Suburban Duplex Sales Act Like A Sponge

Have you ever wiped a few drops of water with the corner of a dry sponge? That part of the sponge swells, while the rest retains its shape.

That’s what the seven-county metro area duplex, triplex and fourplex market feels like. When looking at data for the suburbs, it’s a bit like that misshapen sponge.

For example, there were 32 new listings in August. That’s a 23% increase over last August, and a 28% increase over July. However, April, May and June all saw more than 30 new listings on the market.

In all, there were 58 active listings in August. That’s up from 53 in July, 40 in August of last year, and 39 in 2020. However, it is also the biggest number of multifamily properties for sale in August since 2018.

South St Paul lead the way with 4 new listings. St Louis Park came in second with 3. The latter included the month’s suburban high water mark; an 8 bedroom, 4 bathroom fourplex that hit the market at $975,000. Farmington featured the month’s value add opportunity; a fourplex in need of everything but walls, windows and a roof at $147,900.

August saw 19 multifamily properties trade hands in the suburbs.  This was the second most number of monthly suburban sales this year. It also represented a year-over-year increase of 18.75%. Nonetheless it trailed 2020’s 27 transactions or the month.

The month’s high seller was a 4 bedroom, 4 bathroom up/down Excelsior side by side duplex in turnkey condition that closed at $660,00. A South St Paul house with a guest house in the back yard generated $255,000 or its seller. Seller’s netted an average of 98.6% of their original list price at closing. This is down year-over-year from 100.00%, and 2020’s 101.2%, but is well ahead of the 95.9% in 2015.

On average, properties spent 30 days on the market before selling, and a median of 29 days.  This average is 66.7% higher than last year, but 3.2% lower than 2020. The average of cumulative days on the market stood at 47. This is substantially more than the 18 days last August and the 34 in 2020. The median cumulative days on market stood at 31 last month; this is up from 9 one year ago, and 14 in 2020. However, it still trails the 35 in August of 2020.

The month’s average sales price of $438,205 and median of $435,000 were down from last year’s $458,634 and $458,250. However, both were substantially higher than 2020’s $389,430 and $390,000, and better yet than 2015’s $211,820 and $189,900.

Like I said. There’s one corner of the sponge that’s wet, just nothing worth wringing out.