The Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors released its weekly report tonight and the Twin Cities housing market is continuing to show signs of strength. Key highlights include:
- Pending Sales – up 20% compared to one year ago and the market has now produced three consecutive weeks of 1000 or more pending sales. The last time we saw that was in 2006.
- Active listing inventory is down 18% from one year ago.
- Days on Market Until Sale have dropped slightly to 150 days
- Percent of Original List Price Received at Sale improved slightly to 90.5%…not much of an improvement, but at least it moved in the right direction
Click here to get access to the full report in pdf format.
Below is a graphical display of the key items noted above.
Pending sales – note the steepness of the curve on the current year. It’s much sharper than in previous years which means there are a lot more transactions happening this year. As noted in several posts before, much of the transaction activity is on the lower end of the market – under $150,000. (To enlarge, click on picture to open in a new window).
Active listings – notice the increasing delta between last years inventory and this years. The market has clearly peaked for listing inventory. (To enlarge, click on picture to open in a new window).
Days on Market Until Sale – (To enlarge, click on picture to open in a new window). This adjusts lower every spring market so it will be interesting to see if this holds as we move in to the summer. Days on Market Until Sale means when a home gets an accepted offer and the transaction has moved through the inspection period and the property gets pended. 150 days is not the amount of time from when a home is listed to when it’s closed. You could probably add another 45 days on average until the property actually closes.
Percent of Original List Price Received at Sale – (To enlarge, click on picture to open in a new window). This is showing a very slight improvement. It’s not a game changer and it may well likely bounce around down here around 90% for a while. What this means is that agents and sellers are still, in general, way too optimistic about the price they might achieve with the sale of their home. Note, there are still listings selling quickly and for 95-100% of their original asking price, but they must be priced aggressively to reflect the market and they need to be in excellent condition.
Tomorrow the S&P/Case-Shiller Index will be released for the month of February 2009. Â Last month’s report showed the Twin Cities down over 20.4%.