Come home to Edina? Easier said than done

There's just something about Edina.

Kids who grow up there tend to go off to college and then spread their wings in places such as Chicago and Denver and Minneapolis. But when they marry and that first baby comes, the homing instinct kicks in. When they begin looking for a house, it's often Edina that they want.

Trouble is, the median price of a single-family home in Edina -- including some that need work -- hovers around $450,000. When remodeling costs are figured in, they're often beyond the financial reach of young families.

Edina native Holly Monson and her husband, Tom, have owned three homes in the Twin Cities. Each time, they looked for a house in Edina but decided they could get more house for their money elsewhere. Though Holly, 37, still pines for her hometown, the Monsons and their four boys are settled in a new house in Maple Grove. They are probably there to stay.

"I would love to be in Edina, but we can't afford it," Monson said. "Everybody wants to move back. It feels like a tight-knit community."

Housing affordability is an issue that has preoccupied city officials. Last month, in emotional testimony before the City Council, affordable housing advocates said housing in the city is too expensive, not only for newcomers but for young people who grew up in Edina and are now starting families. But proposed solutions focused on creating more affordable multi-family housing, not addressing the cost of single-family houses with yards that young families want.

Mayor Jim Hovland said young families are part of Edina's "cycle of life."

"You want young families who have a stake in the future of the community," he said. "It adds a tremendous amount of vitality ... almost a village feel, with people forming lifelong friends and kids playing together."

Edina has affordable owner-occupied housing, mostly in townhouses and condos. But they attract few young families. Recently, Edina real estate listings showed 203 single-family homes for sale. Only 3.4 percent -- seven houses -- were priced less than $250,000. About two-thirds of properties were priced more than $500,000.

Contrast that with St. Louis Park, where more than half of the 159 houses for sale were priced under $250,000. In Bloomington, almost 58 percent of the 255 homes for sale were under $250,000.

Edina uses a couple of programs to make it easier for people with moderate incomes to buy a home. The biggest is Come Home 2 Edina, which was started in the 1980s by the city's Housing and Redevelopment Authority to provide second mortgages to qualifying buyers at low interest rates. In the past year, eight homes have been purchased using the program, which has income limits for participants.

The city is trying to boost the profile of Come Home 2 Edina with a link on the city's website. But the vast majority of young home buyers still rely on conventional financing to buy a home. They include such people as 29-year-old Chris Moore, who grew up in Edina and works as a housing advocate for a nonprofit. His wife, Emily, is a teacher. They have a young child and have been living in an Eagan house as caretakers.

It has been a great chance to save for their first home, Chris Moore said. But they're concentrating their search for houses under $250,000 in Bloomington, not Edina.

"The prices [in Edina] are out of our reach right now," he said. "We both chose careers where we don't make a lot of money. ... We don't want to be house-poor."

Good schools and safe neighborhoods are important to them. Ironically, Chris' familiarity with his hometown means that while he admires the schools, he wonders about buying into a suburb that is second only to Roseville in the metro area in its share of senior citizens.

"We would like young families around us. We don't want to be in an area with mostly older folks," he said. "We want our kids to be able to go to the parks and play."

For Tom Bennett, it was not Edina's aging residents but its aging homes that drove the 30-year-old and his wife, Liz, to buy in Minnetonka instead of his hometown. Although they were looking at homes priced up to $500,000, the houses they saw needed expensive remodeling, he said. It made more economic sense to buy a newer Minnetonka home, Bennett said.

"We're drawn to Edina because we know the history and the neighborhoods," he said. "It may be an option for us in maybe three to five years."

But some young couples aren't willing to settle for less than their hometown. Kelsey Brown, 28, and her husband, Peter, both graduated from Edina High School. With a toddler and another child on the way, they put their small St. Louis Park house on the market last spring and looked for a bigger house. They saw value in Eden Prairie but disliked the sprawling suburban feel. Edina houses in their price range needed too much work. So the Browns decided to stick it out in their current home and save to buy a house in a location they really want. They hope that will be in Edina.

"What's great about Edina is that you can go to Byerly's and see four people you know that you grew up with," Kelsey Brown said. "We all went away to college, but there's just something about coming home."

That was the motivation for Matt and Brittany Hansen, who are expecting their first child this week. The Edina natives bought a fixer-upper on a street where homes are now valued between $300,000 and $1 million. Matt Hansen, 28, who works in public relations, is a third-generation Edina resident.

"It's my grandparents, my parents, my best friends, their families, the location, the sense of community, the tradition," he said. "If we were to see our kid put on a Bloomington or Eden Prairie jersey, we'd go crazy."

Mary Jane Smetanka • 612-673-7380