Ted Bergstrom

MN Real Estate Team

612.723.5444

Ted@TedBergstrom.com

Weekly Market Report

For Week Ending August 24, 2019

Lack of affordable inventory has been a key story in real estate in the last few years. There is a growing consensus suggesting the U.S. economy could be entering a recession, and some wonder whether this could lead to an adjustment in housing prices. However, this scenario is unlikely to make housing more affordable, as economic uncertainty is likely to discourage first-time home buyers and could make construction companies leary of building new homes.

In the Twin Cities region, for the week ending August 24:

  • New Listings decreased 1.5% to 1,664
  • Pending Sales increased 1.9% to 1,253
  • Inventory decreased 3.9% to 12,501

For the month of July:

  • Median Sales Price increased 5.8% to $283,420
  • Days on Market remained flat at 38
  • Percent of Original List Price Received decreased 0.1% to 99.7%
  • Months Supply of Homes For Sale remained flat at 2.5

All comparisons are to 2018

Click here for the full Weekly Market Activity Report. From MAAR Market Data News.

Weekly Market Report

For Week Ending August 17, 2019

As families across the U.S. enjoy the last few weeks of summer before the start of the school year, it seems that the real estate market is seeing an infusion of new energy that is partially offsetting the expected seasonal slowdown. Further decreases in housing inventory and month’s supply at the national level point to a moderate influx of new buyers, perhaps due to the allure of lower mortgage rates. It remains to be seen whether these trends will be affected by events in the general economy.

In the Twin Cities region, for the week ending August 17:

  • New Listings decreased 2.9% to 1,712
  • Pending Sales increased 3.9% to 1,316
  • Inventory decreased 3.5% to 12,392

For the month of July:

  • Median Sales Price increased 5.9% to $283,900
  • Days on Market remained flat at 38
  • Percent of Original List Price Received decreased 0.1% to 99.7%
  • Months Supply of Homes For Sale remained flat at 2.5

All comparisons are to 2018

Click here for the full Weekly Market Activity Report. From MAAR Market Data News.

Inventory and Interest Rates Likely Driving Sales Growth

August 19, 2019

The current economic expansion recently became the longest on record, but it’s showing its age. Concerns around slowing growth have spiked amidst new economic data and gyrations in equity markets, but it’s also created opportunities for home buyers. The upside is that mortgage rates have fallen yet again as investors flock to the safety of longer-term U.S. government bonds, thereby driving down the 10-year treasury yield and the 30-year mortgage rates that follow it. That means markets expect monetary easing and lower interest rates to spur growth in the short-term. The risk of recession has grown, but the economy is still buzzing along at a decent pace. Buying a home is an emotional decision, and buyers sometimes pull back at any whiff of turbulence out of fear of hardship.

Twin Cities home buyers and sellers, however, did not pull back in July. Sales rose 4.5 percent and sellers even listed almost 2.0 percent more product than last July. Despite lower interest rates and modest inventory gains as tailwinds, the persistent shortage of homes on the market and affordability headwinds remain. Price increases and wage gains are more aligned now than in the past, but investors are still competing with millennial first-time buyers in the already competitive under $300,000 segment. Conversely, there’s some evidence of a slow-down in the luxury segment. Metrics to watch aside from sales and prices include market times, the ratio of sold to list price and months of supply. These three indicators could be hinting at potential market shifts ahead. That said, home price declines are unlikely until absorption rates rise above 6 months. We’re currently at 2.4 months.

