Legalectric

2010 Annual Foreclosures in Minnesota Report

Our “new” house that we closed on last month, a foreclosure that had been abandoned for two years.  The good news is that there’s heat in the basement now from a Craigslist furnace, a new toilet in the basement too, the old broken and burst pipes are out and a manifold and pex is going in, we got a “new” hot water heater that we can use for heating the house too.  Tearing up carpets and padding, I’d found rosemaling in the front bedroom, cream background with two blue and red detailed flowery rectangles a foot and a half inside and the second a foot inside that, and last weekend, in the back room with the door to the rug porch, seafoam green with red and cream flowers, just beautiful, but huge chunks of it sanded off, WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?   So probably it will all be sanded (note the passive voice there, I’ve done a whole house before and am not looking forward to it again).

And David bought a condo back here in Minnesota in December, and put up his house in Pasco, and that sold in what, a week!  And he made some dough in the process.

This is THE best time to buy a house, but it’s the WORST time to own one if you’re the typical American in the habit of running up credit cards and refinancing the house with each change of season.  I’m so glad I’m not doing family law now, because when I think of my clients back then who were getting divorced, had a couple or more kids, living beyond their means, and struggling to stay in the “refinanced” house then with zero equity, most couldn’t afford to live separately.  What’s happening to them now?  How many are out on the street, living with family members, adults living with parents, and millions of vacant homes across the country…

I’ve been watching this for a while, remembering all the vacant spec houses in New Prague and Belle Plaine in 2004, even going back to 2002, and well, since the crash, it was bad before and now it’s a nightmare.

Look at all the homes in New Prague for sale:

New Prague houses for sale

Belle Plaine houses for sale

Here’s Red Wing, with one less foreclosed house on the market as last month — there’s been up to 222 for sale at once that I’ve noticed, and now it’s down a bit, but I’ve still got two empty houses on either side of me here on the bluff, and I think one near the new one is vacant:

Red Wing houses for sale

It’ll be interesting getting this one fixed up to sell in the spring… this has been a good little house, and I remember it had been abandoned for at least a year when I bought it 11 years ago.  Big improvements since then!