The Saint Paul Condo Blog

The Pointe of Saint Paul has started the process for new elevators, well modernization actually.

The elevators at the Pointe are at about their life expectancy so the Board of Directors (including myself) have decided to replace them.  Construction will likely begin late summer, with completion 18 months later.  It's not an easy process, but it will be worth the effort.  The new elevators will run faster, smoother, and smarter!  The computers behind 20 year old elevators are not very smart!  There are also new codes coming with 5 years that would have required major repairs to the current elevators.

There will likely be a small assessment for the replacement ($500-$1000), as the total bill is nearly $700,000!!!

City Walk went through a similar process a little over a year ago.  The end result was well worth it!  The Pointe does have one big advantage though; THREE ELEVATORS!  This means that during the construction, they will always have two running.

Here's a really cool new feature for the site!  The Rate Lock Advisory is updated daily to give you predictions on where interest rates are heading.  I don't write the material, it comes from our site vendor (Kudos Alamode!).

I also like the little colored bar that tells you at a glance if you should float or lock, it's a neat little tool.  Now, it's just a opinion, and you need to remember that.  Market conditions seem to change hourly these days.  I get several emails a day telling me rates are going up or they have gone down. 

The Rate Lock Advisory can be found in the left navigation bar.

Happy Leap Year!

Today is a historic day for YourStPaulHome.com!  We have just surpassed 20,000 pages views in a single month, and the month is not even over yet.  Normally, I receive about 15k-18k pageviews a month, but the last several months, traffic has been ramping up.  I'm not sure if this is because more buyers are looking to buy, or if my site has started to rank better with the search engines.  Given that I rank pretty good, I would guess that it means there are more people interested in buying a condo or loft.

March of 2007  I had a little uptick in traffic(18,900 pageviews), which ended up keeping me busy all summer long, so here's to a busy summer!

On a side note...

If you are a returning visitor, you may have noticed that the individual condo pages in the directory are changing.  If you see something that looks a little off or is not working, please let me know.  I was hoping to have all of the directory pages updated a while ago, but what I thought was going to take 5-10 minutes a page is taking 30-45 minutes!  Now times that by 43!

Also, if you live in one of the buildings here in downtown, I'd love to hear from you.  I received a suggestion from a site visitor that it would be helpful to have home owner testimonials about that they love about their building and why they bought.  I am going to start that once the pages are all updated.

Thanks again for making this site as popular as it is!

This is a follow up to the first post about this matter
http://www.yourstpaulhome.com/Trouble+at+River+Park+Lofts

During Wednesday nights City Council meeting, the councilmembers decided to postpone a decision on condemnation until Feb 27th.  The likely outcome is the City will close the upper levels of the ramp, still giving access to the homeowners, as the Ramp owner (not related to the condos) had begun repairing the up/down ramps that were called into question.

Hopefully this will motivate GMT Corp to take better care of their parking ramp!

Could downtown finally see a new high rise?

First was the Bridges of Saint Paul, then the Penfield.  Could this development be the ticket for a skyline change?

The developer, WingField Corp, is very tight lipped about the project, only releasing minimal details.

We know where it's going.  The surface parking lot on the corner of 6th & Wabasha in Downtown.  If you are familiar with the area, it's the site with the skyway bridge to nowhere.

From the specs released so far; we know it's going to be 40 stories tall, it will likely contain a "W" hotel, general retail on the first and second floors, some class A office space, and 80 to 100 upper bracket condos.

As more information or a rendering becomes available, I will add it to the Wabasha Court page, and will also add a new post about it.

After months of planning, schooling, testing, and other fun activities, we have opened our own real estate company!  It's something we've had in the back of our minds for some time now, and things happened for the right reasons.

We have always had a strong emphasis on Saint Paul, but that was just us (The Kleppe Group).  Now, our entire company will focus on our lovely City.  We just opened our new office in Downtown on February 4th and we are almost complete in finishing the office.

We hope to reinvent the way people think about real estate!