Short Sales By The Numbers: 5,000 We have just under 5000 short sales currently for sale in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. 1,700 In the Twin Cities, we now have more than 1,700 short sales that have received offers and are waiting for the seller's lender(s) to provide a response, 100's more than we had a year ago. By the way, this means that 1700+ buyers are tied up waiting for properties they may or may not ever get to buy. 35% Percent of short sale properties for sale that are currently stuck in Lender … [Read more...]
Foreclosures and Short Sales Don't Matter to House Prices
July 5, 2011 by 7 Comments
While foreclosures and short sales continue to be around 40% of our sales, when looking at housing prices I believe they should be completely ignored. When looking at all Twin Cities housing sales, here is how the Median Sales Price stacks up: When we split it out to look at Foreclosures, Short Sales and Traditional Sales, we see that Traditional Seller prices have not fallen nearly as much as the composite number suggests: Why we should ignore foreclosure and short sale sales data If we go … [Read more...]
Fannie Mae Gets Smart, Adds Electronic Lock Boxes to Houses
June 21, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Fannie Mae, the mortgage giant, will begin requiring electronic lock boxes on their listings. This means that showing agents will use these boxes instead of the current practice of push button lock boxes.Some may ask, "so what?" Foreclosure properties are occasionally mistreated by real estate agents - some will or let their buyers pull up carpet and move/destroy things you wouldn't do in a normal house. Others will show these homes without permission or go back many times without informing the agent, which is … [Read more...]
Twin Cities Cash Home Purchases At Record-Breaking Levels
June 20, 2011 by Leave a Comment
The Twin Cities continues to see spectacular demand from cash home buyers this year and is on track to make 2011 the biggest year ever for cash home purchases. Since the 1st of this year, fully 1 in 4 home sales recorded by the RMLS of MN have been cash sales - 3600+ and counting so far this year! Cash buyers are often investors, but not all of them are. Some investors are buying to turn homes into rentals, which in this market is a growing need, while other investors are buying these homes and then fixing them … [Read more...]
Twin Cities Housing By The Numbers: MHP's "2×4" Report
June 17, 2011 by 2 Comments
The Minnesota Housing Partnership just released their latest version of their "2x4" Report and there are some important takeaways: 3.1% The vacancy rate of of rental units in the Twin Cities - the lowest since 2001 and well under the "balanced market" level of 5%. Vacancy rate was over 7% just 18 months ago. $916 Average rent, up for the last 3 straight quarters. 13% Percentage of renters in non-luxury units with past due rent - down from approximately 24% in Q2 2009. 6% Percentage of mortgages in Minnesota that … [Read more...]
Twin Cities Housing By The Numbers
May 25, 2011 by Leave a Comment
In the Twin Cities we do an excellent job of reporting housing numbers and tracking supply, demand and trends. Sometimes though the numbers say too much or say too little. I've taken a couple pieces of data to focus on today: 23,851 Approximate number of homes for sale on the MLS in the Twin Cities 2,956 Approximate number of homes marked as for sale that have an accepted offer subject to a contingency, and the seller is still accepting showings 35% Percentage of homes for sale listed as short sales that have … [Read more...]
Cash Buyers Nearly 30% of All February Twin Cities Home Sales
March 30, 2011 by 2 Comments
February 2011 saw a new record for the percentage of homes sold to cash buyers: a whopping 28.3% of all homes that closed in the month were purchased with cash. Further, it also represents the largest number of units sold to cash buyers for the month of February: 624 homes sold in February 2011 to cash buyers, versus 514 homes during the same time last year and 438 in February 2009.While some people complain about cash buyers (the majority are investors buying for rental or rehab & resale) competing with … [Read more...]
Stupidly Slow Short Sales That Seldom Sell
March 16, 2011 by 2 Comments
Here we are, years into the housing crisis, and it seems like while banks have become pretty good at selling foreclosures they are still horrible at closing short sales. On average, short sales a have substantially lower chance of closing than traditional or bank owned listings, which means a huge number of short sales fail and go back to the bank as foreclosures. At the end of the day, short sales sell for far more money than they do as an equivalent foreclosure so each failed short sale means thousands or … [Read more...]
Richfield's Vacant Building Registration Program
March 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment
The City of Richfield is currently considering a lengthy and wide-reaching ordinance regarding vacant buildings - both residential and commercial. This issue has come up in many cities recently but this proposed ordinance is one of the most aggressive ones I have seen. Please read the proposed ordinance here.Cities across the country today are dealing with large numbers of foreclosures and with that come problem properties for the cities to deal with - which costs time and money and also affects the surrounding … [Read more...]
Twin Cities Sellers Taking a Vacation
February 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment
So each January we see home seller activity increase, bringing more new listings on the market than can be absorbed by buyers at this time of year. Well this year things seem to be starting different - new listing activity is down almost 20% since the first of the year! This leads us to the following chart of Twin Cities homes for sale: The 10% surplus of homes for sale versus the same period last year has now become a 1% deficit in just the last 45 days! Inventory as of February 14th, 2011 was only 1.6% … [Read more...]
