There is a lot happening in our current real estate market! The stimulus bill is still working out the details in congress, interest rates are currently holding steady, and of course plenty of other stories in the news about how bad the housing market is. One headline today stated that home prices fell a ’stunning’ 12.4 in the fourth quarter of 2008 nationally, the largest year over year decline in 30 years! What does this mean locally and is it really that bad in Eden Prairie, Chanhassen and other Minneapolis suburbs?
Let’s look at some regional numbers first. The median sale price in the Minneapolis area for the 4th quarter of 2008 was $188,600. This was a drop from the prior year of 13.2 percent. A closer look at that reveals that what is really happening is that over 50% of those sales were lender mediated properties. What I am seeing and hearing in our market is that banks are drastically lowering their prices to the point of generating multiple offers. So when you look at the median sale price of homes, it is because the homes priced under 200 are typically the reo or bank owned properties. Homes priced over $200,000 are still selling but at a slower pace.
Here are some local numbers according the the Minneapolis regional multiple listing service:
Eden Prairie 4th quarter of 2008 the median sale price was $250,000 vs. $289,125 in 2007, a drop of 13.5%
Chanhassen home sales went showed a drop $292,700 to $246,750 a drop of 15.7%
Chaska homes sales went from a median sale price of $220,000 to $165,000 a whopping 25% drop!
Here are a couple things to keep in mind with these numbers. These are only quarterly comparison figures, not a full year picture. Also these numbers included single family homes combined with townhomes. They also don’t differentiate between lender mediated sales, foreclosures, shortsales, and traditional sales. Locally, traditional home sales showed a modest drop of 4.3% from January 2007 to January 2008.
Personally I think there are buyers out there, all looking for ‘good deals’. I would love to hear any of your recent experiences in the housing market, either buying or selling a home in the Minneapolis area.
If you have questions regarding these statistics, or want more specific statistics for your city or even neighborhood, I would be happy to provide those for you.
