Minneapolis Duplex Market Open To Interpretation

Sometimes interpreting the Minneapolis/St Paul duplex market is a bit like reading tea leaves.

There might be some meaning in the patterns.  But they’re open to interpretation.

For the week ending April 3, 2010, the number of new duplex, triplex and fourplex listings was up 18 percent over those properties new to the market for the same stretch last year.

Of these, 49.23 percent were being offered by traditional sellers. This figure meant a year-over-year decrease in lender owned or mediated listings of 20 percent.

However, it should be noted that the number of pended transactions for the week represented a drop of 9.5 percent year-over-year.

This decrease in sales activity did not seem to impact the average off market price, however, which was $119,734.  While not the obvious improvement of recent weeks, this figure was nonetheless just over $9000 higher than last year’s sold price.

Of those properties that received purchase agreements, 26.32 percent had people sign the purchase agreements rather than financial institutions. This represents a traditional seller gain of nearly 10 percent year over year.

The single family market was a bit easier to interpret. There were 11.8 percent more homes that received purchase agreements than did last year.

The number of active listings on the market are also up, beating last year’s by half a percent.

Further good fortune is promised with the news that the average number of days a property is on the market before being sold has dropped to its lowest in years, while the percentage of the list price a property sells for rose. Most properties now sell within 2.7 percent of their asking price.