Minneapolis Duplex Market Open For Interpretation

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.