a mover that uses clean energy and fuel efficient trucks like at gogreen movers. They can even hook you up with moving pads that are made from 100% recycled cotton.

To see a Star Tribune story with some positive real estate news really got my attention the other morning. It made me realize HOW LONG it had been since we had some good news in the industry.

The story was based on the research of the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors (MAAR) which stated that July had a modest spike in signed purchase agreements - a 6.2% increase over last year. Add to that the general decrease in home inventory (8.2 fewer listings than this time last year) and it could mean that change is underfoot in the marketplace.

Of course, this is one baby step along a long road of recovery, but hey - it’s Friday and I’m going to roll with the good news. Humor me, o-kay?

While I was reading the press release from MAAR, I caught their tag line at the bottom stating that they’ve been around since 1887. Honestly, I thought it was a typo, but a quick search showed that hey, they really have been selling dirt since the beginning of dirt.

I put most history in perspective to its relationship with Laura Ingalls having recently read the entire series to my children - she was 20 years old that year and had just given birth to her daughter Rose outside of DeSmet, S.D.

The first real estate office in Minneapolis, 1957. Simon
Synder and William McFarlane are believed to have
formed the city’s first real estate company in 1855.
(Photo: Minnesota Historical Society)

And if we’re going to talk Laura Ingalls, I have to mention that our Twin City Treasure, The Guthrie, will have it’s opening night for Little House on the Prairie production. It stars Melissa Gilbert, television’s original half-pint, as Ma and the play is slated to take a 40-city tour after working out the kinks here in Minneapolis.

Apparently Twin City audiences are considered sophisticated and a good place to hone a show - how flattering is that? Some tickets are still available to what will surely be a buzzed about production.

So, this one goes out to my colleagues in the business.  I think that I have figured out why no one trusts us.  I am serious.  I really figured it out.  My theory is that it is the whole picture on the business card thing.  Who’s bright idea was that anyway?  It is absolutely the dumbest thing I have seen since putting your face on a bus stop bench.

You don’t even keep them current.  I had a closing recently with an agent who does a huge amount of business from one of the top three RE companies in the twin cities.  I had not had the chance to meet her until closing, but I did have a nice photo on the business card to put a face with the name.  Always nice right???  Wrong.  She didn’t anything like her photo…which must have been from like the early 90’s given how much she had aged.  (By the way, she looks better now than she did then.)

You see - this sends a subminal message to people.  If someone gives your card to a friend or co-worker as a referral, and then they meet you…and you are not what they are expecting…that isn’t a good thing.  It may not be on the surface, but the potential client may be thinking that there is just something that they don’t like about you.  Can’t put their finger on it, but there is something that aint right about that guy…or gal.  (I will say that for the most part, men are the worst offenders of this)  Kind of makes sense.  We  are too lazy and/or cheap to buy new business cards and take a new photo. 

But there are only two options here: 1.)  Not trustworthy.  2.)  Lazy & Cheap.  My guess is that it is the latter.  For the most part, many of the more successful people in the industry are very trustworthy - which is why they are successful. 

But, it is that portion, and it is large faction, that leaves people with that no so fresh feeling after they meet them and they look nothing like the business card photo.  So, here is some advice to all my friends in the business…update the photo!  Or just take it off the business card.

Oh yeah, and call me back.

When times are tough, our creative juices really flow…

The “no money down” home purchase seems to be heading the way of SUVs and Hummers as Congress pulls in the reins on lending. Of course, there’s a little bit of time to get in on it - ’til the end of September (see below) - but after that it will be scrimping and saving just like our parents did.

I’ve been listening to pundits talk on the radio and TV about this topic. There’s this general idea that Americans are now soft and incapable of the sacrifices needed to pull together 10,000 or several tens of thousands to commit to a home.

But I’m optimistic. Truly.

