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Viewing Bank Owned Homes in Plymouth, MN – Confronted by this Turkey

December 31, 2008 By Leave a Comment

You never know what you’ll run in to when viewing bank owned homes and foreclosures, but needless to say, this was a little unusual the other day when I was out.

This turkey seemed to love cars and in fact it tried to cut us off and the other cars on the road that morning.  It would come right up to the cars and try to get close to the wheels.  It looked like it had already had a damaged foot so I suppose he just got too close to a car at some point and got hit.

There ended up being several cars stopped in both directions as I think everyone was facinated with seeing this turkey on the streets of Plymouth.

Turkey in Plymouth, MNTurkey while viewing homes in Plymouth MN

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Regional Malls to Add Housing?

December 30, 2008 By Leave a Comment

HousingWire is running this story from the magazine they publish.  At first I thought it was crazy, but the more I read, the more I think it makes some sense.

Regional malls are dying in many parts of the country, but in some areas, they are remodeling them and attaching housing.

Perhaps as some of these big anchor tenants go away, a developer could come in and say take out a Sears store and add a 10 story building filled with condos.  Then perhaps on the other side of the mall they could take out the JC Penny’s and put in a small medical center.  Lastly, perhaps a company like LifeTime Fitness could come in and be an anchor tenant to provide exercise and rehab for the condo dwellers and the medical patients.

Thoughts?

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Case-Shiller Index: October Data Shows Twin Cities Home Prices Declined by 16.3%

December 30, 2008 By Leave a Comment

The Twin Cities saw a fairly dramatic drop in prices from September to October according to the just released Case-Shiller Index.  The monthly decline was -3.4% and was one of the biggest drops amongst the 20 cities studied.  The overall index shows house prices off 16.3% compared to a year ago.

Note this does not account for various micro markets in the Twin Cities that include specific cities/suburbs as well as neighborhoods.  Clearly there are some areas doing better than others.  Just click around on the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors reports (The 100).
Below is a graphical look at the latest results.  Click on any graph to enlarge in a new window.

Case-Shiller Index Oct 2008 Data 20 Cities

Twin Cities has dropped to new lows on price declines according to the Case-Shiller Index – October 2008 data.
Case-Shiller Index Oct 2008 Twin Cities vs 20 City Composite

Below is a graphical display of the 10 and 20 city composite indexes.
Case-Shiller Index Oct 2008 Graphs of 10 and 20 City composites

Below is the data table for all 20 cities studied.  It shows the Oct./Sept. percentage price changes as well as the Sept./Aug. and one year changes.  (Click to enlarge)
Case-Shiller Index Oct 2008 Table

Perhaps I’m still a little too optimistic, but I do think we’ll start to see some better comparables come spring…that doesn’t mean prices will be improving, but rather that they will begin to stablize.

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Twin Cities Real Estate Market Update – Week of December 29, 2008 – Pending Sales Continue Improving

December 30, 2008 By Leave a Comment

The Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors is out with their final weekly report for the year and sales continue to improve at a healthy rate compared to the same period in ’07.  This has been a nearly uninterrupted trend for the second half of 2008 compared to 2007.

As I tell people often, it’s more important for the market to see improving transaction volume rather than price.  Price will not lead the market.  It will continue to lag while transactions start to rise.  In part this is due to the fact that that market will continue to chew up housing on the low end first before moving up the food chain.  Right now we’re seeing this at its extreme with so many sales happening at price points under $150,000 as we see again in this week’s report.

What’s hot right now?   Bank owned and under $150k.

Below is this week’s report.

Weekly Market Activity ReportThe recent plunge downward in mortgage rates to a decades-low level is spurring Twin Cities home sales, despite shorter days and holiday interruptions. For the week ending December 20, there were 553 purchase agreements signed (pending sales), which is an increase of 20.0 percent from the same week last year. Since rates dropped three weeks ago, there have been 368 more pending sales than there were during the same period in 2007, an increase of 27.5 percent. During this period, 57.6 percent of sales have been lender-mediated foreclosures and short sales and 45.8 percent are below $150,000.

Listing supply is relatively flat with last year at this time over the past few weeks, with an increasing share of new listings being lender-mediated. Traditionally, sellers often pull back at this time of year to wait out the holidays, but banks continue to list no matter what time of year it is.

Weekly Market Activity Report

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The Wall Street Journal Real Estate Site

December 29, 2008 By Leave a Comment

The Wall Street Journal is promoting its luxury homes site in the newspaper this morning.  The search capabilities leave something to be desired.

