Minneapolis Holiday Duplex Sales Beat 2007 Mark

Shoppers may have avoided the malls during the 2008 Christmas season; perhaps because low interest rates and bargain basement prices lured them away to shop for Twin Cities duplexes.

For the week ending December 27, 14 properties received acceptable purchase agreements. Not a whopping total, to be certain, but it represents a 27% increase over last year’s figure. Of those sales, 93 percent involved lender-mediated properties. Last year, 91 percent of the sales for the comparable week involved lenders in the negotiations.

The average sales price for small multi-family properties, however, did not fare as well. While last year’s holiday average was $128,630, in 2008 that figure was just $94,453. We may start to see a change as we ease into the new year, however, as inventory continued to decline; down a robust 14 percent for the week.

In the single family market, inventory has also declined. New listings for the week were down 3.2 percent, while pending sales were up 8.9 percent.

MAAR also announced an updated figure for its Supply-Demand Ration, which measures the number of homes for sale for each buyer active in the marketplace. While there were 10.41 homes for every buyer in January 2008, in 2009 there are 8.36. This represents nearly a 20% decline in inventory.