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Spring - Prime Time For Home Sales

Spring – The Best Time to Sell Your Home!

It’s officially Spring!  Birds are chirping, flowers blooming, and “Home for Sale” signs as plentiful as dandelions on your lawn after a rain shower. Wait! What? The calendar says Spring but that is apparently fake news since I am looking out the window at 18 inches of snow we were just gifted and shaking my head.The truth is the only Robin I saw was wearing a parka and snow boots. Not a single crocus is shoving a brightly hued head out of the earth. Even the forsythia has yet to bloom. And Home For Sale signs are not so plentiful at all with inventory levels of available homes at an all-time low in the Twin Cities.However, what I have witnessed is an army of serious home buyers out in the marketplace. Yes, a plethora of buyers whose pockets are bulging with pre-approval letters, down payments and closing costs. Isn’t that great? It depends. It’s outstanding if you are a seller. 

The Twin Cities Housing Theme is Short on Supply, Big on Demand

Right now there is an extraordinary imbalance in the Minneapolis-St. Paul real estate market which favors sellers under the $500,000 price point in a big way, and I'm talking really big! New listings in March were down 17.5% compared to last year at this time and inventory of homes down 26.1%. That translates into 1.7 months supply of inventory. So what exactly does that mean? If no new listings enter...

February 2018 Twin Cities Housing Market Review

Not a Market for the Fainthearted

Looking at the housing market in the Twin Cities for February we are going to be focusing on four factors; an ever-shrinking supply of inventory, declining home sales, a consistently upward trend of median sales prices, and rising interest rates.  The market activity we are seeing here pretty much reflects what is happening across the nation.

While we might not expect prices to climb when sales fall, this downward trend is more a result of seriously limited inventory levels coupled with strong demand. There are simply too many buyers chasing too few homes and for a nervous buyer, this may be situation impossible. 

The Market in the Twin Cities is Starving for Listings

New listings declined 8% over February of last year while inventory levels dropped 23% putting the supply of homes at 1.5 months. At the same time, the median sales price of homes in the Twin Cities metro rose 12.7% to $250,000. This rise in prices is partly a reflection of bidding wars on desirable properties where supply is so limited.

The same theme of the last 2 years continues with a vengeance: ready, willing, well-qualified buyers who desperately want to become homeowners being thwarted because there just not enough listings to go around.

What Rising Interest Rates Mean for Twin Cities Housing

We have long talked about an impending increase in mortgage rates. Well, higher rates have arrived.  The 30-year fixed sits at its highest point in four years, 4.5 percent. The higher rates coupled with the rising price of homes have begun to make an impact on affordability. Some buyers at the lower price ranges have found it necessary to drop out of the market until they can save a higher down payment or wait for a fixer-upper to come along that may work for them. Buyers at higher price points are faced with the option of...