Real Estate. Economics. Business
In case you missed this headline stories for four days running in the Star Tribune, here is the 4 part series on the problems facing many in Wright County in the Twin Cities.
It’s just more bad news from the Star Tribune. Any chance you think they take some delight in the problems in the suburbs?
If you talk with other agents, you’ll hear lots of frustration with short sales. I’m glad to hear NAR is looking in to requiring some kind of disclosure rules for short sales.
Reuters published this brief article today about the challenges many of us are facing in the business with short sales.
Having personally just gone through a frustrating 5 week waiting period to hear back from Countrywide on a short sale offer, I can confirm that banks are not particularly responsive to these offers.
The Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors released their latest report for the Twin Cities market yesterday. There are some very interesting data points to consider. Granted, one week does not make a trend, but it’s worth while to point these items out:
For the week ending April 12, 2008
Weekly New Listings Table below: note the trend has generally been downward for the number of new listings each week. This is good news for the market as supply has continued to be a problem.
Pending activity is starting to improve. For the past twelve months, we have generally been lower each week by 15-30% compared to the same week the year before. We need to consistently start to see week to week activity where pending sales are down in the negative single digits compared to the year previously before we’ll have a sense that perhaps the market has turned. By the time we get there though, it would seem to me that there will still be bargains out there but they may be harder to come by.
For more market information, check out the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors web site.
