Real Estate News Blog

With the fallout in the mortgage market, new requirements and higher costs will be part of equation for home buyers if they need a mortgage. However, with home prices where they are, the opportunity to buy at these lower prices may offset the effort and cost necessary to obtain a mortgage. Full Story: Star Tribune (may require free registration)

The afternoon began with chicken salad sandwiches with meat from the Farm at Prairie Oaks, and the last farm on the tour included a look at Joe Bowman's Cornish Cross broilers, fluttering about in a pasture. The message to Scott County commissioners and planners: Here is a vision for the county's future--neighbors feeding neighbors. By the end of a long afternoon of climbing in and out of a bus, visiting farm after farm, it was clear how complicated it will be to try to keep farming alive in Scott County as suburbia spreads. At issue is a new long-range plan for the county's future due to be submitted to the Met Council by the end of the year. The most contentious part of that plan, if a public hearing last spring was any guide, is that it envisions the gradual suburbanization of western Scott County, an area that boasts prime farmland. Full Story: Star Tribune (may require free registration)