Minneapolis Duplex Sales Require Double Take

Sunglasses and anti-dust ragClean your glasses and wipe your computer monitor, because you’re not going to believe your eyes when you read the news about the Minneapolis and St Paul duplex market.

Duplex sales are up 15% over last year’s sales for the week ending May 28, 2011.

More incredibly, in the single family home market, buyer activity was up 59.2% week over week.

Of the duplex owners who received purchase agreements, just 34.6% were traditional sellers with equity. This is down from 45.45% last year.

The average list price of the duplexes that left the market during the week was $134,037. This trails the average sold price for the same week one year ago, which was a healthier $168,802.  That stronger number is likely a reflection of the greater percentage of traditional sellers who had property that sold. 

The amount of new inventory continued to trail last year; with 22.7% fewer new duplex opportunities available for buyers than there were one year ago. Of these new listings, just 35.3% were offered by traditional sellers; a figure which is paltry compared to the 65.9% of the new duplex listings last year that belonged to equity sellers.

There was additional good news in the single family home market. Total inventory is down 10.6 percent from last year, while buyer activity was up for the third consecutive week.

I don’t know about you, but I think it’s nice to have a little good duplex and housing market news for a change.