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Plymouth, MN Homes For Sale – 19% of Inventory is Distressed — Foreclosure, Bank Owned, or Short Sale

December 26, 2008 By Leave a Comment

While some of the “traditional” or “normal” sellers may have pulled their properties off the market this Christmas season, the banks and other sellers are plowing ahead trying to get rid of theirs.

Plymouth, MN distressed inventory is now approximately 19% of the overall inventory for sale.  Distressed properties included any bank owned, foreclosures, pre-foreclosures, short sales, corporate owned, as-is etc. type properties.  It would seem likely that the overall percentage should decline in Q109 as more traditional sellers put their homes on the market.

Here are the stats:

Overall Market for properties for sale in Plymouth, MN

  • Ave. Asking Price: $365,000
  • Ave. Days on Market: 173
  • Number of properties for sale: 415

Distressed Properties for sale in Plymouth, MN

  • Ave. Asking Price: $254,000
  • Ave. Days on Market: 147
  • Number of Properties for Sale: 79

Distress Sale Bank Owned

Short Sale Foreclosure

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Bridgewater Foreclosure Update

December 26, 2008 By 1 Comment

The foreclosure in Bridgewater has not hit the MLS yet.   There have been a couple of other very beautiful, brand new houses that the banks just put on the market a couple of days before Christmas.  They are incredible opportunities for the buyers paying attention to the deals this market is offering this Christmas season.

There remains a foreclosure for sale in Foxberry Farms and a short sale in Wild Meadows.
Contact me if you’d like to see some of the bank owned new construction homes that just came on the market.

Bridgewater of Lake Medina Monument at entrance

New Construction

Luxury Homes

Foreclosure

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Plymouth, MN Sold Price per Square Foot Declined 8.6% in 2008

December 26, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Plymouth, MN real estate has been holding up reasonably well the past couple of years.  Certainly prices are down, but nearly to the extent we are seeing in some areas around the Twin Cities and the U.S.

I thought I would look at some sold analysis for Plymouth by quarter to smooth out some of the ups and downs we tend to see on month to month reports.  As you can see by this table below, Plymouth had been selling fairly consistently between $145-$150/TFSF (total finished square foot) for much of the past two years.  It’s only in 2008 that we’ve started to see a pretty good hit to prices based upon this kind of analysis.  As a reminder, TFSF is the total amount of square footage finished in a property including basements…lower levels if your home was built after 1985 or if your property is worth more than $500,000 :-) .

All the data below came from the RMLS 13 County Metro.  Click on any chart to enlarge in a new window.
Plymouth MN Sold Price per Total Finished Square Feet 2006-2008@MedinaReport.com

Closed sales during this nearly 3 year period are seen below broken down by quarters.  NOTE: Q32008 doesn’t look a whole lot different than Q32007 or Q32006.  Interesting…
Plymouth MN Closed Sales by Qtr 2006-2008@MedinaReport.com

Average sales prices are starting to drop rather sharply in the past couple of quarters.  This is consistent with what we’ve been seeing throughout the rest of the Twin Cities.  The cheaper the house, the better the odds are it’s going to sell.

Plymouth MN Ave Sales Price 2006-2008 @MedinaReport.com

By mid January, I’ll have the data for all of 2008 and will post updated charts.

What this data tells us is that Plymouth is not down 12-15% like some other areas in the Twin Cities.  Depending upon the neighborhood, it is likely down 8-10%…painful for sellers…yes, but not the end of the world.

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Expecting Case-Shiller Index on Monday December 29, 2008

December 26, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I’m expecting the updated Case-Shiller Index to be published early next week and perhaps as early as Monday to kick off a quiet week of financial information for the last week of the year.  The latest report will compare October data.

At some point in the next 3-4 months I believe we are going to see marked improvement in the Case-Shiller Index for the Twin Cities.  The reason is it compares year over year data.  Home prices in the Twin Cities really started to go in to a steep decline last December.  When we start looking at pricing data this coming February and March, I just don’t think we’re going to see comparable declines of 14-15%.

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Merry Christmas!

December 25, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Merry Christmas.  Enjoy the day with your families.  We attended Christmas Eve Mass at Holy Family in St. Louis Park last night.  Here’s a picture from one of the church’s side entrances.  I thought it made for a good picture.

Holy Family St. Louis Park

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