Duplex Sellers Top Santa’s “Nice” List

The holiday season has Minneapolis duplex sellers feeling like Santa’s favorites.

After all, for the week ending December 1, 2012, the average final list price pending sales of Minneapolis and St Paul duplexes, triplexes and four unit buildings at was $46,796 higher than similar properties sold for one year ago.

Granted, on average, Twin Cities real estate sellers are receiving 94.3 percent of their list price, so that number will be down some when sales close.

Nonetheless, it is great news for duplex sellers.

Most of these sellers, 57.1 percent of them to be exact, are traditional sellers with equity in their properties. This is up from the 42.9 percent who could say the same during the week in 2011.

This trend promises to continue, as new listings continue to be as scarce as a Master-Moves Mickey. There were just 22 new listings for the week; down three from the count last year. Of these new investment opportunities, 40.9 percent were brought to the market by traditional sellers. This is a leap from the 28 percent who did so last year.

Single family home sellers also experienced a holiday rush as pending sales rose 18.6 percent for the week. In all, there are 29 percent fewer homes on the market than one year ago.

The .7 percent increase in new listings for the week offered some hope for home buyers, but clearly not enough to loosen what continues to be a tight supply of inventory.

This leaves Minneapolis duplex shoppers little choice but to ask Santa for more inventory.