Twin Cities Real Estate Blog

Today I am pleased to announce the release of the Foreclosures and Short Sales in the Twin Cities Housing Market: Q4 2008 Update.  This is the 4th installment of quarterly reporting of lender mediated sales and their impact in the Greater Minneapolis/St. Paul area, which I co-author with the musically, intellectually, politically and statistically talented Jeff Allen.  2008 reports from quarters [...]

I love data… be it hard numbers, graphs, charts, tables, interpretation, etc.  I’ve come up with another concept of tracking overall affordability: combining cost per finished square foot with mortgage rates to give an overall cost of financing each square foot of house over the last few years (I only had data back to 2002):

This [...]

Just released from MAAR:
The Housing Affordability Index (HAI)�shot up 19 points to 180 thanks to the recent healthy declines in mortgage interest rates and a continued softening in home prices; the HAI has not been this attractive since we began tracking data in 1990.

What This Means to You
The dramatic fall in interest rates in recent [...]

While the median sales price of homes in the Twin Cities continues to fall, there is some great news to be had as well.  No, this market downturn/correction/bubble burst/armageddeon/etc. isn’t over yet but there are some fundamentals that need to change before the market can turn around and several have or are close to changing.

Pending [...]

The Minneapolis Area Association of REALTORS released their latest market update this week which shows a Housing Affordability Index number of 157… the highest affordability in 5 years and 14% higher than a year ago!

Though interest rates did tick up some in the last month, median sales price took another dip which more than made up [...]

As the news about a slowing economy and fears of recession mount, the stock market has taken a huge hit, falling double-digit percentages in the last couple months, but housing is benefitting.
 As money has been taken out of stocks, it has been flowing into bonds, which are historically a very safe investment.  When demand for [...]

The Minneapolis Area Association of REALTORS released their weekly market report today with new Housing Affordability Index numbers for December 2007.  The HAI of 141 is the highest we’ve seen in the Twin Cities since February 2005… nearly 3 years ago.  Falling mortgage rates, with many brokers quoting under 6% for a 30-year fixed), and [...]