If you are trying to stay up to date on the local housing market here in the Twin Cities, you are probably getting a little frustrated trying to find accurate data that isn’t trying to sell you or scare you…
Well let me help you get rid of that stress. This blog is your one-stop-shop for real, local data-driven updates. No smoke up your butt. No fear tactics. Just info.
Watch the recap below, or continue reading.
If we haven’t met before, my name is Bailey Beckman. I’m a local realtor that drives my business by data and real facts, not market assumptions. Save yourself time and energy moving forward and subscribe to my YouTube Channel to be the first to know about market changes in the Twin Cities.
Spring Market...
Typically the marker for the spring market tends to be the Super Bowl. Now I know this seems odd because February in the state of Minnesota is still the dead winter, but the data shows that this is typically the kick-off to our busy season (and sorry, yes that pun was intended).
In the month of February, we saw the median sales prices of homes hit $342,000. This is up just slightly compared to February of last year ($340,000) and right on the same line as last month.
In the past we would actually see a higher jump in the sales prices from January to February, but with higher interest rates over this winter we saw a little bit of a slower market.
Inventory (Total # of Homes Available for Sale)
You can also see the impact of the interest rates cooling down the market here in the total inventory of homes in the Twin Cities. There were 5,327 homes available, up 7.1% compared to last year, but down about 8% compared to the last month.
If we look at new listings that were added in the month of February, you will see that we were down 24.3% compared to last year. We haven’t seen a trend like this one since the January to February data back in 2019.
Inventory is very tight and is expected to stay a problem through the rest of 2023
Buyer Demand
There are three data points that I like to look at.
- The percentage of the original asking price
- The days on market
- The number of showings per listing.
In February we saw the percentage of the sales price vs the original asking price come up to 98.2%. This means that sellers were accepting offers for LESS than their list price. As you can see, over the last 5 years, February is the last month that typically has offer prices below asking.
In the month of March, I expect offers to be at 100% of asking price if not above.
We can also take a look at the median days on market from February to understand where demand was at… We climbed to 45 days on market, a 136.8% increase compared to February of last year. Interest rates are the culprit here too.
Finally we saw the number of showings per listing increase month over month to 6.6 tours.
Now what it is really interesting is seeing how this data point changes leading into the month of march historically. Over the last 10 years, March has been the peak point for the number of showings per listing (with the exception of March 2020 when covid hit).
We see this trend because it is right before the bulk of the inventory hits the market, but buyer demand wakes up prior to when inventory increases. So buckle in for a busy March here in 2023.
interest rates
Leading into February, we were all really excited because rates were trending down. But here you can see that on February 2, we saw rates start to climb back up to the 7% mark.
The fed is really trying to get inflation under control, so we will have to keep an eye on the CPI to see what happens with rates. On march 7th, the New York Times stated that the central bank is likely to increase rates higher than previously expected. I wouldn’t be surprised if we stay near the 7% mark for the month of march.
So there is your recap of the local housing market here in the Twin Cities!
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