Like $4 gas, it will wake the creative spirit in us that has been dormant during easy times. I have been seeing the most creative vehicles out there - mountain bikes with little handcrafted motors, homemade street vehicles that look like go-carts. It’s pretty cool, actually.
It used to be we were considered one of the most ingenious people on the planet. At our core, if you scratch the surface, we’re a nation of tinkerers leading in invention and innovation. And what we run best on is adversity - which I often tell my kids is the root word of adventure.

I’m not pretending there aren’t tough times all over with foreclosures and the like, but it could be the impetus Americans need to reconnect with their creative, can-do roots.

Of course, there is still an opportunity to jump the zero down train - and below is an email I got about how the Webdigs model really can take you farther.

Now - September 30, 2008

• 0% down! Ask us how.
• First-time Home Buyer Tax Credit
  (up to $7,500 from the U.S. Government).
• Plus: 2/3 commission rebate from Webdigs.

Buy it. Sell it. Dig it. Webdigs.com or 1.888.WEB.DIGS

These three programs can help first-time home buyers to buy a home with $0 down, get a tax credit and a rebate when using Webdigs. Here is an example:

$350,000 purchase price

“This is a tremendous opportunity for first-time home buyers. But you need to act now because the Nehemiah ($0 down) program expires on September 30, 2008. If you are in the market for a home or know someone who is, call us for details. Our Webdigs real estate agents and mortgage advisors can answer your questions and get you started. Many experts are beginning to say that we are at the bottom of the real estate market, so it is a great time to buy,” wrote head Webdigg’r, Rob Buntz.

When I find an MLS listing that stirs my burning real estate desire, I grab onto it like a pit bull with lockjaw. Suddenly I get lost in a micro-obsession mode and need to learn everything I can about the area.

For my last move, it wasn’t convenient for me to jump into the car and drive 2+ hours every time my housing lust flared. Instead I jumped on my trusty Mac and did my snooping virtually. (Which as a home seller I can say is much appreciated. My friend Kelsey’s house has incredible gardens, as you can see from her MLS photos, and she has had more than one party impulsively let themselves into her privacy-fenced backyard to have a closer look around. That’s a bit creepy.)

A few of these snooping features I’ve mentioned in previous posts and some of them are brand new. I thought it would be handy dandy to bundle them up in one spot to serve as a kind of stalker training manual. Of course, we must use our power for good, not evil.

My first stop as a Nosy Rosy is always Google Maps. I wrote about it a while back regarding the controversy surrounding private communities not wanting their homes pictured on the web, more specifically on Google’s Street View. As I said before, it’s a cool feature that allows you to see photos from various street addresses. And if you’re obsessed with a home that’s for sale, being able to “drive” up the road on your computer can really help you scratch that itch. One caveat is that the street numbers aren’t always perfect, but usually there’s a front photo on a MLS listing that can help you ID the exact house if the numbers fail you.

After I’ve i-driven the street a few dozen times, then I’m ready to go to walkscore.com. This site takes any given address, looks up the walkable businesses, libraries, schools and other amenities like parks and kindly places them on a map for you. It then renders a score based on how many locations you can walk to and add to your quality of life - not to mention avoid gas consumption and being skinny like our EU cousins across the pond. The house I still own in St. Anthony Village scored an impressive 72 and is considered “Very Walkable.” You can see it’s score card here.

The next big deal for lots of people with children is schools. There are several sites out there that slap together numerical ratings for schools based on test scores. A popular one I mentioned before is GreatSchools.net and another is School Data Direct, but what is even more important to me than the numbers is finding parental comments about the school on the sites.

That’s why I suggest you search for a local blog in your area. When moving to Duluth, I posted on PerfectDuluthDay.com asking for readers to advise me on where to live in the city. This was 2 days before Christmas and I got 80 something replies. And these were thoughtful replies that really helped me. And not just with selecting a neighborhood, but it gave me an emotional toehold into the city and gave me the lay of the land about local issues. Suddenly it felt like somewhere I wanted to live and I actually “knew” a few people when I got here.

A Minneapolis example would be minneapolis.metblogs.com, but a google search- and looking on the blogrolls of other sites (it’s just a link page on a site that can direct you to other blogs) can help you find your way to a blog that’s right for you.

