Twin Cities Duplex Sellers Prefer High Rent To High Prices

In Minneapolis, it’s a duplex sellers market. The irony is, nobody seems to want to sell. They’re too busy raking in the cash from rent.

For example, consider the week ending March 29, 2014. There were just 17 new listings that week; 88.2 percent of which are being sold by people with equity in their properties.

During the same week in 2013,  there were a whopping 32 new listings. Traditional sellers contributed 59.3 percent of those new listings to last spring’s market.

Pending sales for the week took a slight dip from last year, with 17 sellers accepting offers; down two from last year. Of this year’s pending sales, 82.3 percent belong to traditional sellers. On average, these properties were listed at a price of $202,623. This is up from last year’s sold price of $178,615.

The single family home market saw New Listings jump 18.4 percent over the last week in March of 2013. Meanwhile, Pending Sales declined 5.6 percent. However, thanks to a year of listing scarcity, overall inventory remained 5.5 percent below last year.

Twin Cities duplex sellers tell me they’re happy with low vacancy rates and high rent. However, high rent also inevitably leads tenants to discover sometimes buying a house is more affordable than renting.