Today MAAR released the quarterly update to their report: “Foreclosures and Short Sales in the Twin Cities Housing Market,” which was co-developed and authored by Jeff Allen from MAAR and myself.
Today’s headline number is that while foreclosures and short sales (what we call lender mediated sales) are still a large part of our new listings and our inventory, they are an even larger part of our sales, which means that the for sale inventory of these lender mediated listings is dropping dramatically. In fact, from February 1 2009 to April 1 2009, inventory of lender mediated listings fell by 1200+ units, a drop of more than 13%. This dramatic reduction in active inventory happened while new lender mediated listings still stayed at record high levels. The foreclosure moratoriums that many lenders put in place in late 2008 and early 2009 have not lead to a marked decrease in new lender mediated listings, so the reduction in lender mediated listings for sale is based solely on dramatically increased buyer demand.
Lender mediated sales in Q1 of 2009 were up 147% from Q1 2008 while traditional seller sales were down 41% over the same period last year. This shift has been evident since Q3 2008 and is likely to continue well through much of 2009 due to lender mediated sellers using their pricing power to attract buyers to their listings.
The difference in median sales prices between traditional and lender mediated sales hit a new record in Q1 2009: lender mediated sales averaged $122,900 while traditional sellers received $212,000 on average, a difference of nearly $90,000!
As was first released in the Q4 2008 Update, we also have new detailed community-level activity data as well. You will find no better analysis of local market impact from lender mediated sales anywhere in the country… this data and methodology is exclusive to our market. I’m proud of what we have and I hope you are too!
