Twin Cities Duplex Sales Pancake

As I go through each month’s sales and new listing and closed multifamily transactions, I try to figure out if there are any meaningful changes in the market to be aware of.

This year, that’s been tough to do. If I had a word for 2025, I would call it flat. Like pancakes.

For example, in the 7-county area in October there was a 4 month supply of inventory. That means if we got no new listings, at our current rate of sales, we’d be sold out in 4 months. The same was true in September, one year ago, and 10 years ago.

Technically that’s still a seller’s market. It just isn’t the frenzied one we saw four or five years ago.

The total number of duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes sold between January and October 31 this year is 759. Over the same stretch of time last year it was 753.

The sold properties last month spent an average of 36 and a median of 24 days on the market. One year ago it was an average of 34 and median of 24.

Where there starts to be separation between the years are in the categories that may ultimately make a meaningful difference to the marketplace. For example, there were 90 sales in October; up 32.4% from one year ago.

Closed properties averaged a closed sales price of $439,221 for the month; up a hair under $7000 from September. However, one year ago that figure was $447,419. October also saw a median price of $397,500. This was considerably down from last October’s $433,500.

The month’s market topper was a 7 bedroom, 3 bathroom triplex in Minneapolis’ Kenwood neighborhood, which netted the sellers $1.147 million. The value-add deal of the month was a side by side duplex in Farmington which had been stripped down to the studs and closed at $140,000.

At the same time, there were fewer new listings in October (137) than September (168). However, the October number was 18.1% above last year’s mark.

The Kenwood/East Isles area brought October’s new listing market topper with a turnkey 8 bedroom, 5 bathroom duplex for $1.2 million. A tenant-ready 4 bedroom,  2 bathroom house conversion in the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood of St Paul offers a cash-flow opportunity at $199,900.

While flat isn’t up, it isn’t down either. Given all the economic uncertainty in the country, I’ll take it.