By One Point: St. Paul’s Duplex Market Hits a Decade High in Listings — But Who’s Really Winning?

If a basketball team wins by one, it’s still a win, right?

Unfortunately, when it comes to real estate, that isn’t always worth celebrating. Case in point, last month the city of St Paul saw 126 active listings; the most in any month in over a decade. By one. Last September there were 125.

Of these 54 were new listings. That’s 2 less than last month, but up 12.5% year-over-year.

The Thomas-Dale neighorhood contributed the most to the month’s total with 11 new listings. Summit-University and Dayton’s Bluff chipped in 6 each.

An 8 bedroom, 4 bathroom fourplex in the Merriam Park/Lexington neighborhood topped new offerings at $925,000. A duplex house conversion on the city’s Category 2 list with 5 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms offered a chance to build some equity at $169,900.

St Paul sellers seemed to hold their own in May. The 22 property owners who sold managed to obtain a sales price that was 99.7% of their original asking price. This percentage was actually higher than April’s 93.9% and last May’s 98.6%. However, these numbers are still well below May of 2021’s 40 sales that averaged 102.6% of their original asking price.

Sellers managed to garner an average sales price for the month of $396,493, which was up both year-over-year and moth over month. The median of $342,500, however, was down slightly from April’s $347,500. The good news is it took less time to sell these duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes in May than it did in April. Listings spent an average of  just 35 and median of 24 days on the market before selling. This represented a big drop from April’s average of 93 and median of 67 days. The average Cumulative Days on Market also saw a big decline, down to an average of 53 from 130 and median of 28 from 103.

Nonetheless, St Paul saw a one-month increase in supply of inventory; to 6 from 5. While this figure slightly favors buyers, it doesn’t mean they’re running away with the game.  It’s more like sellers are down by 4 with a minute left. In other words, buyer’s have a slight edge. For now.