Half of NoMi Doesn't Exist at Edina Realty

Post and images below by the Hawthorne Hawkman, above image from Edina Realty.

While on vacation with my family in Upper Michigan, I began perusing NoMi real estate listings for my own devious purposes.  I started my search at Edina Realty, not out of any preference but because a neighbor once showed me their site and I found it easy enough to navigate.  Plus the little green houses and red condos kind of remind me of Monopoly game pieces.  At their Minneapolis site, there is a tab to click on and view all Minneapolis listings.  That link shows you these houses for sale:

Even without clicking on the image to enlarge it, one can see that only homes in downtown and southwest Minneapolis are shown.  Okay, well the site does tell us that only 200 of 1,909 listings are shown, and there's a handy sidebar to refine our search.  I can understand if they're putting what they see as the 200 most desirable homes or the more profitable listings first.  Right or wrong, at least that makes business sense.  The sidebar doesn't allow for a more refined geographic search, so we're left to go back to the initial Minneapolis listing page.  There they have a sidebar that breaks down search criteria by neighborhood/community.  The "Camden/North Minneapolis" tab takes us to...

Fighting Back Against Discriminatory Maintenance

Post and photos by the Hawthorne Hawkman.


Part 3 of 4 mortgage policy/wonkish posts.

The previous post alluded to possible ways to combat what I will now coin "discriminatory maintenance" of properties in NoMi.  More specifics will be laid out here, both from the National Fair Housing Alliance and their report, and my own ideas at a local level.

Johnny Northside jumped into the fray by recommending that we get these properties taken care of immediately, which is pretty much exactly what the NFHA group recommends when they say...

Predatory Maintenance; Post-Foreclosure Discrimination

Post and photos by the Hawthorne Hawkman.

Part 2 of 4 mortgage/policy wonkish posts.

In April of this year, the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) released a study entitled "Here Comes the Bank, There Goes Our Neighborhood."

That report details significant differences between White, African-American, and Latino neighborhoods when it comes to how homes are maintained, marketed, and resold after a foreclosure.  Research focused on metropolitan areas of Conneticut, Ohio, Maryland, and Virginia, but by all appearances could easily indicate similar patterns in Minneapolis.  Now this may come as a shock to you, but foreclosed properties in White neighborhoods were more likely to have well-maintained lawns, better curb appeal, secured entrances, and professional sales marketing.  Similar Real Estate Owned (REO) properties in Black or Latino neighborhoods were more likely to be poorly maintained, unsecured, and look vacant or abandoned.  Care to hazard a guess as to which houses sold faster and for more money?


Where this bumps up against legal statutes is with the federal Fair Housing Act, which states that...