St Paul Duplex Market Cools

It snowed in July in St Paul. Not really, but the city’s duplex, triplex and fourplex market acted a bit like grass in the dead of winter.

On average, a multifamily property listed for sale spent 56 days on the market before selling. That’s the longest properties have lingered since February 2023. When considering canceled and relisted properties before selling, that number swelled to 68; the most since February of this year.

The longer a duplex is on the market, the less it ultimately sells for. So it makes sense that on average, duplex sellers netted closed prices that were 99 percent of their original asking price. This was the lowest percentage since December.

There were 22 properties sold in July. These sellers realized an average sales price of $328,864.  Values tend to jump around in cities from month to month, so while this is down from last month, it is also higher than March’s average. Six of these transactions came from the Payne-Phalen neighborhood, while the Greater East Side and Mac-Groveland contributed 3 each.

The high seller for the month was a Craftsman-era true duplex in the Como neighborhood. Last on the market in 1973, this 6 bedroom, 4 bathroom gem sold before appearing on the MLS for $500,000.

The value of the month was a 4 bedroom,  2 bathroom house conversion in the Thomas-Dale neighborhood closed at $163,000.

St Paul saw a whopping 48 new listings come on the market in July. While that’s down from June’s 51, it still represents a 45.5% increase over July 2023. The Thomas-Dale and Payne-Phalen neighborhoods saw 6 new listings each, while the West Side, Summit-University, Datyon’s Bluff and Payne-Phalen communities each added 5.

A boarded-up 7 bedroom, 3 bath triplex in Dayton’s Bluff is the value-add opportunity of the month. It is a short sale currently awaiting bank approval at $60,000.  A 9 bedroom, 4 bathroom collection of condos being sold as a fourplex in the Summit-University area represented the other end of the spectrum, coming in at $999,900.

There was a total of 86 active listings in St Paul in July. That’s the most since September of 2021. The city’s market is currently balance with a 4 month supply. This is the third month of the year when that was the case. Balanced markets are usually transitional, quickly moving toward either a buyers or sellers market.

Let’s hope the Federal Reserve’s anticipated September rate cut inspires a thaw.