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New Home Construction Trends for 2011

December 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Smaller, simpler, and more practical homes are in.   New construction, while being down 70-80% throughout the country, has not stopped.  Those builders who are still in business are figuring out price points that the public is willing to look at new homes again.  They are also figuring out what they can do without as they get the pricing down.

MSN ran a story on the top 6 trends in new home construction for 2011.

1).  Smaller homes – size is decreasing by 10-15% to save costs

2).  Front porches are popular again

3).  Green homes

4).  One level homes

5). More modest kitchen and baths

6). Lifestyle amenities such as a nice laundry room and walk-in closets

Search for new homes in Maple Grove, Plymouth, or across the entire Twin Cities metro.

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Medina Highlands – Charles Cudd Luxury Townhomes – 2010 Real Estate Report

December 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I am working on the 2010 Medina Highlands neighborhood real estate report and soon will be able to publish the data.   If you would like a copy, please feel out the form below and I will send it to you upon it’s completion early in the New Year.

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Pending Home Sales Improve by 3.5% – National Association of Realtors

December 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

NAR just published the latest data for pending home sales for November.

According to Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors…

All the indicator trends are pointing to a gradual housing recovery,” Yun said. “Home price prospects will vary depending largely upon local job market conditions. The national median home price, however, is expected to remain stable even with a continuing flow of distressed properties coming onto the market, as long as there is a steady demand of financially healthy home buyers.

It looks like a slow and steady recovery is in the offing.  That doesn’t mean there won’t be some very challenging times ahead for certain segments of various markets.

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Jobless Claims Drop Below 400,000 – Now If This Just Translates in to Job Growth…

December 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

This is the best report in 2 years for jobless claims.  They have fallen to below 400,000 to 388,000.   This doesn’t necessarily mean there are more jobs, but it’s a good sign nonetheless.

The housing market cannot recover with employment coming back.

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Minneapolis, Edina, Orono Lead the Way for Million Dollar Home Sales in the Twin Cities for 2010

December 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Minneapolis, Edina, and Orono are the top places to buy and sell a million dollar home in the Twin Cities once again.   Those are cities that we often think of when we think of million dollar homes.  Eden Prairie and Chanhassen are on the rise for million dollar homes.

Below is a table I created by pulling information from the MLS.  The data run was completed on December 26, 2010 so there may be a few year end sales for 2010 that were not captured by this data.  The actual final sales price had to be at least $1,000,000 in order to make this list.

Minneapolis has seen a fairly significant decline in closed sales dropping from 55 to 42.  Edina dropped a bit from 36 to 31.   Orono finally saw an increase to 25 up from 20.  Both Eden Prairie and Chanhassen saw increases in million dollar home sales in 2010.

City # of Sales 2010 Ave. Sold Price 2010 # of Sales 2009 Ave. Sold Price 2009
Minneapolis 42 $1,478,975 55 $1,569,387
Edina 31 $1,416,605 36 $1,623,505
Orono 25 $1,676,871 20 $2,133,878
Eden Prairie 16 $1,270,375 13 $1,269,857
Chanhassen 10 $1,311,350 8 $1,418,342
Shorewood 10 $1,530,089 9 $1,642,317
Wayzata 9 $2,968,734 5 $2,960,000
Deephaven 8 $1,435,375 7 $1,329,286
Minnetonka 8 $1,309,000 10 $1,234,650
Medina 8 $1,622,309 6 $1,438,099
Maple Grove 7 $1,093,779 5 $1,087,785
North Oaks 6 $1,178,167 4 $1,409,105
Prior Lake 6 $1,200,769 3 $1,230,000
Minnetrista 5 $1,842,000 4 $1,681,225
St. Paul 4 $1,505,000 5 $1,422,200
Tonka Bay 4 $2,067,500 6 $1,733,333
Minnetonka Beach 4 $2,050,000 4 $2,795,750
Plymouth 3 $1,498,333 3 $1,091,667
Greenwood 3 $1,414,750 3 $1,700,325
Independence 3 $1,541,667 0 $0
Source: RMLS 13 County Metro; 2010 data as of 12-26-10 and does not include some
final year end sales.  Search run by John Murphy, RE/MAX Results
www.JohnMurphyReports.com

Overall, million dollar home sales increased across the Twin Cities metro with 261 closed sales as of December 26, 2010 up from 238 in 2009.  The average sales price was down 5%.

