Twin Cities Real Estate Blog

I hear buyers, sellers, lenders, real estate agents and the community as a whole rhetorically ask when we’ll see the housing market recover.  Unfortunately putting a timeline on a housing recovery is pretty unrealistic as there are simply too many variables to account for.  But all is not lost!  While I cannot predict when the [...]

As a follow-up to the report I co-authored with Jeff Allen from MAAR, below is a comparison of price per finished square foot between lender-mediated sales and traditional sales.

As can be seen by the chart above, there is a substantial price discount on a cost per square foot basis when you look at lender mediated [...]

On Friday my loan officers were quoting rates on 30yr fixed mortgages in the 5.5% – 6% range again… which is down more than .5% from just a couple weeks ago.  On a $200,000 house, that means a monthly payment that is more than $80 less than it was just 2 weeks before.  Or in [...]

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 [...]