I am coming off maternity leave long enough to post this weeks weekly market activity report.  I just couldn’t resist.  Thanks to Mark Allen for this Real Estate version of “Twas the Night Before Christmas.

Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the market,
Realtors were selling houses in the Twin Cities, some wearing parkas.

For the week ending December twelfth there was such a clatter,
Pending sales flattened out, unlike a step ladder.

542 for the week, which was 2.5 percent under last year,
When market volatility was in the stratosphere.

New listings were down to a more normal fashion,
With 1,028 added this week, a stable ration.

Santa may be bringing sellers some Christmas luck,
With the laws of supply and demand in flux.

“On Original Price, on Days on Market!” he calls,
But Housing Affordability makes sellers feel mighty tall.

With just one week left in the year 2009,
The Twin Town Market looks to end just fine.

Click Here, for the Full Market Report courtesy of MAAR.

Wishing you Merry Christmas and a prosperous and joyful New Year. 

Reprinted from The Skinny Blog from the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors:

Neighborhoods Where Traditional Homes Are In Shortest Supply

Last week we looked at which neighborhoods were seeing their inventory of available foreclosures and short sales dwindling. The general conclusion: lender-mediated properties are going fast and buyers have to be quick and aggressive to secure them.

This week we’re looking at the other side of the coin: homes listed by traditional sellers. In general, these properties are not selling quite as quickly than their cheaper lender-mediated cousins and are still facing challenging conditions. As of September 1 there was 10.1 months of traditional supply compared to 4.0 months of lender-mediated supply.

But there are some areas where traditional properties are moving relatively quickly. Let’s take a look at the Top 30 neighborhoods by Months Supply of Inventory. You’ll probably notice some patterns. Think urban and first-ring suburban, dudes:

Homes Listed by Traditional Sellers              Months Supply    Active Listings

1  303 - MPLS - Longfellow                               2.7                     55

2  744 - SP-Como                                              3.8                     51

3  361 - Crystal                                                 4.0                     62

4  304 - MPLS - Nokomis                                   4.3                     192

5  750 - SP-Mac/Groveland/River Road             4.4                    72

6  363 - Brooklyn Center                                   4.8                    73

7  378 - Richfield                                               4.9                    118

8  306 - MPLS - Northeast                                  5.1                    123

9  752 - SP-Highland Area                                   5.1                   82

10  308 - MPLS - Powderhorn                             5.7                   92

11  379 - Bloomington-East                                6.0                   93

12  362 - New Hope                                            6.1                   60

13  602 - South St. Paul                                      6.1                   67

14  360 - Robbinsdale                                         6.1                   72

15  746 - SP-St. Anthony/Midway                       6.2                  69

16  310 - MPLS - University                                 6.4                  42

17  309 - MPLS - Southwest                                6.4                  287

18  748 - SP-Town & Country                              6.5                  41

19  301 - MPLS - Camden                                     6.8                  150

20  742 - SP-Central                                             7.0                  70

21  738 - SP-Home Croft/W 7Th                           7.0                  30

22  768 - Fridley                                                   7.1                  85

23  770 - Hilltop/Columbia Heights                      7.2                  78

24  771 - Spring Lake Park                                   7.3                   22

25  766 - Moundsvw/New Brightn/St.Anthony   7.3                   150

26  391 - Saint Louis Park                                    7.4                   301

27  702 - Falcon Hghts/Lauderdale/Roseville      7.5                    159

28  716 - SP-Hillcrest/Hazel Park/Dayton’s Bluff 7.5                    191

29  720 - SP-Southeast St. Paul                          7.5                    39

30  714 - SP-Phalen                                             7.5                    113

There’s not a second- or third-ring suburb in the bunch. You’ll also notice that these neighborhoods tend not to contain too many expensive homes. The median prices in these neighborhoods tend to fall in the low-to-mid ranges that are affordable to a larger swath of home buyers. And when you think about perhaps the largest factor driving buyer demand right now, it makes a lot of sense: the first-time home buyer tax credit, dummy.

Let me show you what I mean:

I’d call that a pattern.

First-time home buyers are extremely active due to the tax credit and—unless mom and dad have chipped in a ridiculous amount of money to help—first-time home buyers don’t typically buy homes in the $500,000 and above price range.

What we’ve got is an extremely bottom-heavy market (insert inappropriate metaphor here) with robust activity in the price ranges typically populated by first-time buyers, and a declining market still searching for a bottom in the higher price ranges.

Takeaway: traditional home sellers in the mid-to-low price ranges have a serious window of opportunity for the next month to find a willing buyer, especially with foreclosure inventory becoming so scarce. When the tax credit expires in November, the landscape might look a little different.

