Minneapolis Duplex Prices Rise

If you were a Twin Cities duplex owner thinking about selling, there’s likely one category of real estate activity you’re most concerned about: price.

The good news for Minneapolis and St Paul duplex sellers is exactly that: prices are up. In fact, for the week ending February 15, 2014, the final list price for a duplex, triplex or fourplex listed on the MLS whose owner accepted an offer was $225,306. This demolishes the average sold price for the same week last year, when sellers realized an average price of $154,827.

The news wasn’t as encouraging in the rest of the categories. Just 17 sellers accepted offers for the week this year; that’s down two from 2013.

New listings were down as well, tallying 16 new opportunities for buyers to choose from, compared with 19 last year. Of these 16 new listings, 75 percent are being sold by people with equity. This represents a slight uptick from the 73.7 percent of last year’s sellers who had equity when they listed their property for sale.

Single family homes sales saw similar drops. New listings were down 2.9 percent, pending sales down 8.4 percent, and overall, there was 9.7 percent less inventory available to buy than there was last year.

And it’s exactly this shortage of available properties that has caused prices to rise.