Minneapolis Duplex Sales Shift Gears

Minneapolis and St Paul duplex sales moved from second to third gear the week ending April 28, 2012.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the market share of short sale and bank owned properties vs. that brought to the market by traditional sellers.

Of the 19 owners who accepted purchase agreements, 52.6 percent were equity sellers. Of the 41 new listings that came on the market, a whopping 78 percent of them have equity in their duplexes.

Compare this to the same week in 2011, when just 40.6 percent of the 32 sellers new to the market did not need to receive permission from a bank to sell. Perhaps even more dramatically, of those duplexes that sold in that week, 80 percent were bank owned or negotiated.

Of course, this shift toward traditional sellers is most likely the result of the five major banks 11 month long moratorium on foreclosures. Case in point, this morning alone 82 Twin Cities property owners received notices of default; the first major step in the foreclosure process.

Single family home sales saw their new listings decrease by 14.9 percent, while their number of pending sales increased 21.4 percent.

Increased demand coupled with decreasing supply resulted in a 7.1 percent price increase in March, to a median of $149,900.

This increase has not applied to the duplex market however, where the average off market and sales price continue to be within one to two percent of their averages for last year.

The road ahead promises to be interesting.