Wow, that was a fast home sale!

Yesterday we were driving through our neighborhood when I noticed a nearby house that just went on the market a few weeks ago is already under contract. In addition last year there was another house on our street that went on the market and was also sold in less than a month. So a great location and a reasonable price can still definitely move a house in this slow housing market. Unfortunately, the house across the street from us is still for sale, even after a lot of people were visiting it in the first few weeks it was on the market. They originally priced it at a strange price point ($514,990) although they have now lowered it to $499,990. I believe they bought it near the market peak in 2006 so they are trying to get as much out of it as they can, but I bet if it had started at under the $500K point it may have sold by now. They had priced is substantially higher than what the house next to it sold for last year ($475K) even though the other house is actually larger. They are also using some tiny real estate agent I had never heard of before. The quick sale on the other street was priced a bit lower which definitely helped it move faster, but there is still another nearby home for even less that has yet to sell for a long time. The fact that the last home is in the Brentwood school district while north of highway 40 does not help, and neither does the fact that is backs up directly to the highway. The Brentwood district is a really nice one, but I do not understand why there are just a few homes north of the highway they decided to put in Brentwood instead of Ladue schools.

On other local news, I recently noticed my favorite online campus webcam of the Brauer Hall construction is no longer updating. It stopped April 22, and now just shows how the building looked on that date. Instead they have moved the webcam to be perched on top of Kayak's to monitor the new Preston Green Hall construction and also people walking to the Skinker Metrolink station. This shows the lovely "Washington University" sign which we can no longer walk behind since they fenced off the little sidewalk that cuts the corner (I do not think that was necessary!) Since I walk that way every day, someday I am going to try to time myself so I am standing right there on the corner so it will take my picture. Clayco also set up a webcam on the top of Liggett on the South 40 to show the construction going on down there. I do not find this webcam nearly as interesting, and you do not see too many people walk by or anything! On my walks by the completed Brauer Hall and the forthcoming Green Hall, I keep looking for a door that can allow me to cut through the engineering buildings on my way to the lovely Earth & Planetary Building (soon to be Scott Rudolph Hall.) They do not appear to be making it easy for people to cut through Whittaker then Brauer through Green. Hey, I see engineering folk cutting through our building all the time! Why can't we do the same?