Rare Suburban Duplexes Continue To Shine Bright

The Minneapolis and St Paul suburbs and surrounding 7-county area have consistently been a bright spot or Twin Cities duplex sales.

Lest we all think we should sell and buy multifamily properties in the suburbs, it’s important to remember one thing: there aren’t a lot of them out there. Most duplexes in the Twin Cities were built either before 1940 near the urban core, or between the late 1950’s and mid 1960’s in first ring suburbs as the population grew, creating an urgent need for housing.

That makes them somewhat rare. Perhaps rarest of all is the 8 bedroom, 6 bathroom Apple Valley fourplex that topped the market in November at $653,888. In fact, this was one of two sales in Apple Valley last month, a city not known for small multifamily properties, let alone one that lead all the other suburbs in sales.

In all, there were 16 properties that sold in the 7-county metro area, including Apple Valley. A South St Paul 4 bedroom,  2 bathroom house conversion in need of cosmetic upgrades was the value-add project of the month at $230,000.

Suburban duplexes spent an average of 30 days and a median of 28 days on the market before selling. If the property had been listed, cancelled, then relisted again before it sold, that number swelled to an average of 48 and median of 35.

Suburban sellers managed to nab 97.5% of their original list price in a sale. And on average, they netted a sales price of $475,098 with a median of $466,000.

November saw 22 new listings hit the market, with just 57 for sale throughout the month of November. Fridley and South St Paul made the most substantial contributions to new inventory, chipping in 3 each.

The opportunity of the month was in Norwood Young America where a dated 7 bedroom, 3 bathroom duplex complete with groovy multi-colored shag carpeting offered a chance for sweat equity and time travel at $240,824. An updated Minnetonka duplex featuring 6 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms topped new inventory at $795,000.

In all, the suburbs saw a 4-month supply of inventory. That’s up from October’s and last November’s 3-month supply, but still low enough to be considered a seller’s market.

As we move deeper into winter, let’s hope that continues. We can all use extra daylight.