Averages 2010 Sales 2009 Sales Price Decline
261 238
Ave. Sold Price $1,511,786 $1,590,324 -0.049384905

The biggest drop in listed inventory by price range has been for the million dollar plus category.  Below is a graph from the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors – Twin Cities Housing Supply Outlook Report. Listings over $1,000,000 have dropped by 16% year over year.

(Click on image to enlarge).

Twin Cities Housing Supply - Active Listings by Price Range Dec 2010

This is an encouraging sign if that million dollar inventory finally starts to dwindle.

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Everything Old is New Again – Pink Bathrooms Make a Comeback

December 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Okay, so I had to post this if for nothing else than as a reminder to myself and the clients I consult with regarding the sale of their homes.  This story in the New York Times is particularly good news for potentially hundreds of St. Louis Park, MN home sellers.   (Note: it looks like the NYT now requires registration to read their stories…it’s free. Just register).  There are a lot of pink bathrooms still in operation.  The funny thing is I have always thought they were very cool and retro and agree they should be played up.   Below is a classic example of many of the bathrooms found in St. Louis Park.

Pink Bath St Louis Park MN

There have been many times that I will go to a house built in the 1950′s that will have a pink bathroom.  The amazing thing is that more often than not, the tile and grout as well as the tub are still in great shape.  Now for the bathrooms done in that mucky colored green in the 1970′s…get rid of it!

Don’t miss the blog that is linked in the NYTimes story…I’ll call it out here – Save The Pink Bathrooms.

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Case-Shiller – Which Cities Will Double Dip on Home Prices in 2011? Minneapolis?

December 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Calculated Risk has a great chart and article that I am posting below.  This shows the prices from the bottom in the Case-Shiller Home Price Index which gets published once per month.  (Click here for October’s data which was released yesterday).

www.CalculatedRiskBlog.com

Not surprisingly, San Francisco has shown the greatest bounce off the bottom.  Minneapolis has shown excellent performance as well with prices somehow nearly 12% off the bottom (Not Seasonally Adjusted) and about 4% when Seasonally Adjusted.  The 4% feels about right.  Certainly it’s possible that we could go negative again over the next year, but it feels like the worst is behind us.  (We’ll see this time next year, right?)

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University of St. Thomas Professor Falls from Roof and Dies

December 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

This is a terrible story that I just read.   As a graduate from the University of St. Thomas, my eye is tuned to catch news stories about the University.   I was surprised and saddened when I read on the Star Tribune that University of St. Thomas professor, John Rowher, 64, Chair of the Health and Human Performance Department fell off his snowy roof last week.  According to the Star Tribune, he was taken to Regions Hospital in St. Paul where he died.   There is a memorial service for him tonight, Wednesday, at the King of Kings Lutheran Church in Roseville, MN.

Here’s the press announcement from the University of St. Thomas.  Apparently he was removing snow and ice from his roof on Christmas eve when he fell on to his driveway.  It’s a scary thing and given the ice dam problems happening all over the Twin Cities, people need to be careful when they are up there removing all the snow and ice.

May God rest John Rowher’s soul.

 

 

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How to Remove Ice Dams – Twin Cities 2010

December 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

It has been an unbelievable two weeks in the Twin Cities for ice dams.  You can see them growing virtually everywhere!  They are going to cause problems folks.  I am not pitching for any particular contractor, but you really should get those removed or run the risk of much more costly repairs down the road.

Here’s the Star Tribune story called “The War on Ice Dams” from today.  They also have a video and additional story.  Apparently it’s the worst in 20-30 years.  Paul Douglas reminds us that it was probably worse in 1983 when the Twin Cities had some 98″ of snow.   So far this year we officially have had 34″.   In Medina it’s over 40″.

The University of Minnesota has an excellent article on how to remove ice dams and prevent them from developing in the future.

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Top 20 Real Estate Web Sites

December 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I was searching for some information about top real estate web sites and came across this from Hit Wise.   They rank several categories including travel, banking, social networking, search etc.  It’s very interesting data.

Below is a graphic of the top 20 real estate sites from Hit Wise as of 12-25-10.  What’s interesting about this is there are many agents, myself included, who syndicate our listings all over the web.  The fact of the matter is, most of those other sites get very little traffic.  However, what this doesn’t show is local market brokerage sites.  At this point that’s still where most people find their homes I believe.   They get used to using a particular broker’s site such as RE/MAX Results, RE/MAX International, Edina Realty, Coldwell Banker Burnet, Keller Williams, etc.

Top 20 Real Estate Web Sites - Hitwise 12-25-10

It’s interesting that Craigslist didn’t show up on this list.

 

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