Check out what is happening in the real estate market.  Good news for homes priced under $150,000.  Median sales price on the rise.

Median Sales Price

Lender Mediated $125,000

Traditional Sellers $209,000

 

The September Housing Supply Outlook is online now. As usual, here’s a few quick takeaways from this hyper-detailed look at the Twin Cities housing market.

Takeaway #1: The single-family detached market segment is rapidly approaching a balanced equilibrium. There are currently 6.3 months of supply available in that segment compared to 8.0 and 11.7 months in the townhome and condominium segments, respectively. The lower price ranges of the single-family detached segment are actually now extreme seller’s markets, with only 2.3 months of supply available under $120,000, for example.

Takeaway #2: Sales continue to boom below $200,000 as first-time buyers move to take advantage of the final days of the federal tax credit. Expect sales to continue at a brisk pace for the next two months as the "last call before bar close" buyers take advantage of the final days of this substantial market incentive.

Click here to view the September Housing Supply Outlook.

Months Supply of Inventory by Property Type:

Thanks to The Skinny Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors and Jeff Allan

From Mark Allen at the Minneapolis Association of Realtors

The August Monthly Skinny Video is live up online. This month’s edition is another quickfire update on trends in the Twin Cities housing market, this time narrated by our CEO, Mark Allen (no relation, seriously, for the last time).

There’s a lot of reasons for optimism, as some key market metrics are showing signs of rebound. However, there’s still more foreclosures than anyone’s comfortable with and the upper price brackets are unfortunately fairly quiet. The video explains.

Click here to view in a separate window, or just click on the embedded clip below

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Weekly Market Activity Report

Let’s take a trip in the WABAC Machine (pronounced "wayback") to see what our current market landscape looks like compared to years past.

• The 1,026 signed purchase agreements for the week ending August 15? That’s the most since 2005.
• The 25,765 active listings for sale? The fewest since 2005.
• The 1,630 new listings? Fewest since 2002.

In other words, buyer activity is growing and supply is shrinking. There are fewer homes available per buyer than at any point since 2005, and inventory should only continue to tighten through the remainder of the year.

Click here for the full Weekly Market Activity Report.

Thanks to Minneapolis Area Association of REALTORS^® for these insightful statistics

July Housing Outlook Supply, homes under 120k only a 3.6 months supply, lowest mark since 2005. In short it is now a sellers market in that price range!  In my opinion, in some areas, especially the city anything under 200k is a sellers market.

http://www.mplsrealtor.com/downloads/market/HSO/hso.pdf

The Q2-2009 Update to "Foreclosures and Short Sales in the Twin Cities Housing Market" has been released. Click here to view. Click on neighborhood for detailed view of MLS area.  Interesting Numbers!

The July Monthly Skinny has just become available.  Check it out. 

The trend for the weekly statistics are more of the same, more pending sales and less inventory, compared to last year.  Click here for the full version of the weekly report.   

Per the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors Blog "The Skinny"

Prices Creep Up as Traditional Sales Grow

Word on the street is that people like lists more than prose for receiving information they can digest with ease. This hurts my writerly heart, but, hey, I get it. We’re busy people these days. Two hundred emails per day, 15 blogs to follow, 65 Facebook status updates, 450 Twitter feeds. Plus all the other stuff you’re actually trying to get paid to do, not to mention the personal life you want to have. Goodness gracious.

So let’s do this for you, MSP:

Stats Snapshot:

1. June saw 5,183 signed purchase agreements, up 33.7 percent from this time last year.

2. 40.7 percent of closed sales in June were lender-mediated, compared to 59.7 percent in January.

3. A decrease in lender-mediated market share brought the overall median price up from last month to $173,500 in June. Despite the month-over-month increase, that’s still a 15.4 percent drop from June 2008.

4. The median June sales price of traditional homes was $210,000, down 7.7 percent from a year ago

5. The median June sales price of lender-mediated homes was $124,025, down 16.8 percent from a year ago.

6. The number of properties for sale at the end of June was 26,204, down 21.9 percent from this time last year.

7. There are 7.3 months of supply available, down significantly from the 10.6 seen at this time last year and trending back down towards a balanced market of 5 to 6 months of supply.

8. There are 10.9 months of traditional supply and only 4.4 months of lender-mediated supply.

Primary Takeaways:

1. June’s pending sales were the highest June showing since 2005 and the 12th consecutive month of year-over-year increases.

2. With low mortgage rates and the $8,000 federal tax credit for first-time home buyers, we’re seeing the recent jump in sales spill over into the traditional market.

3. We still have an abnormally high number of foreclosures and short sales, but it’s an improvement from six months ago.

4. Sellers still face a challenging market, but things look better for them than they have in awhile.