If you run into any other tricky cybertools, please send them along in a comment (I love comments!) or directly to Lucie at webdigs.com.

As the famous Uptown Art Fair (which attracts a crazy number of people - around 350,000) was this past weekend, I thought it would be a good time to profile the area.

Now Uptown is more a state of mind than an actual location on a map and everyone has a slightly different idea of where Uptown begins and ends. So I’ll share my interpretation of the boundaries and then you’ll send angry comments telling me how very wrong I am - at least, this is how it typically is when talking about the hipper than hip spot that is Uptown.

Uptown begins somewhere southwest of downtown at roughly the Franklin/Hennepin intersection. There the turn-of -the-century apartment buildings brush up against boutiques and trendy restaurants that announce you’re here. This is technically the Lowry Hill and Lowry Hill East neighborhoods of Minneapolis and possess a  neighborhood in the city vibe.  It’s a busy place, particularly because it includes what is arguably the most successful co-op in the nation, The Wedge.

If you jog just west of there, you’ll find yourself in the Kenwood ‘hood with it’s grand homes near or on Lake of the Isles and Cedar Lake. Think lovely older homes with large lots among the many green spaces, parks and trails that is Kenwood. These homes are mostly arts and crafts or the more palatial Mediterranean or colonial styles.

At the intersection of Hennepin and Lake is what I believe is the real meat and potatoes of the area - technically the East Isles neighborhood. Here you’ll find the avant garde theaters such as The Uptown showing current movies as well as art films and the Suburban World that offers vintage cartoon breakfast during the winter and fall months.

This spot also has food galore, including the “we’re too hip to even put a sign out” Chino Latino and Lucia’s - well known for its organic menu. Not far from there is St. Sabrina’s for all your unmet tattooing/ piercing needs (I’ll own up to a belly button ring adventure there a decade or so ago).

But the place that I think IS Uptown is The Bryant Lake Bowl. It is an establishment where you can see live theatre, bowl a few strings and eat excellent food from burgers to tofu. That, my friends, is Uptown in a nutshell.

Of course, I can’t leave out the lakes, Lake Calhoun and Lake Harriet, as they’re the true stars of the show. Hundreds of people walk, run and rollerblade on the trails daily. There’s also a fantastic bandshell with loads of free concerts and a dock for fishing (I’ve taken my kids there and those fish are bad ass urban fish that steal your worms) and boats for rental. You can even sign-up for reasonably priced sailing lessons on the Minneapolis Park & Rec website. (I know, how cool is that?)

The architecture is eclectic like Uptown itself, but I can say that it’s mostly 20th century - some homes nearer the lake are actually “cottages” that people would go to to escape city life back in the day when the trolley get you out there. There is a pride of ownership in the area which may border on gentrified making it a historically safe investment.

In recent years houses have been snapped up pretty fast in this area - an for a pretty penny; however there are many brick apartment houses and clapboard duplexes if you’re willing to rent your little piece of Uptown until the right home comes on the market. You can start your search here.

Signs indicate that the traditional real estate empire may be crumbling.

Inman News reported on a recent survey - and it seems that the full 6% real estate commission isn’t the deadlocked deal that it used to be.

That’s according to a survey released Monday by Consumer Reports - you know, the good guys. The poll questioned 3,753 readers who sold or tried to sell a home, 4,029 who bought one, and 7,368 who both bought and sold a home in the past few years. Just over 9,000 responses were tallied.

Results revealed an astounding 71 percent of Realtors lowered commission price when asked. That’s amazing. What it says to me is that there is a lot of wiggle room in that fee structure and that the country is truly ready for a different way to buy and sell homes - such as the Webdigs.com model which allows for both buyers and sellers to save on the transaction.

Of course, I don’t expect the industry to go down without a fight. Whenever I’d question the commission structure in my writing for various newspapers and magazines I’d get insane hate mail for weeks. And who can blame them? It’s been a sweet ride.

