Minneapolis Duplex Sellers Sleep Better

Wake me. I must be dreaming.

Minneapolis duplex sales just went up.

For the week ending October 9, 2010, 29 duplexes pended on the Twin Cities MLS. That’s four more than did for the same week last year.

It doesn’t sound like a lot, I know. But when you convert it to percentages, that’s an increase of 17.2 percent.

Unfortunately, 76 percent of this year’s accepted purchase agreements for the week involved a bank in the negotiations; up 12 percent over the year before.

But there were still some flying and prize-winning lottery tickets left in the dream. The number of new listings for the week was down 22.4 percent from last year’s mark, with traditional sellers putting forth a whopping 53 percent of the week’s new inventory. Last year, just 37.93 percent of the new listings didn’t involve lenders in the negotiations.

The average off-market price for the week was $7000 higher than last year’s sold price for the week as well; the first time that’s happened in nearly a year. Of course, it’s important to remember that the pended price is based on what the property was listed for and is usually higher than the sold price in this market.

While this is likely a brief, pleasant dream, the nightmare in the single-family home sector continued. New listings were down just 4.1 percent from last year. That decline would be good news if there weren’t also 44.8 percent fewer pended sales than there were for the same week last year.

That drop, by the way, is the largest in 13 weeks.

In other words, don’t look for the monsters to get out of the closet anytime soon.