Patrick D. Niemeyer and his wife, Ellen, bought a four-bedroom, four bath at 712 Payson Dr. in Olivette for $780,000 from Robert Totsch and his wife, Elizabeth, on May 19.

The Totsches paid $719,500 for the home in June 2007 and added a bedroom, finished the lower level and extensively landscaped the grounds prior to the sale in May.

Bob Macrum of Strait Realty was the agent for the sale. The home was listed for $793,500.

Mr. Niemeyer is a St. Louis-based independent consultant and author specializing in the computer programming language Java. He also works as a spec lead for the Java Community Process expert group. As an author, he's penned the books Exploring Java, Learning Java and BeanShell Java Scripting Language.

He has served as a senior architect and consultant to several companies, including Bank of America Securities in New York, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Edward Jones, A.G. Edwards, StreamSearch.com and Strata Group, Inc. Previously, he was a process specialist with Southwestern Bell and has also served as a systems engineer at Innerlink Systems, Inc.

Mr. Totsch is the general sales director at KMOV-TV, the CBS affiliate in St. Louis.

Home sales in Olivette have dropped 27.8 percent thus far in 2008. The median sale price has also dropped from $268,000 in 2007 to $200,000 so far this year.

Address: 712 Payson Drive
Buyer(s): Patrick D Niemeyer (and wife)
Seller(s): Robert Totsch (and wife)
Sale date: May. 19, 2008