Newsflash: Caron NOT to be Obama's VP Pick

At this late hour, I can now announce that I will NOT be Barak Obama's VP pick.

While friends, family and neighbors have speculated that I was speaking with Obama's campaign during my extensive and furtive cell phone conversations, it was simply clients, loan officers, other realtors and the occasional robo-caller.

My Sunday "open house schedule" has also been suspect, with family assuming I was spending time at Obama's Raymond Avenue Minnesota HQ. I was actually in St Paul and nearby suburbs, holding open houses.

With my extensive experience with the local real estate market, the foreclosure crisis, my credentials as a board member of the Lexington Hamline Community Council and prestigous Bachelor of Fine Arts, I was a must-call for the campaign.

However, I have decided the campaign trail would simply take too deep of a toll on The Annoying Cow Dog and The Brown Dog.

I have referred the campaign to other Famous LexHam/St Paul Bloggers. We'll see how they respond to Mr. Obama's inquiries.

Petit Flower
LexHam Rand
The Pirate
The Dork
Little Latin Lupe Lu
Blacktop Desciple

So I'm hoping to make $169,000 this year

I was talking to my mom on the phone and she was talking about how they paid off the mortgage a while ago. She told me that when they had us 3 kids, my dad had one week where they had only $6 left, because they paid the mortgage that week.

I was like -- WHAT??? --- YOU COULD PAY THE MORTGAGE ON ONE PERSON'S SALARY???
And what's more, my dad was paid weekly so it was just ONE WEEK'S SALARY.

God in heaven! My attorney husband's salary takes two weeks of work to pay one week of mortgage -- and we have a cheap house.

So I pulled together some stats:

Current Nerstrand Stats
(Where my parents live)
A house down the street for them sold for $120,000 recently. Some sold for more, some less, we'll use $120 as our average.

Mortgage on $120,000, with 5% down, FHA 5.5% interest:
$642 each month
$78 taxes
$720 total

To pull in a salary to pay that mortgage payment in one week's salary, you would need to make $57,200 per year.

The factory my dad was working in when they bought the house is still around. My sister works there now too, and she is not making ANYWHERE near $57,200. I think salaries there are in the high $20k-$30s for the average workers.



So now let's do St. Paul.
I pulled the average house price for my area, Merriam Park. Average house price is $329,530.

Mortgage on $329,530, 5% down, FHA 5.5%
$1777 payment
$338 tax
$2115 total


To make $2115 after-tax each week, you would need to make $3250 pre-tax, for a pre-tax income of, yes, $169,000.

I don't know anyone that makes $169,000 in a factory when they are 28.

So I'm Super Dorky

I am seriously into financial data.
You have seen that the Case Shiller index recently published the October index results.

The Case Shiller Index is a Wall Street invention to try to track home prices. An index is kind of an artificial scorekeeping method to track things that are a little bit difficult to track. You may all know about the inflation index -- when the cost of a few goods that everyone buys goes up (milk, gas, etc.) the cost of living goes up a few points. Now, no one is taking any "points" out of your wallet for a gallon of milk, but you get the idea. They have made a similar points system for house prices -- the Case Shiller index.

To my delight, Case Shiller tracks not only national data, but metro-area data, including Minneapolis. So after shoveling out again today, I settled in with some Minneapolis area Case Shiller data. Whoo-hoo!

What I was wondering about was kind of twofold-- first off, when was the high point, and how far have we fallen from there?

Well, the high point was in mid-2006.
Prices have fallen now to about the same level as they were in early 2005.


Really, it's not as bad as I thought it would be. We've lost a few years of growth -- but the prices at the peak were SO inflated.