Ask Oprah About The Minneapolis Duplex Market

If you’re looking for an “Aha!” moment in Minneapolis and St Paul duplex sales for the week ending September 24, 2011, you’ll have to ask Oprah for it.

Because I’m not finding it here.

There were 23 duplex and small multi family property owners who accepted purchase agreements on their properties for the week.  Of these, only six did not need to get a bank’s permission to sell their duplex.

Last year during the same week, just 16 duplex and multi-family property owners received and accepted offers. Of these, four did not need a lender’s ok to sell.

The average list price duplex lisitngs left the market at for the week was $109,201. While this is above last year’s $100,175, it’s important to remember that on average, Twin Cities real estate is selling for somewhere between 8-10 percent less than that off market number.

However, St Paul and Minneapolis duplex buyers got a bit of good news, in that there were 37 new listings to choose from for the week. This is an increase of 13.5 percent over the same week one year ago.

Over in the single family home sector, new inventory continues to dwindle. Last year at this time home buyers had 30,178 houses to choose from.

This year, they only have 23,351.

This drop can be attributed to the continued decline in new listings coming on the market, as well as an average increase of 260 sales every week over last year.

It’s too soon to tell whether this inventory decline is due to the moratorium banks took on foreclosures while they sorted out the paperwork, or a true tightening of the market.

I guess we’ll have to wait a little longer for our epiphany.