North metro real estate, explained.

We publish three kinds of thing and nothing else: what homes actually cost in a particular north-metro city, what a step in a transaction actually involves, and what the job of being an agent here actually looks like. If a post can't be written from something checkable — a published figure, a Minnesota statute, a number out of our own closing ledger — it doesn't get written.

So when we write about the market, it is the mechanics rather than this week's prices — a page claiming to track those is stale before it is indexed. What we write instead is the part that stays true long enough to be useful: how Minnesota's deed tax works, why the seller here customarily buys the owner's title policy for the buyer, what a buyer-agency agreement commits you to, and what it takes to get licensed in this state.

If you already know which side you're on, skip the reading. Buying and selling each have a page that lays out the whole process, and the careers page covers the licence, the training and the commission cap. The posts below are for the questions those pages leave open.