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Minneapolis Duplex Market Hints At Thaw
March 2nd, 2010 categories: Twin Cities Real Est
Believe it or not, in some sectors of the Twin Cities housing market have begun to thaw. In fact, it feels like spring: of 2006.
Realtors and our clients are once again experiencing multiple offers and having to rush to see newly listed properties before they’re gone.
Unfortunately, the bulk of this activity is in first time home buyer territory; namely, those properties below $225,000.
But there are hints in MAR’s Weekly Market Activity Report that perhaps things are loosening up. For the week ending February 20, pending sales were actually 9.9 percent higher than they were for last year. This is the first year-over-year increase we’ve seen in weeks.
With just 5.39 homes available for each active buyer in the market, a 17.7 percent increase in the number of new listings for the week may help those facing multiple offers find homes. There are 6.9 percent fewer homes available for purchase this year than there were at this point in 2009.
In the small multifamily sector, traditional sellers continued to gain ground on the banks. Twenty-five percent of the owners of properties that received purchase agreements were people, not corporations. Of those listings new to the marketplace, 48.14 percent were being sold by people with actual names.
While the number of pended duplex sales was down 38.5 percent, the good news is the average price they left active status at was $121,509. This represents a significant leap over last year’s sold price of $94,671.23.
As we head toward the $8000 first time home buyer and $6500 repeat buyer tax credit April 30 deadline, we’re sure to see even more signs of spring.
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Minneapolis Duplex Market Goes Zen
February 9th, 2010 categories: Twin Cities Real Est
MAAR issued its Weekly Market Activity Report this morning and by all appearances, housing transactions for the week ending January 30, 2010, remained in their meditative state.
Pending single family home sales were down just slightly from the same week in 2009, while the number of signed purchase agreements rose just 0.7 percent.
The number of new single family home listings didn’t make any real perceptible moves either, dropping 3.7 percent year over year.
The duplex and small multi-family market showed a few signs of movement, but most were slight. For example, of the properties this year that received purchase agreements, 95 percent involve a lender in the negotiations. This is down .5 percent from last year.
The average pended price of properties for the week in 2010 was $98,395, compared with last year’s average sale price of $93,118.
New listings for the week trailed last year by 12.3 percent. The good news is 40.35 percent of the week’s new inventory was offered by traditional sellers, compared with just 26 percent for last year.
Let’s hope the tranquility doesn’t last.
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Minneapolis Duplex Sale May End Soon
January 12th, 2010 categories: Twin Cities Real Est
The buyer’s market is over.
Buried in the Weekly Market Activity Report from the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors was news that The Months Supply of Inventory in the marketplace is 5.
In other words, if no new houses came on the market today, in 5 months we’d be out of houses to sell.
A year ago, we had a 6.7 month supply.
Generally speaking, the housing market is considered to be balanced, with neither buyer nor seller having the advantage, at a 5 month supply.
Does this mean we’re once again on course for double digit rates of appreciation for single family homes?
Unlikely. Especially with the distinct possibility of higher interest rates on the spring horizon.
The duplex market for the week ending January 2, 2010, however, tells an entirely different story. The average off market price for a pended duplex or small multi family property for the week was $161,237. For the same week in 2008, that number was $92,656.
The number of sales week over week was a bit less promising, dropping 16 percent. Traditional sellers for the week represented 19 percent of the transactions. This is more than double their market share for the year before.
New listings continued to be few and far between, dropping 38 percent week over week. Just over one quarter of the new inventory for the New Year was offered by traditional sellers, an increase of three percent year over year.
While the months supply of inventory and increased traditional seller market share are good news, it’s important to remember the vast majority of the market is still controlled by lender mediated transactions.
While foreclosed duplexes seem to be increasingly rare, the same cannot be said in the single family home market. There are persistent rumours of a shadow inventory of foreclosure properties being kept off the market by banks, though the validity of those rumors is difficult to substantiate.
If they exist, we’re all likely to lose our balance.
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Minneapolis Duplex Market Statistics Refuse To Celebrate Holidays
December 29th, 2009 categories: Twin Cities Real Est
While the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors apparently isn’t releasing market statistics for the week ending December 21, 2009, I nonetheless have numbers to report in the duplex and small multi-family sector of the market.
Hey, CNN never takes a vacation either.
Pending sales dropped dramatically for the week from their 2008 mark. In fact, they dropped by exactly half. And while the most inexpensive duplex to receive an offer was listed at $13,000, this is more than twice as much as the cheapest duplex that sold in the same week last year at $5,900.
