Mackenzie Rasmus - Engel & Völkers

Mackenzie Rasmus - Engel & Völkers Midwest Charm meets West Coast Passion. This is Mackenzie Rasmus - Engel & Völkers.

09/01/2026

Robbinsdale is nicknamed Birdtown, and its annual summer festival is called Whiz Bang Days. The story behind that name is better than you are expecting.

In 1919 a publisher launched a joke magazine called Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, the sort of thing your great grandfather kept out in the garage. The same company went on to produce True Confessions and Mechanix Illustrated, packed up for Minneapolis in 1930, and left a parade behind when it went. 🎪

The first celebration ran in 1936. A first ring Minneapolis suburb has now been running a summer festival named after a men's magazine for roughly ninety years, and nobody seems inclined to rename it.

Did you know that was where the name came from?

08/31/2026

Cottagewood is not incorporated. It is a self named neighborhood inside Deephaven on the southeastern shore of Lake Minnetonka, which is exactly why it never turns up in the relocation articles people find on Google.

The Cottagewood General Store opened in 1895, selling bread, sugar and flour to families renting summer cottages, and that is where the name comes from. The neighborhood runs the store itself. 🛶

Six city beaches sit within reach, with lifeguards Wednesday through Sunday in season, and all of them are permit parking, so plan ahead.

There is a catch to this one and it is a real one. It is in the full video.

Have you ever lived somewhere that technically was not a place?

08/30/2026

Maple Plain sits in the same Orono school district as Long Lake, and the median home price there runs around $430,000.

The reason to go is Baker Park Reserve. Twenty seven hundred acres, two swimming beaches on Lake Independence, a 203 site campground, and Baker National, an eighteen hole public course that is a certified Audubon sanctuary. All of it twenty miles from downtown Minneapolis. 🌲

The Luce Line runs straight through town as well, seventy five miles of trail laid over a railroad that only operated from 1917 to 1927 before it was abandoned and later rebuilt for walking and biking.

There is a catch here too, and it is in the full video.

Would you trade a shorter commute for that much park?

08/29/2026

Long Lake covers 0.83 square miles and holds about 1,800 people, which makes it one of those west metro places most people drive straight through without registering it as a town.

It runs its own police department. It has Birches on the Lake, a genuine supper club with a brewery inside it, and the coffee chocolate golden ale has been on that menu since opening day. Every August the Church of Saint George puts on Corn Days, complete with a parade, a petting zoo and a w**e pull. 🌽

It also sits in the Orono school district, which is the part that makes people look twice at the price.

There is a catch to this one, and it is in the full video.

What is the smallest town you would seriously consider moving to?

08/27/2026

Here is a Minnesota rule that sellers and relocation buyers usually meet at the worst possible moment in a transaction. If you sell a single family or multi family home, so duplexes and triplexes included, inside Minneapolis or St. Paul, that sale requires a Truth in Sale of Housing report. A fair number of metro suburbs require one as well, and condos and townhomes are exempt.

The process is straightforward. A city inspector walks your home, writes up code violations and hazards, and that report has to be finished before you are able to close. The original intent was transparency in the buying and selling process, which I fully support. I would rather over disclose than under disclose every single time, and I tell my clients that constantly.

What it has grown into looks much closer to a money grab. The inspector comes through, gives things a fairly quick look, writes up a list, hands it over, and walks out the door $250 later. Keep in mind that most items are disclosure obligations rather than required repairs, and a handful of them become leverage at the negotiating table, which is exactly the conversation to have with your advisor before your home goes live.

08/26/2026

Minnesota's housing stock is older than most people realize, and relocation buyers are usually the ones caught off guard. In Minneapolis, 42.8% of homes were built before 1939. St. Paul sits right around 41%. The median build year in both cities lands in the early 1950s, and statewide roughly half of all Minnesota homes went up before 1979.

I want to be clear that I adore these houses. The 1920s bungalow off Minnehaha, the story and a half in Highland Park, the Tudors in Linden Hills, these have more character than anything built in the last 30 years. They also arrive with k**b and tube wiring, which is a phrase that has never once been followed by good news, along with galvanized supply lines, 100 amp panels, and cast iron stacks pushing a full century of continuous service. There is a fair amount of optimism holding those stacks together.

During the frantic years, buyers waved all of that through. With the metro now sitting at 42 days on market and 2.8 months of supply, every one of those items lands on the inspection list at the exact moment buyers finally have leverage to ask about it, and that moves your number in ways an appraisal never will.

08/25/2026

Every rate lock statistic has a face, and this is the one I meet most often around the West Metro. A couple in Minnetonka with a home worth about $650,000, a mortgage sitting at 2.875%, and roughly $250,000 in equity. They have wanted a bigger place since 2023, and the money to make that move has been available to them the entire time.

What keeps them where they are is the loan. That 2.875% stands as the best financial decision of their adult lives, and handing it back feels like betraying their own good judgment. I understand that completely and I say it with love. I am half convinced people around here will try to leave their interest rates to their kids in their wills, and yes, I know that is not how any of it works, so please be gentle with me in the comments.

Here is the piece worth sitting with. Every month that decision stays paused, the other 11 things on this list get a little bigger, and those are what quietly set the real price of staying put.

08/24/2026

A house builds wealth for you in two separate ways, and right now only one of them is doing its job. The first is principal paydown, which is the piece you control every month by chipping away at the balance and owning more of your home. The second is appreciation, and since the COVID market that is the one carrying most of the equity gains around the Twin Cities.

In June 2026 the metro median came in at $410,000, up 2.1% over the year, which is appreciation running close to flat. When it flattens, your equity stops doing that work for you and the flexibility it created goes quiet. Your spreadsheet keeps looking healthy, so this one hides well. Where it shows up is the move you planned for next spring that now needs another year or two of patience before the numbers make sense.

08/19/2026

A few things worth knowing before your first month in Minnesota. Ope is a complete sentence, and it covers excuse me, I am sorry, and I did not see you there, all in one little syllable. Duck Duck Gray Duck is the correct name of the game, and I would gently encourage you to accept that one rather than argue it. And the Minnesota goodbye is very real. When someone says they should probably get going, plan on another 45 minutes, because there is a whole second conversation in the entryway, a third one in the driveway, and one final lean on the car door before anyone actually leaves. It is one of my favorite things about this place. Thinking about a move to the Twin Cities? Message me for my free relocation guide.

08/18/2026

You have probably seen the Reddit threads that call Minnesota nice fake, so let me give you the real version from someone who lives here. People are genuinely warm and friendly, and they also move slowly when it comes to letting you all the way in. Your neighbor will plow your driveway, watch your dog, and show up with a hot dish the moment something goes wrong. That same neighbor might also take two years to invite you over for dinner, and both of those things are true at once. The fastest way in is to join a community, whether that is a church, a gym, or a rec league, anything that puts you around other Minnesotans doing something you enjoy. That is the real cheat code for feeling at home here. Curious about life in the Twin Cities? Message me for my free relocation guide.

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700 Lake Street E Suite 200
Wayzata, MN
55391

Telephone

+16128014565

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