Why this Week’s Minneapolis Duplex Numbers Don’t Sync Like An iPod

Oh how I wish I could just plug my calculator into my laptop and, in seconds, be able to know how the Twin Cities duplex market is doing!

But it’s week two of the market anomaly; comparing 2008’s Twin Cities duplex sales figures from the week of Thanksgiving, to the comparable week from 2007, which was the week after the holiday. If we did a side by side comparison, we wouldn’t necessarily get an accurate read. Because this year we were all eating turkey.

So we’re left with what we do know. During the holiday week, 44 new small multi-family listings came on the market. Of these, 36, or 82 percent are lender-mediated properties. Last year during the same period, there were 58 new listings, of which 79 percent were lender mediated.

Of the 31 properties that received purchase agreements this year, 24 were lender mediated. This figure represents 77 percent of the transactions. The average pending sales price of these properties was $125,740.

In the same week of 2007, 21 listings sold. Sixty-seven percent of these were lender mediated for an average sales price of $188,050.

While it looks like sales were up once again in 2008, next week’s statistics will offer a much more accurate update of recently played and purchased properties.