Minneapolis Duplex Listings Proove Duplex Chick Isn’t Crazy

In the last week, I’ve been calling traditional Minneapolis and St Paul duplex sellers — you remember them, they’re the people with equity in their properties, and asking if they were interested in selling.

In light of the media headlines about a down real estate market, many of them have laughed and implied I was nuts. That was until I explained there’s very little active inventory on the market for duplex investors to choose from.

As if to help me prove I’m not crazy, the data for the week ending May 7, 2011, backs me up.

There were just 26 new listings that came on the market. Many of these have already been on the market for a while. They just showed up as new listings because it was time to refresh the paperwork between the real estate broker and seller. One half of these duplex offerings will not involve a lender’s opinion in the negotiation of a sale.

During the same week last year, there were 60 new listings. That’s 56.7 percent more new listings than there were for the week this year.

Unfortunately, duplex purchases were down week over week too. Just 12 properties had accepted purchase agreements. The good news is a whopping  67 percent of these belonged to traditional sellers.

Of course, this translated into a higher average off market price than last year. Duplexes left the Minneapolis and St Paul market at an average list price of $168,217 (sold prices are likely to be somewhat lower).

Last year, when 31 properties pended on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and just 29 percent belonged to equity sellers, the average sold price was $136,131.

In the single family home market, there were 27.7 percent fewer accepted purchase agreements than at this time last year. Interestingly, however, the number of new listings was up 14.5 percent from their mark one year ago.

Again, if you’re a duplex owner who’s thinking about selling, this may be a great time to do so. There’s not a lot of competition out there.