Twin Cities Real Estate Blog

The Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors has a fantastic assortment of stats that are published on weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly cycles.  These reports are based off the listing data provided by our local MLS, the Regional MLS of Minnesota.
As anyone who works with data knows, the statistics you create are only as good as [...]

Over 40% of the sales in the Twin Cities currently occurring are foreclosures or short sales, what we at MAAR call “lender mediated sales.”
The RMLS of Minnesota recently revised their fields regarding foreclosures and short sales (after a year of much confusion over the old fields) and we now have separate fields for in foreclosure, [...]

Short Sale
Definition: a home sale where the seller owes more than what the home is worth and is asking the lender(s) to accept an amount that is less than the amount owed to them as payment in full.
The same problem continues to come up day after day and I finally have the time and focus [...]

The RMLS of Minnesota, which is the governing body of the MLS in the Twin Cities and is owned by the 4 local REALTOR associations, has made some policy changes in regards to the reporting of foreclosures on the MLS, effective on Thursday:

The “In Foreclosure/Lender Owned?” field:

Initially will be an agent-only field (not available on [...]

You can find the report here.
Background
In late October I wrote a blog post regarding foreclosures and short sales listed on the MLS in the Twin Cities. Once I started researching this topic, I found that the information I was uncovering was previously unknown in our market and that the trends it offered were very insightful. [...]

There’s a lively discussion going on in our office regarding foreclosures and short sales and their impact in this market.  I was going to call it a debate but typically a debate has two opposing viewpoints whereas of the people I’ve spoken to, we all seem to be in agreement: the MLS should add a [...]

Every week I look over updated stats from the Minneapolis Area Association of REALTORS to see what new things I can learn from them and I’ve found another interesting thought:
As of 1/22/2008, the Twin Cities region has 12.2% more listings today than we did a year ago.  The 3-month average is 10.8% higher this year [...]