The Minneapolis real estate market surely is seeing some positive signs here in the last few months. Less and less homes have been coming onto the market, more properties are going pending, and the overall inventory of homes for sale has been declining.

Over the last few months, trends show that new listings coming onto the market here in the Twin Cities have continually decreased. The increase in pending sales and decline in overall listing inventory has also been steadier compared to last year. In the previous year, new listings coming onto the market had varied significantly, from 1700 to 2100 and down to 1600 all in one month’s time!  Typically, the winter months are slower with a smaller number of homes for sale and pending sales, and each year the real estate market peaks in the summer months.  Here in our market, pending sales are also on a decline for the last few months. However, they have certainly increased over last year’s numbers. Last week, pending sales were up 74.5% over Thanksgiving week from 2007, and almost every week for the last 3 months, with an exception of one, we had an increase over last year. Current inventory of homes for sale in the Minneapolis and St Paul metro area is 27,733.  Looking at overall trends of inventory is quite interesting. This year and last have almost the exact same “slope” throughout the year; however this year’s inventory is consistently 10% lower than last.  Looking at 2004 through 2008, each year, the inventory of total homes for sale gets progressively higher going from an average of around 17,000 in 2004, all the way to an average of around 30,000 in 2008.

Other interesting trends: the days on market until sale have started to decline, being the highest at the start of 2008 at about 165 days, and now at the close of 2008, the average days on market are down to 140. Still high but promising to see that trend occurring.  In addition, the current supply of homes is 12.06 houses per buyer.

If you are a buyer here in the Minneapolis area, there has almost never been a better time.  Sellers, remember price and condition remain paramount in our real estate marketplace.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 5th, 2008 at 2:48 pm and is filed under Minneapolis Real Estate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.