1. How’s the RealEstate Market?
2. Zillow indicates upward trend in Memphis home sales prices
3. Where do expired listings go?

My favorite weekend of the year. You will lose an hour of sleep tomorrow night (3/13/2010), but starting Sunday you will gain one glorious hour of sunlight in the evening. Spring is here! Enjoy!

Photo:

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Presidents Island School House at the Fairgrounds

In a parking lot in the shadow of the Arena building at the former Mid-South Fairgrounds is a little piece of Memphis history.  Moved there and set up on blocks is the one-room school house from President’s Island, dating back before the industrialization of the area when it was a rural community.   It  looks like an easy target for the long arm of the next trackhoe that happens to be by there.  Does this building have any value for preservationists?

Turn 180 degrees and look into the empty stalls of the cattle barn.

Cattle Barn - Fairgrounds

The Arena Building

The city has chosen to keep the ugliest building intact because they use it for storage.

As is typical in our City, demolition is happening before there is a set plan.  Oh yeah, there is that plan to make the whole thing into a shady grove so the tens of thousands of UM fans can have tailgate parties before games, leaving Memphis’ version of “the Grove” to collect litter for the other 355 days of the year.

What about the big box?  What about the athletic fields? Retail? Who knows?  Just keep the demolition equipment running.

If you have memories of the Fairgrounds, get over there quick and get some pictures and video before it’s all gone.  The decision makers are keeping pretty quiet about the Coliseum, but considering that much of it’s parking lot is being greened turned to mud, it probably doesn’t have much longer either.

Read Mary Cashiola’s piece in this week’s Flyer

The Eagles did “The Last Resort”  and Joni did this:
Maybe there’s a Memphis songwriter who can put all this to music.

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Maybe I am just a grumpy old wimp, but 78 minutes seems like a lot of time out of my life to get the mandatory car inspection, just to be able to renew my vehicle registration, which is probably more expensive here than anywhere else in Tennessee because, in addition to the normal registration fee of $24 + a $2 EDP fee, we get to pay a wheel tax of $50 (It is my understanding that this was a temporary tax about 30 years ago, but it just never got cancelled.) + a $30 municipal fee (which, one must assume, pays the expenses of the highly efficient inspection stations plus adds a few bucks to the City’s coffers). {My English professors used to call that a run-on sentence, I think}   So the rest of the state pays $26/year for car registration renewal, but we Memphians pay $106 – more if you do your transaction by mail and/or use a credit card.  Oh, and did I mention that it’s only Memphians that have to have the inspection and pay more.  You can get cheap registration, with no inspection, and drive your smoking, missing brake light, no windshield wiper junker in from Germantown to your job in Memphis every day with impunity.

I probably would not be on this rant if I could have gotten through vehicle inspection in a reasonable amount of time.  In years past, the wait was never very long, but over the past few months I have heard reports of waits of well over an hour for the inspection.  Mayor Wharton, a quality of life kind of guy, even extended the hours of the inspections to lessen the misery.  When it was my time to go I took along my Flip camera.

Related posts:

1. Harold Toboggans brings humor to the Memphis non-profit scene

1. Roost.com interviews Joe Spake
2. Memphis home sale numbers inconclusive
3. Clock is ticking on $8000 Tax Credit

Time to make some more space in your house and buy a bigger pick up truck or more ropes for your car roof and trunk.  The CA’s new, unique iPhone app will keep you from missing any great garage sales.  Complete with maps, search and customization options.

Here’s the press release.  Check it out:    (No word yet on the Android version)

CA Media/The Commercial Appeal launches

Garage Sale iPhone Application

Memphis, Tenn. – CA Media/The Commercial Appeal announces the release of its Garage Sale Finder application which gives Mid-South bargain hunters a simple, fast way to find all the best yard and garage sales in the greater Memphis area using their iPhone or iPod touch.

The Garage Sale Finder application for iPhone enables users to quickly and easily access garage sales listings from The Commercial Appeal, including descriptions of items to be sold.

Features of the Garage Sale Finder app include:

– Map functionality – Users can map an itinerary to garage sales that interest them.

– Search functionality – Users can search through the latest garage sales in the Memphis area as the listings are placed. For instance, if a garage sale ad is placed on Tuesday for a sale that occurs the following weekend, users of the app are notified within a couple of hours in order to start plotting their itinerary for the weekend sales.

– Customization options – Users can generate a list of sales that match their criteria such as antiques, vintage clothing, toys, vinyl records and more.

The Garage Sale Finder app is available for free and can be downloaded from the iTunes App Store.

“This new app is a great way for on-the-go bargain hunters to locate garage sales and find the deals they’re after,” said Eric Janssen, VP Digital Media for The Commercial Appeal.

According to Omniture, CommercialAppeal.com had over 1.5 million unique visitors in January 2010 and is the No. 1 news web site in the Mid-South.

The Garage Sale Finder app was developed exclusively for CA Media by Resolute Games Corporation, a Memphis firm.

The Garage Sale Finder app can be downloaded from http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/commercial-appeal-garage-sales/id347823710?mt=8

- END –

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