Minneapolis/St Paul Duplex Sales Provide Ray of Light on Dark Day
A bit of good news would be nice today, wouldn’t it?
Well, in spite of all of the doom and gloom about the economy and the real estate market in the media, the Twin Cities housing market continues to push rays of sunlight through the clouds.
For the seventh week in a row, home sales posted huge gains from the same time one year ago. In fact, for the week ending September 20, pending sales were up 42.8 percent. Over the course of 49 day run, there have been 1500 more sales than there were for the same stretch in 2007.
Of course, it’s important to bear in mind that with the tightening of lending standards in August 2007, September was abnormally low. It is also possible that this burst of activity is the result of buyers taking advantage of seller-assisted down-payment programs.
In the single family home market, 39.1 percent of the September 20th sales were lender-mediated, as compared to 13.4 percent of those in the week last year.
Lender-mediated sales actually seem to be diminishing in the multi-family market, however. While the 84.6 percent of the September 20 sales week transactions were lender-mediated, this is a drop of as much as 10 percent from just a few weeks ago. Last year’s transactions included 71.4 percent lender mediations, which represents a significant jump from the single digit statistics reported in early summer.
Overall, multi-family sales for the week were up a staggering 278.57 percent over the same time in 2007.
The dark clouds remain in the sky and don’t show signs of clearing; but for a moment perhaps, we can try to at least remember where we left the sun screen.