Minneapolis Duplex Sales: A Vote for Optimism

There’s a lot of hope in the air today. And it isn’t limited to the voting booth.

In addition to the election, there is some encouraging news in the housing market. Last week, real estate headlines shouted that in September, new home sales unexpectedly rose 2.7 percent and existing home sales jumped 5.5 percent.

And today, MAAR reports that for the week ending October 25, pending sales were up 17.1 percent over the same week last year. New listings, meanwhile, were down 2 percent. While this is certainly encouraging news, it should also be noted that 51.1 percent of the pending sales were foreclosures or short sales, which should result in continued declines in sales prices.

In the small multi-family housing sector, the number of new listings was identical to last year’s mark, with exactly 61 new properties to choose from.

However, there was no comparison between 2007 and 2008 in terms of sales volume. Last year’s weekly mark featured just 9 units sold, at an average sales price of $178,600.

This year, 49 metro listings received purchase agreements for the week; an increase over last year’s mark of 544 percent. This year’s pending list price, however, was $104,439; a decline of 41.5 percent in value.