STL Develops

This Old House Magazine recently rated the Shaw neighborhood as one of the top places to buy an old home in the Midwest.  They site the Victorian era neighborhood’s beautiful homes, wide streets, and proximity to Tower Grove Park and the Botanical Garden as aesthetically pleasing features that make the neighborhood a pleasant place to be.  In addition, they mention the growth of local cafes, pubs, galleries and restaurants as an appealing features.  The homes in the neighborhood were built between 1880 and 1940 and feature a mix of Victorian-era, Queen Anne, and Second Empire homes and also some Arts and Crafts, Georgian, and English Tudor.  The prices of course are also appealing.  They say you can buy an unrestored Victorian era home for as little as $125,000 or double if it is restored. 

This is a neighborhood that I am very familiar with and it is one of my favorites for many of the reasons mentioned in the article.  The homes are beautiful and the neighborhood becomes more vibrant each year as more people move in and businesses open.  One of the great features of this neighborhood is the diversity of the people.  There is a mix of income levels and races in the neighborhood, which gives it a good feel.  The article mentions that homes could be bought for $125,000, but this would most likely be an unlivable home.  Victorian homes that are livable cost $200,000 and above with a nicely restored home costing $300,000 and up.  This neighborhood is still rough in some parts, as there are some bad land lords who don’t screen their tenants well.  However, I think the Shaw neighborhood is well on its way to revival and I don’t see it turning for the worse.  The new Biotech corridor along Forest Park Parkway is nearby, and this neighborhood provides great housing stock for future employees of this corridor.  This is a neighborhood that I personally am interested in investing in, and there are some great investment opportunities here.

While we’ve all seen the doom and gloom news reports about the state of the real estate market , it is a fact that St. Louis is really better off than most metropolitan areas according to Forbes . While I can tell you as a real estate professional that this year has been slow, we are actually doing better than most cities. St. Louis developers have struggled as evidenced by the shut down of Taylor Morley and Pyramid Companies, as well as the public troubles of Saaman Realty. However, St. Louis has a reasonably low inventory of vacant new construction compared to cities in the West and South that have thousands of speculative neighborhoods sitting empty, especially in the city and near by suburbs. Downtown St. Louis has been overbuilt, but developers have responded. Properties originally planned to be condos or lofts are being developed as rental housing, like The Lawrence Groups Park Pacific development, or commercial space. Also, projects that were proposed have been cancelled or put on hold like Pyramids COs Leather Trades Build. If you buy a property today are you going to be able to sell it for a huge profit next year of the year after? Probably not. But I do think that St. Louis property values will begin to rise significantly sooner than most of the country. Right now prices are favorable and interest rates are low, so I think that there are definitely some great long term deals to be made.