Every Minneapolis Duplex Cloud Has A Silver Lining

There’s a lot of doom and gloom in the air today, and not all of it has to do with last night’s Viking loss.

Some of it has to do with today’s announcement by the National Association of Realtors that nationally, existing home sales fell in December. It wasn’t entirely unanticipated. Most economists thought the rush to beat the original November tax credit deadline might have an effect on December’s housing market. And it did.

So that’s the bad news. But there was some good news in the rest of the story.

See, while existing home sales fell 16.7 percent, they were still 15 percent higher than they were in December 2008.

More importantly perhaps,  4.9 percent more existing homes sold in 2009 than they did in 2008.

The national median home price was $178,300, which is again up over December 2008; albeit a slight 1.5 percent.

Of course, foreclosures and short sales, which represented 36 percent of all home sales last year continue to skew those median price numbers.

The Vikings had a sliver of good news too. Yesterday’s loss means they’ll get a better draft choice.