To that end, the average off-market price for the week was $110,170, compared with the $95,200 for the stretch in ‘08.
Of those properties that accepted purchase agreements, 6.25 percent were offered by traditional sellers. While this number seems paltry compared to data in recent weeks, it is, again, exactly double the figure for last year.
Traditional sellers did, however, hold their ground among new listings, comprising 37.14 percent of the market. This mark smashes last year’s traditional holiday offerings, which represented just 3.33 percent of the new inventory.
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Minneapolis Duplex Sales Go To The Movies
August 25th, 2009 categories: Twin Cities Real Est
Remember the movie The Incredible Shrinking Woman?
After being exposed to a mix of household chemicals, the lead character, played by Lily Tomlin, inexplicably begins to shrink. This, of course, baffles everyone involved.
Kind of like the Twin Cities housing market.
Amid reports of a glut of foreclosures on the horizon, and an uptick in foreclosure notices, the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtor’s Weekly Market Activity Report notes shrinkage.
For the week ending August 15, there were 25,765 active listings on the MLS; the least since 2005.
There were 1,630 new listings for the week; the fewest since 2002.
And, there were 1,026 signed purchase agreements; the most since 2005.
Over in the duplex and small multifamily market, new listings were down 42 percent from 2008. The percentage of those new listings that will involve a lender in the negotiations lost an inch as well, dropping 1.5 percent year over year.
Unfortunately, pending sales lost a little altitude also; experiencing a 35 percent decline week over week. While I can’t prove it statistically, I believe this may be a result of a lack of inventory for owner occupants to choose from.
While the average off market price for the week was a healthier $112,620, it still trails last years average sales price for the week which was $133,130.
The good news is the percentage of bank owned or lender mediated properties that left the market appears to be stabilizing; up just 1.7 percent over 2008.
We’ll hope for a growth spurt next week.
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Minneapolis Duplex Market Shrinks
July 28th, 2009 categories: Twin Cities Real Est
If you’re considering taking advantage of the $8000 first time home buyer tax credit to buy a duplex, you’d better hustle. Not only is time running out, but so is the inventory.
Wait? A housing shortage? Well…
According to MAAR, there are 21.4 percent fewer homes for sale in the Twin Cities market than there were at this time last year. In just the week ending July 18, there were 12.1 percent fewer new listings than there were for the comparable week in 2008.
Meanwhile, pending sales the week ending July 18 jumped 18.2 percent. Of course, most of these transactions involve homes in the first time home buyer price range.
As a result of shrinking first time home buyer single family inventory, frustrated buyers may be opting for duplexes. Pending sales for the week were up five percent from last year, with 15 percent of those properties did not involve a lender in the negotiations.
Sadly, the 2009 average off market price of the pended properties was just $104,927, as 16 percent drop from the same week in July in 2008.
There were, however, 18.9 percent fewer new listings year over year. While 70 percent of these continue to involve a short sale or foreclosure property, 67.57 percent of the 2008 properties did. In other words, we haven’t seen a dramatic leap in the percentage of foreclosures hitting the market.
A word of caution. In late 2008 and early 2009, there was a moratorium placed on foreclosures by the government. Word is those properties where the seller was not able to successfully renegotiate the terms of their loans will begin hitting the market August 1.
What’s more, numerous real estate reporters like Diana Olick of CNBC are talking about a ”shadow inventory” of bank foreclosures; properties the lenders have already seized, but are holding on to in order to not flood the market, causing further declines in home values.
While I have no statistical data to support this assertion, I do personally know of several properties that were foreclosed on as much as a year ago that have yet to hit the market.
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More Good News In Minneapolis Duplex Market
July 7th, 2009 categories: Twin Cities Real Est
While the media continues to report disheartening news for the national housing market, the most recent data for the Minneapolis/St Paul real estate market again suggests there may be reasons for cautious optimism locally.
With their release of the Weekly Activity Report for the week ending June 27, MAAR reports that new listings for the week were down 18.9 percent from the same period last year. In fact, the total supply of listings is down 21.3 percent from 2008.
The number of pending sales for the week were also encouraging. The 1,121 propererties that received purchase agreements was a leap of 31 percent over last year.
On a broader scale, there are now just 4.9 homes available for sale for every buyer. That’s 32.6 percent lower than last year, and a number that hasn’t been seen since 2005.
In the multi-family market, pending duplex sales were up 25.7 percent from the comparable week in 2008. Of the properties that received purchase agreements, 91 percent were lender owned or mediated, with an average off market price of $109,742.
