You Tell Me How The Minneapolis Duplex Market Is

Sometimes I wish I was a statistician. Or an economist. Or, even a psychic.

If I were any of those things, perhaps I could come up with a better answer to the question, “What’s the real estate market like?”

Because sometimes I’m not sure how to answer other than to say, “Dunno”, which is Minnesotan for “don’t know”.

For the week ending May 29, 2010, pended Minneapolis duplex sales were down 3.8 percent from the pace they set over the same stretch last year.

Uh-oh, right?

Well, hold on. The average off-market price for those properties was $164,276, and 40 percent of them were owned by traditional sellers.

Last year’s average sold price for the same week was just $93,454, with only 7.7 percent did not involve financial institutions in the negotiations.

Of the new listings for the last week in May, 54.7 percent were listed by traditional sellers. Not only was the number of listings up year-over-year by 15 percent, but traditional sellers also gained an additional 14 percent of the market share.

So is it good? Bad? Dunno.

Things are more clear over in the single family home market. Well, sort of.

The number of purchase agreements signed for the week was down 34.6 percent below the previous year. This was the fourth week in a row (and the fourth since the tax credit), in which this happened.

New listings were down 5.9 percent for the week from the mark they set last year.

However, those listings that received purchase agreements were also spending less days on the market than they had last year, and receiving 2.8 percent more of the original list price; at 94.1 percent.

Maybe we’ll know more next week. Maybe not.