Main Street — Oklahoma City Historic Postcards

From my Oklahoma City postcard collection…

This photo is definitely before my time! This would be Main Street looking east and appears to be taken in the early 1930’s. On the left is Street’s Department store which remained in Oklahoma City until the 1980’s or 1990’s. Kerr’s Department Store is on the right and I do remember going there as a small child.

The tall buildings in the background are the Ramsey Tower which became City Place and the First National Bank Building.

Wheee!!! The OKCHomeSellers Oklahoma City Real Estate Blog Is One!

It was just one year ago today that the OKCHomeSellers Oklahoma City Real Estate Blog came online with its’ first post. Time flies when you’re having fun!

This marks the 270th post during the last year. I know I started out slow. That seems to be the thing with a blog. It just seems to get easier the more posts you write. I sure hope the posts get better also with experience.

A challenging year it’s been! Oklahoma City’s been in a decline. We’ve seen home sales decline. We’ve seen home prices decline. And on a positive note, we’ve seen interest rates decline.

We’ve seen appreciation too. Perhaps mostly the appreciation I have for the new friends and clients I’ve acquired over the last year. You have no idea how much I appreciate you. I’ve seen massive gains in the traffic to this website. According to my Google Analytics, nearly a 400% increase. Along with that, lots of new folks searching for, and hopefully finding, new homes here in the Oklahoma City metro.

I suppose in ‘blog years’ one year old means we’re really probably a teenager. But unlike the stereotypical teenager, I certainly don’t feel like I know it all. I know there’s more to learn. Hopefully as we go through the second year, we’ll to better and have a better report next year on our birthday.

Thank you all.

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Santa Fe Depot — Oklahoma Historic Postcards

From my Oklahoma City postcard collection…

Just east of the Ford Center at the entry to Bricktown is the Santa Fe Depot. This is a magnificent art deco building is from the late 30’s. It’s still used today for Amtrak’s Heartland Flyer. It has also been restored and used for events such as a wedding reception I attended there.

As a small child I remember going there to catch the train to Houston to visit my aunt. It was a bustling place back then, and of course seemed gigantic to me. The train stopped running sometime during the 60’s or 70’s and the Santa Fe Depot sat abandoned. I recall thinking during the 80’s and 90’s that this would have be a great place to open a Oklahoma City Hard Rock Cafe!

Originally posted on okchomesellers.com

Robinson Street — Oklahoma City Historic Postcards

One of my hobbies is collecting historical postcards of Oklahoma City. I’ve wanted to include in the blog, images from my collection and perhaps add my own thoughts.

Today’s postcard is an artists rendering of North Robinson Street looking north from Sheridan. This is from the 1940’s. If you were the photographer here, the Cox Convention Center would be off your right shoulder and Myriad Gardens off your left. The building shown at the left is the Colcord Building, and the building on the right is now the Sheraton Century Center parking garage. This, to me, is one of the unfortunate effects of the urban renewal. We lost so many downtown treasures.

You can see the State Theater on the right. I still remember seeing movies at the State. The State Theater opened in 1937 and remained there until it was destroyed in the 1970’s. The State was one of the few theaters built to showcase Columbia Pictures.

Across the street, if you enlarge the picture, you can see the Liberty Theater. I subsequently became the Harber Theater from 1948 to 1953 when it became the Cooper Cinerama.

Finally the tall building in the back is the First National Bank Building.

Originally posted on okchomesellers.com

Weekend Events August 27-29, Tulsa OK

Are There Too Many Realtors In Oklahoma?

I read an interesting post this morning by Jay Thompson, The Phoenix Real Estate Guy. He was asked how many Realtors were in Arizona and how many per-capita.

The answer he came up with surprised me somewhat. Arizona has over 43,000 licensed Realtors. With there population that works out to be 1 agent for every 153 people in the state. Wow, that’s a lot. In fact, out of the top 10 states of Realtor population, Arizona has the lowest per-capita.

This report naturally got me curious as to how Oklahoma would compare. Per the National Association of Realtors Monthly Membership Report of July 2010, Oklahoma has 9,084 Realtors. Our 2009 population estimate is 3,687,050. This works out to 406 per Realtor in Oklahoma.

So there you have it. If you’ve thought there are too many Realtors, Oklahoma is better off than most!

The Complete List

Photo credit: Flickr/nationallibrarynz

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Oklahoma City Metro July Real Estate Market Report

Oklahoma City Metro July Real Estate Market Report

Active Listings – 9299 units (8670 units in July 2009 - increase of 6.8% and 9004 in June 2010)

Total Units Closed - 1138 (-33.3% compared to July 2009 and -27.3% to June 2010)

At midyear, homes were selling almost two workweeks faster than last summer — in 75 days on average in June, compared with 86 days in June 2009, according to the Oklahoma City Metro Association of Realtors.

Nonetheless, sales were off 6 percent in June compared with the year before and off 6.2 percent from May.

A sign of strength, however, was the average sale price of $160,570 was virtually flat with the average of $159,400 in June 2009, and the median price of $138,000 was a 2.2 percent increase over the year-ago median of $135,000.

On the building side of the market, construction has been rebounding from 2009 levels all year.