This figure once again represents an increase in the number of short and foreclosure sales from the 2008 mark. The duplexes that pended for the same week in 2008, meanwhile, averaged a sale price of $122,389.
The number of new listings for the last week in June, however, was down an incredible 34.9 percent from last year. As supply continues to decline, we may see price improvements in the near future.
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Ray of Light Shines On Minneapolis Duplex Market
June 2nd, 2009 categories: Twin Cities Real Est
While there continues to be foreclosure clouds on the horizon, the National Association of Realtors delivered a ray of light this morning. Pending home sales in April rose for the third consecutive month.
Here in the Midwest, the pending home sale index rose 9.8 percent; making it 11.1 percent higher than in April 2008.
There was encouraging news locally as well. MAAR’s Weekly Activity Report for the week ending May 23, reflected a Supply-Demand Ration for June 2009 of 5.04. This means there will be 5.04 houses on the market for every buyer out shopping this month.
This figure represents a drop of 33.4 percent compared with June of 2008.
While market statistics were tempered a bit by the early Memorial Day holiday, there were nonetheless 1,103 pending single family home sales for the week; a figure 27.2 percent higher than for the same week last year.
Of the week’s single family home sales, 43.2 percent were lender-mediated short sales or foreclosures.
In the duplex and small multi-family sector, 97.6 percent of the properties that received purchase agreements involved a lender in the negotiations. This is up significantly from the 85.4 percent bank negotiated transactions for the same week in 2008.
While both years logged 41 pending sales for the week, the average sale prices stood in stark contrast to one another. The average sale price in 2008 stood at $129,114. This year’s average off market price was down 26 percent from that mark at just $95,137.73.
The good news is, however, that new listings were down as well. While 75 new properties came on the market the third week of May 2008, just 56 debuted over the same stretch in 2009.
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$8000 Minneapolis Duplex Tax Credit Dates Lindsay Lohan
May 28th, 2009 categories: Buying A Duplex
Not to be outdone by TMZ, the $8000 tax credit rumor mill is buzzing that the on again off again monetization of the credit for use as a down payment mentioned earlier this month by HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan appears to be on again.
Then again, according to a Wall Street Journal report, the program was ne
ver off. The FHA may well have simply needed to iron out some issues and get White House approval before the program can make its debut.
Once in place, the Journal anticipates it may take several weeks for the program to become operational.
The plan had been for FHA approved lenders to be authorized to provide bridge loans to first time home buyers secured by the tax credit the buyer will be receiving.
Nonprofit organizations, as well as state and local agencies would also be authorized to provide the loans in the form of a second mortgage secured by the house.
This program would allow people who haven’t owned a home in the last three years to use their anticipated tax credit as a down payment on property. Of course, this “first time home buyer tax credit” extends to any principal place of residence, including duplexes and other multi-family units.
Both the real estate and home building industries believe this initiative would go a long way toward jump starting the housing market.
And you thought government news wasn’t as juicey as Hollywood’s.
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Minneapolis Duplex Sales Send Mixed Messages
May 26th, 2009 categories: Twin Cities Real Est
Which do you want first? The good news? Or the bad?
Chances are you’ve already heard the bad on CNN or MSNBC. The monthly Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller National Home Price Index reported national home prices dropped 19.1 percent in the first quarter. In all, home prices have now fallen 32.2 percent since 2006.
It gets worse. Between February and March, Minneapolis posted a drop of 6.1 percent; the biggest monthly drop on record for any of the 20 major metropolitan areas in the index.
But remember, all of this news was for the first quarter. It doesn’t take into account what we’ve seen here since April.
MAAR announced in its weekly activity report this morning that new listings for the week ending May 16 were down 10.2 percent from the same week last year. In all, there are 20.5 percent fewer listings on the market now than there were at this time last year.
Pending sales, meanwhile, eclipsed the 1200 mark for the first time in three years. In fact, the 1,235 sales are up 36.9 percent over the same stretch in 2008.
And the duplex market?
Pending sales continued their strong performance; up 32 percent over last year. Of those properties that received purchase agreements, 82.9 percent were lender owned or mediated. Seventy-seven percent of the transactions for the same week in 2008 involved a bank in the negotiations.
Last week’s euphoria proved short-lived, with the average off market price for 2009 being just $118,156. This figure was far below the average sale price of $145,311 set during the week in 2008.
New listings were down 5.7 percent, however, which should ultimately bode well for future price increases.
Once again, it’s wait and see.
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