Minneapolis Duplex Sellers Have Hoarding Problem

Apparently, Minneapolis and St Paul duplex owners have some deep emotional ties to their investment properties, because they’re not putting them on the market to sell.

New duplex listings for the week ending April 9, 2011, were down 36 percent from the same week one year ago.

Both equity sellers and lender owned and negotiated properties must be filling up a warehouse somewhere, because neither made a significant change in the percentage of Minneapolis and St Paul duplexes they were willing to part with.

Of these new listings, 35 percent were offered by traditional sellers. The rest will involve banks at some level of purchase negotiations.

Last year, traditional sellers contributed 43 percent of the week’s new inventory.

The number of pending duplex sales for the week was relatively flat, with 20 sellers accepting purchase agreements this year, compared to the 22 who did one year ago.

A whopping 45 percent of the duplexes that pended for the week were owned by people with equity. That’s a 13 percent jump over last year.

This was likely a significant factor in the average off-market listing price of $158,620. While this is likely to result in a somewhat lower sales price, it nonetheless represents a significant jump over last year’s average sold price of $112,182.73.

Apparently single family home sellers have a hoarding problem too. New listings for the week were down 30 percent over last year’s mark.

Of course, they’re not alone, as buyers seem to be hoarding their cash too, in spite of historically low interest rates and fire sale prices; so much so that pending sales were down 22.7 percent from last year’s tax-incentive inspired spree.

It’s probably the single family home buyers we need to do an intervention on. There are presently 27 active listings on the market for every buyer.

Minneapolis and St Paul duplex and single family home buyers and sellers probably need to see a therapist. But I just don’t know where we’ll find enough trash bags to clear out the clutter.