Duplex Chick

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If home sales were a slide in the park, this would be fun.

With today’s release of the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, we climbed the ladder of hope on the news that Twin Cities home prices were up 6.5 percent in March over the same month one year ago.

Looking forward to a quick trip down the slide, however, today’s Weekly Market Activity Report released by the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors (MAR), resulted in our skin sticking to the slide.

MAR reported that for the week ending May 15, there were 830 purchase agreements signed. While that sounds like a lot, it is disappointing when compared to the 1,469 that were signed during the final week of the tax credits.

Worse yet, this is a 32.8 percent decline in transactions from the same week a year ago.

On the duplex playground, however, there was a little more fun to be had.

Exactly the same number of duplexes received purchase agreements during the second full weeks of May in 2009 and 2010. While the 32 pended for the week isn’t exactly an inspirational number, it is just three transactions shy of the number pended the final week of the tax credit.

Of the small multi-family properties that received purchase agreements, 31.25 percent were offered by traditional sellers. This represents a 6.25 percent year over year increase in market share.

New listings for the week fell dramatically were down a dizzying 27.3 percent from last year. Of those, 43.75 percent were being offered by traditional sellers; a market share increase of 4.36 percent.

Recent weeks and months haven’t seen the dramatic swings in the duplex market we saw during winter. However, this very lack of drama may in fact suggest we’re bumping along the bottom of the multi-family market.

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Look at the image to the left and tell me what you see.

I don’t know what it is, let alone what it means; kind of like the real estate market statistics for the Twin Cities for the week ending December 5, 2009.

In the single family sector, pending sales were up from the week before, but still trailed the mark from the same week one year earlier by 7.7 percent.

The months supply of single family inventory dropped to 5.7; the lowest it’s been in two years and down 32.9 percent from last year. Look a little closer, however, and numbers indicate there’s a 7.6 month supply of homes offered by traditional sellers, a 1.4 month supply of foreclosures and a big, black splat of short sale inventory at 12.8 months.

Houses priced below $190,000 have sold 49.9 percent faster over the last twelve months than they did the year before. For properties listed above that $190,000 mark, however, sales are down 10.5 percent.

Over in the duplex sector, the average off market price for pending sales was $132,355. This is a leap of $22,125 over the average sold price for properties one year before.

Of the small multi-family properties that received purchase agreements, just 13 percent were negotiated by traditional sellers. While this is a significant drop from previous weeks, it is nonetheless a 10 percent gain year over year.

The amount of new inventory to hit the market was down 33 percent from last year. Of these new offerings, traditional sellers were obvious, representing 49 percent of the market. Last year, they were responsible for just 17 percent of the new inventory.

All in all, there doesn’t seem to be an obvious picture in any of it.