About
I am Michael Affeldt, a Realtor with Counselor Realty and The Boen Team, working with buyers and sellers across the Twin Cities metro.
I grew up in Orono and studied law enforcement at Metropolitan State University. In 2014 I joined the Metro Transit Police Department. I served seven years and was named Officer of the Year in 2018. I was medically retired at the end of 2021.
That work is the reason I do this one the way I do. Police work is mostly paperwork, procedure, and telling people the truth about a situation they did not choose. A real estate transaction is not an emergency, but the mechanics rhyme: deadlines that do not move, documents that mean exactly what they say, and one person in the room whose job is to explain it plainly.
I read the contract to you. Contingencies, timelines, what you are committed to and what you can still walk away from. Not a summary. If you do not understand a clause, that is my failure, not yours.
I have swung the hammer. I spent years as a handyman and painter, and I remodeled my own house. I know what a five-thousand-dollar problem looks like next to a fifty-thousand-dollar one, and I know which one the photos are hiding. That shows up at showings and it shows up hard during inspection negotiation.
I do not sell urgency. If the timing is wrong, I will say so. If a house is a bad buy, I will tell you before you write, not after.
I offer the Homes for Heroes program, which returns roughly 0.7% of the home price after closing — about $2,800 on a $400,000 home — to educators, law enforcement, firefighters, EMS, healthcare workers, and military. It is funded from my commission on your side of the transaction and is never added to your costs.
I did not come to this program as a marketing angle. I bought my own first home through The Boen Team using it, as a police officer, and joined the team afterward because of how that went. I know what these careers pay and I know what they ask.
I live in Saint Louis Park with my wife Jessie, our son Teddy, and three dogs — two German Shorthaired Pointers who were bred to hunt and one rescue who was not. We spend our time on house projects, travel, and hiking. When the wind is right, I kiteboard on a local lake.
If you are weighing a move and want a straight read on it, call or text. There is no presentation and nothing to sit through.
Every city in the metro wants something different before a sale can close — inspections, disclosures, assessment searches. I write them up one city at a time, with the city’s own source behind every line and the date it was last checked. Where something is not established, the page says so rather than guessing.
Selling guides by city → ← Everything else — listings, contact, social