Minneapolis Duplex Sales Rewrite Themselves

Sometimes Minneapolis and St Paul duplex sales seem to have unwritten rules.

Take, for example, the week ending April 13, 2013.

There were 18 duplex, triplex and fourplex owners who received and accepted offers. For the first time in ages, the minority of these, 38.9 percent, were traditional sellers with equity in their properties. Last year there was a similar trend, when just 36.8 percent of the 19 properties that sold were offered by equity sellers.

With banks contributing the majority of the sold properties, you would think prices would drop. And yet, the average final off-market list price for duplexes this year was $195,733, compared with $134,608 one year ago.

Meanwhile, traditional sellers continued to bring the majority of the new listings to the market. For the week in 2013, 52.2 percent of the 23 new investment property opportunities were being offered by traditional sellers.  Of the 28 new listings last year, 57.1 percent did not need a bank’s permission to sell.

The single family home market continued to experience a squeeze in inventory, with new listings down 2 percent and pending sales up 6.1 percent for the week.  In all, inventory was down 28.7 percent.

With so few properties to choose from, it continues to be a great time to be a seller.