Saint Matthews, KY

Selling your Louisville home can be a fierce, stressful ordeal in a market like this one. Ideally, homeowners will do everything they can to prepare their house for a sell, especially when they’re faced with competition from neighboring houses and a weakened real estate market. But sometimes, it’s the small things that make a difference in the eye of a buyer.

I’m talking about decor. What pleases your eye may not please everyone else’s, and sometimes buyers just can’t get passed those lace curtains, floral wallpaper, and plastic greenery draped on top of your cabinets. Those things—while stylish to you—can make your home appear dated and cluttered. We all have our own design sense, but when selling your home, sometimes no design sense is better.

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 The St. Matthews area of Louisville, Kentucky is one of the most sought after areas in the entire Louisville Metro area. Why you ask?  The fact that is it Louisville's largest shopping district gives way to its central location along with its premier dining and entainment. Its close proximity to nationally recognized schools and expressways and affordable housing is what makes it such a desired area of town.

Isn't all of our new technology fun? Honestly, raise your hand if you thought a few years ago that for the price of a few hundred dollars a person could let his smart phone "listen" to the music on the car stereo and tell him what song it is, who it's by and even purchase and download the song immediately? Amazing! That application is called Shazam and it's free! Wow. What we need to remember is that new tech also comes with danger.

Louisville Home Owners Beware

For years, my wife has reminded me about the danger of blogging about an upcoming vacation because there are people who could put two and two together and rip us off while we're out of town. I don't publish my home address but that might not be too difficult to obtain in our age of free information. So for that reason (and the desire to keep my wife happy) I've tried to limit those kinds discussions in the online world.

But now with Foursquare, geotagging and other new applications it may be the unintentional works of technology that are causing homeowners to be robbed. This Realtor in Oregon has clients, that if not for vigilant neighbors, would have lost thousands to criminals who knew they weren't home because of these new new technologies.

Smart Home Owners Are Informed

How does it work? Well, each technology is slightly different. Foursquare is a game of sorts, where people install the application on their smart phone then updates occur on various Websites as to their physical location. It's completely opt-in but beware... Facebook "friends" might be watching for their own nefarious purposes. Geotagging is defined by Wikipedia as:

"the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as photographs, video, websites, SMS messages, or RSS feeds and is a form of geospatial metadata."

Upload those vacation photos with geotagging turned on and anyone hitting that Web site knows you're in Bermuda rather than in your St. Matthews home. With the Holiday season upon us, please consider how some might take advantage of your free spirit. Be aware how your technology works both for you and possibly against you.

In St. Matthews, a bit of Louisville history passes through every day, as CSX trains whiz by. Railroad crossings were at times a nuisance to hurried drivers, but otherwise did not disturb the residents. The area was considered a quiet zone, where trains did not blow their horns as they passed through. In 2008, the railroad announced that new federal regulations required that the six crossings in St. Matthews be upgraded to prevent drivers from circumventing them by driving around them.

In the 19^th century, Louisville was a railroad town and several major railroads transported coal, commodities, and passengers to points south. Over time, the local railroads were bought and sold and ultimately became part of the CSX system, which runs through the city. Needless to say, the Louisville where the tracks were laid is not the Louisville of today. Suburbs like St. Matthews emerged from farmland. From 1910 to 1946, the city was the epicenter of the St. Matthews Produce Exchange, once the second-largest potato shipper in the country. Ultimately, St. Matthews developed as a major shopping district and an upscale residential district. Six railroad crossings remained in the city, and about 30 trains move through the city each day.

As St. Matthews Councilman Richard Tonini explained it, "Right now the gates come down, one gate for north bound and one gate for south bound and what's happening is cars are going around the gates. Now what we're going to do is we're going to put in two additional gates so that gates come down and touch each other so you can't go around the gates."

The railroad estimated that the projects would cost $200,000. The City of St. Matthews paid $10,000 to get the projects started, but the railroad did not respond. In June 2010, the Federal Railroad Administration lifted the quiet zone, much to the dismay of residents. For four months, the residents had an unpleasant look back at the city's early history as 30 trains loudly announced their presence, day and night.

At this point, all required work at St. Mathews Avenue, Clover Lane, Westport Road, Thierman Lane and Hubbards Lane has been completed, but work at the Chenoweth crossing needs to have the new gates installed. The police department will provide additional enforcement at that location until the gates are in place. The city applied for a waiver to reinstate the quiet zone. In early October, the Federal Railroad Administration agree to temporarily restore the quiet zone. CSX was granted a 21 day adjustment period for their drivers to stop blowing their horns.

Final cost on the project will be $150,000, including the installation of median barriers and new gate, with the money coming from the City St. Matthews and the District 7 Neighborhood Development Fund. When the last piece of the project is complete at Chenoweth, St. Matthews will once again be a quiet zone. Area residents can respect their history and again sleep soundly without interruption.

Contact Mollie Younger of Younger Group Real Estate for interesting, affordable St. Matthews properties! We know Louisville!!