Duplex Sales Leave Realtors Looking For Something To Do

I don’t know what Realtors will do with all our free time when a bank doesn’t have to be involved in the negotiations in the sale of a duplex.

But it looks like more and more Minneapolis agents are getting a chance to find out.

For the week ending January 22, 2011, traditional sellers were responsible for 17.4 percent of the duplexes, triplexes and four unit buildings that left the market because of a signed purchase agreement.

That sounds paltry, I know. But it’s up 7.4 percent over the same week in 2010.

Traditional sellers were also responsible for 45.16 percent of the newly listed small multi family properties that hit the market. While that’s still not a majority, it also is an increase of just over 7 percent from the same week last year.

Perhaps this return of sellers with human names was also responsible for the average pended price leaping to $129,912; a significant increase over last year’s average sold price of $78,195. While it’s important to remember pended prices tend to be higher than those on sold prices, it’s difficult to imagine a greater than 10 percent drop, which is the current market average.

Over in the single family market, there were 4.5 percent fewer purchase agreements signed for the week than there were that week of January in 2010. Not great, but not the typical slide of 9.3 percent we’ve seen over the last three months.

There was also a drop in the number of new listings; down 21.5 percent week over week. This is generally good news, but not enough of an improvement  to truly impact the 22,810 properties buyers can presently choose from.