July 2019 by the Numbers (compared to a year ago)

  • Sellers listed 7,827 properties on the market, a 1.8 percent increase from last July
  • Buyers closed on 6,628 homes, a 4.5 percent increase
  • Inventory levels decreased 4.4 percent from last July to 11,961 units
  • Months Supply of Inventory was down 4.0 percent to4 months
  • The Median Sales Price rose 5.9 percent to $283,700, a record high for July
  • Cumulative Days on Market remained stable at 38 days, on average (median of 18)
  • Changes in Sales activity varied by market segment
    • Single family sales rallied 6.0 percent; condo sales increased 2.2 percent; townhome sales rose 0.8 percent
    • Traditional sales increased 5.6 percent; foreclosure sales dropped 17.6 percent; short sales fell 37.5 percent
    • Previously owned sales were up 5.6 percent; new construction sales rose 4.5 percent

Quotables

“There are lots of headlines out there vying for our attention,” said Todd Urbanski, President of Minneapolis Area REALTORS®. “The bottom line is that the best time to buy a home is when you’re ready. Over 70.0 percent of Minnesotans have made that choice, the vast majority of whom have seen their values increase.”

“No one thought mortgage rates would touch 3.6 percent again,” said Linda Rogers, President-Elect of Minneapolis Area REALTORS®. “Buyers who felt squeezed by a monthly mortgage payment should take another look and consider this a fleeting gift.”
From The Skinny Blog.

Weekly Market Report

For Week Ending August 10, 2019

As July data roll in, more economists wonder whether we are seeing the signs of an economic slowdown. Yet that would not necessarily imply a slowdown in the housing market. While July’s existing home sales fell below analyst expectations, consumer confidence in housing reached new highs as mortgage rates dropped and more homeowners refinanced their homes. It remains to be seen whether growing confidence and lower rates will help boost home sales.

In the Twin Cities region, for the week ending August 10:

  • New Listings decreased 2.1% to 1,794
  • Pending Sales increased 3.8% to 1,342
  • Inventory decreased 3.0% to 12,339

For the month of July:

  • Median Sales Price increased 6.0% to $283,950
  • Days on Market remained flat at 38
  • Percent of Original List Price Received decreased 0.2% to 99.6%
  • Months Supply of Homes For Sale remained flat at 2.5

All comparisons are to 2018

Click here for the full Weekly Market Activity Report. From MAAR Market Data News.

Weekly Market Report

For Week Ending July 27, 2019

As we await July results, the June numbers and preliminary July indicators suggest that current trends in most real estate markets are likely to continue. Mid-to-lower priced segments continue to experience imbalances favoring sellers, leading to steady year-over-year increases in price, outpacing inflation in many markets. Although the Fed rate decrease dominated the news this week, industry experts seem to agree this event by itself is unlikely to have much effect on mortgage rates and real estate markets, at least in the short term.

In the Twin Cities region, for the week ending July 27:

  • New Listings decreased 4.7% to 1,736
  • Pending Sales decreased 4.9% to 1,364
  • Inventory decreased 3.0% to 12,236

For the month of June:

  • Median Sales Price increased 7.2% to $290,000
  • Days on Market increased 2.5% to 41
  • Percent of Original List Price Received decreased 0.3% to 100.0%
  • Months Supply of Homes For Sale increased 4.0% to 2.6

All comparisons are to 2018

Click here for the full Weekly Market Activity Report. From MAAR Market Data News.

Test Post

What is Lorem Ipsum?

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Why do we use it?

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).
 

Where does it come from?

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..”, comes from a line in section 1.10.32. The standard chunk of Lorem Ipsum used since the 1500s is reproduced below for those interested. Sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 from “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” by Cicero are also reproduced in their exact original form, accompanied by English versions from the 1914 translation by H. Rackham.

Where can I get some?

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don’t look even slightly believable. If you are going to use a passage of Lorem Ipsum, you need to be sure there isn’t anything embarrassing hidden in the middle of text. All the Lorem Ipsum generators on the Internet tend to repeat predefined chunks as necessary, making this the first true generator on the Internet. It uses a dictionary of over 200 Latin words, combined with a handful of model sentence structures, to generate Lorem Ipsum which looks reasonable. The generated Lorem Ipsum is therefore always free from repetition, injected humour, or non-characteristic words etc.
  • There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available
  • There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available
  • There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available
  • There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available
  • There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available
  • There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum
There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum