Welcome The New Minneapolis Duplex Seller’s Market

Apparently all of the Minneapolis and St Paul duplex sellers went up north for the summer.

After all, there were only 21 new duplex, triplex and four unit listings for buyers to choose from; down 36 percent from one year ago.

Then again, 66 percent of last year’s new inventory was either brought to the market by banks, or involved a bank in the negotiations. This year they contributed just 48 percent of the new inventory.

It is interesting to note in a market filled with multiple offers and enormous buyer demand that just 14 Minneapolis and St Paul duplex owners accepted purchase agreements on their properties. Most (64.2 percent) of these were traditional equity sellers.

One year ago, there were 17 duplex sellers who accepted offers. Sixty-five percent of those properties were either bank owned inventory, or required a lender’s approval in order to proceed with the sale.

Traditional sellers, of course, always bring higher average prices and the holiday week was no exception. Their market domination resulted in an average off market list price of $203,278. After applying an MLS average Percent of Original List Price Received of 95.1 percent, resulting in what will probably be an average sale price for the week of $193,317, we are on track to shatter the average for the same week in 2011, which was $119,297.

Single family homes also saw a decline in new listings, dropping 21.9 percent, and an increase in pending sales for 24.6 percent. Overall in June, we saw median sales prices increase 10.4 percent to $179,000, and the months supply of Inventory drop 44 percent to 4.5 percent.

A real estate market is considered balanced, favoring neither buyers or sellers, when there is a 5 – 6 month supply of inventory. Less than that creates a seller’s market, and more inventory favors buyers.

Not so subtle hint: it’s a great time to sell.