Photo from the Star Tribune by Joel Koyama from the 8.6.08 story Rambler Revival in the Variety section

The 50’s rambler has always been the Rodney Dangerfield of architecture, but it seems their smart and efficient layout is finally getting some respect. I’ve long been a fan.

When we bought our rambler during the frenzied love affair with the bungalow, several friends really didn’t know what to say. The house had hardly been updated since it was built in 1950 (picture orange shag) so it was dated to say the least - and downright ugly in parts. But we saw past that to a layout that really worked for a family.

And it seems that finally, I’m not a alone. Today’s Star Tribune has a fantastic story written by Kim Palmer about an award-winning rambler remodel. What won the 2008 Heritage Preservation prize, along with an appearance on HGTV’s “Decorating Cents” wasn’t that the ranch-style house was transformed from an ugly duckling to some show swan - but instead the project has been lauded for keeping the rambler a rambler with some tasteful updates.

The owner architect who is responsible for the project, Judy Grundstrom, offered some tips on updating a mid-century home:

A rambler is a rambler. “Don’t try to turn a rambler into something else. I get these calls from people who say, ‘I have a rambler but I’d like to make it Tuscan or Craftsman.’ I actually turn those projects down. If your house is going to have any historic integrity for the future, allow it to be a rambler.”

Work with what you’ve got. People who own vintage houses often want to remove original features that they consider too dark, such as old fireplaces or paneling. But it’s easier, and much less expensive, to brighten a space with light-colored furniture and vibrant accents, she said.

Know your limits. Doing it yourself is a great way to save money, but some projects are better left to professionals. The Grundstroms decided they were handy enough to install the mosaic glass tile in their kitchen, a decision they soon regretted. “That was the worst weekend of my life, so stressful that we almost got divorced,” Judy Grundstrom said. “Now I tell everyone, ‘Pay the money. It’s a steal.’

***

If you’re truly a hipster you can subscribe to the magazine Atomic Ranch to get ideas to make your trendy digs even more so.

Have a visceral response to ramblers? Let me know, I’d love to hear it.

Lucie Amundsen is a shelter writer and essayist who owns a rambler and is currently renting a rambler. You can read more of her stuff at www.twowordy.com.

There is nothing like a party to get my rear in gear to clean the house and take care of any unsightly chores hanging over me. The last time my parents visited from Maine had me buying kitchen tile at Home Depot at midnight and taking on Herculean landscaping projects (Not that I recommend that).

And it seems that the Twin Cities are feeling a similar stress to impress. In under a month we’ll be hosting one of the biggest shindings of the year as the National Republican Convention (replete with journalists and worse yet, snarky bloggers) descends on our humble home.

Now we’re being asked to do our part to make the city look spic and span. In a press release by the convention hosting committee reported by MinnPost, citizens are invited to participate in the “Spruce up Spirit” campaign which includes contests for the “best sprucer” and free tickets to the Twins for those who show at the Dome to wash taxis (more below).

Here are some suggestions outlined by the convention for homeowners:

- Display the American flag
- Hang red, white and blue decorations
- Plant, primp, and trim the yard and garden (petunias and impatiens come in red, white, and blue)
- Put a fresh coat of paint on your fence and touch up any chipped areas on your house
- Sweep your sidewalks, decks and porches

Additional volunteer events planned during the month of August include the Airport clean up and signage campaign — and my personal favorite The Cab Wash at the Metrodome, Aug. 5, 10 a.m.- 4 p.m. If you go, would you please please send me some photos???? I think this would be a gas and honestly think it’s a good thing.

It goes back to my theory that even though I have never been to a professional sporting event in Minnesota, I think supporting sports are good for a market (within reason). Every time people talk about sports, they’re actually talking about my state - and suddenly we’re less about loons and more of a place where exciting things happen.

So I hope we do noticeably tidy up a bit, dress our houses in their Sunday best (sometimes putting political affiliations aside) and take some pride in our properties. At the very least, your curb appeal will be nicer for you - and you never know when you’re going to put your house on the market.