Minneapolis Duplex Inventory Hits 10-Year High as Sellers Hold Their Ground

Minneapolis accounts for about 50% of the duplex, triplex, and fourplex housing stock in the Twin Cities. This means Minneapolis holds roughly half of the area’s multi-unit stock. It makes sense, then, that how Minneapolis sales go will have a heavy impact on how the rest of the metro goes.

In July, Minneapolis had 242 active listings. That is the most in a decade. Eighty new listings hit the market, while there were just 45 sales, so active listings may grow as we head into fall. Some of this is normal. The duplex market always has the most properties to choose from in late summer and early fall.

The Lowry Hill East and Whittier neighborhoods lead the way with 5 new listings each. The Holland, Hawthorne and Sheridan neighborhoods were close behind with four apiece.

A fully rehabbed 8-bedroom, 4-bathroom side-by-side duplex in the Linden Hills neighborhood topped new listings at $950,000. The month’s best value-add opportunity came in a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom duplex house conversion, which listed for $185,000.

While the number of active listings set a high-water mark, duplex sellers still fared relatively well at the closing table. Sellers posted an average sale price of $474,111 and a median of $450,000. They sold for an average of 99.2% of their original list price.

Properties spent an average of 32 days on the market before selling. This represented a 20% drop in market time from June.  Median days on market dropped as well, finishing the month at 23, a nearly 8% decline in market time. However, when factoring in any previously accrued market time without a sale, the average number of cumulative days on the market swells to 55 and the median to 27. The good news is both numbers are down from June’s 70-day average and 36-day median.

A Whittier neighborhood fourplex with four two-bedroom units topped the month’s sales at $935,000. A McKinley neighborhood 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom house conversion duplex offered upside and closed at $100,000.

In all, the Holland neighborhood led the way with 5 closings. Audubon Park, Midtown Phillips, and King Field tied for second, with three sales each.

Minneapolis currently has a 5-month supply of inventory. In other words, if nobody listed a duplex, triplex or fourplex in the city from today on, given the current pace of sales, we’d be sold out by January. This is either a balanced market, where buyers and sellers have equal negotiating power, or one where sellers have just the slightest edge.