Minneapolis Duplex Sales Need A Publicist

anderson cooperI can’t believe there aren’t any headlines or special news bulletin interruptions. After all, what is a balanced real estate market?

One where there are an equal number of duplex buyers and sellers in the Minneapolis market.

The easiest way to measure this is with the Months Supply of Inventory statistic. Essentially, this number comes from the calculation of, if nobody put another house or duplex on the market, how many months would it take to sell all the ones already for sale?

A balanced market is one at which there’s a 5-6 month supply.

Anything bigger than that, and it’s considered a buyer’s market. Like what we’ve had the last few years.

Anything smaller than that, and we’re in a seller’s market.

In statistics released by the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors today, in December, the Twin Cities had a 36.2 percent decline in inventory, resulting in a 4.6 month supply.

Which means, for the moment anyway, the market favors sellers.

And I certainly haven’t heard any word of this in our local media outlets.

For the week ending December 31, 2011, there were 20 Minneapolis and St Paul duplexes, triplexes and four unit apartment building sellers who received and signed purchase agreements for their properties.

Of these, 35 percent have equity in their property and do not have to get a bank’s permission to sell.

These 20 properties left the market at an average list price of $158,300. This is up from last year’s sold price for the same week of $117,310.

Of course, one year ago, there were just 11 Twin Cities duplexes that sold that week. Of these, only 18 percent did not involve a bank’s input on the sales price.

Last year during the week, there were 12 new duplex listings for buyers to choose from. There were the same number last year.

However, while traditional, equity sellers contributed 42 percent of the inventory during the final week of 2011, just 25 percent of those sold the same week in 2010 did.

Before we start looking for signs of CNN trucks and Anderson Cooper in our neighborhoods, it’s important to note happy days, are probably not here again.

After all, on a national basis, there are reportedly well over 6 million homes and duplexes at some stage of the foreclosure process.

But right now, we’ll take any bit of good news we can get.