MAAR released figures this week that show the Median Sales Price in the 13-county Twin Cities region fell in February to $195,060… the lowest level since 2003. Sparked by strong competition and lower demand from buyers, prices have moved sharply lower in just the last few months.
While this news isn’t exciting for sellers, it is a very positive development for buyers in this market (and for sellers planning to buy as well). With housing affordability now at 5-year highs in the Twin Cities and mortgage rates still very attractive, opportunities exist for buyers to pick from their choice of properties at prices far below their peak just a couple years ago.
Each community and segment of the market is different; with some markets still holding much of their appreciation over the last 5 years and others having lost that much or more so there’s simply no golden rule that Buyers can use when looking at homes but the trend is clear: housing affordability is coming back quickly and dramatically and we haven’t seen opportunities like this for many years.
It definitely sounds like a lot of the cheaper sales are bringing the median down. As much as I enjoy disagreeing with realtors, I think the numbers we’re seeing ($195k) are quite misleading. That does not tell the true story of the ‘micromarkets’ around the Twin Cities. I’d like to see some more analysis on each city — median, average, sales, etc. SPAAR has the Feb 2008 data on municipalities, but seems to have removed all data prior to that, so I can’t do much in the way of statistics.
My wife and I are still struggling with the market in the areas we’re looking. Asking prices just aren’t going down.
Disco,
I agree that the number seems artificially low and expect it to climb up over $200k in March.
I see you’re right about SPAAR taking off the old data… it might be due to the web site redesign or other oversight or maybe on purpose… hmmm….
MAAR has their “The 100″ that you can pull data from each month back to March 2007. It’s quite good: http://www.mplsrealtor.com/the100.aspx
Unfortunately no statistical report can be as good as feet on the ground. Because of the dynamics changing in the market with foreclosures & tightened financing, buyer activity isn’t “typical” and consequently lots of purchases on the very low end of the market will affect the numbers dramatically.
I’ll see what I can do to get some better numbers…