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Warming weather, affordability and approaching deadlines are activating the housing market. With less than 60 days left until the home buyer tax credit expires, buyers and sellers appear to be kicking it into a new gear. There were 1,715 new listings for the week ending February 27, an increase of 5.3 percent from a year ago and the fourth consecutive week of year-over-year increase. The $6,500 tax credit for move-up buyers appears to be stimulating some sellers to place their homes on the market in an attempt to sell them before the credit expires.
 
For the same reporting week, there were 868 accepted offers, which is a bump of 13.9 percent from a year ago. After several months of relatively flat home buying, the last two weeks have seen a jump as the credit deadline nears.
 
Days on Market continues to decrease, landing at 142 days in February. That was a 9.7 percent decrease from a year ago.
 
The Percent of Original Price Received at Sale stood at 92.3 percent in February, a 3.4 percent increase over the year prior.

Click here to view the full Weekly Market Activity Report.

Over the last three weeks, the number of new listings has grown at a stronger pace than we saw in 2009. For the week ending February 20, there were 1,833 new listings, an increase of 17.7 percent from a year ago. The recent uptick is likely a combination of the typical spring increase in activity coupled with the effects of the $6,500 tax credit available to move-up buyers. Consumers who have lived in their current residence for 5 of the last 8 years are eligible to receive the credit when they purchase a home before April 30.
 
Also for the week ending February 20, pending sales made a 9.9 percent year-over-year jump after staying even with last year for several consecutive weeks.
 
The Supply-Demand Ratio for March is 5.39, which means there are 5.39 homes available for each buyer. That's 6.9 percent below last year's number and is another indication of dwindling supply.

Click here for the full Weekly Market Activity Report.

We provide a LOT of information to our members on housing market conditions. Some might say too much. Some might not. Both of those groups will probably say that they could use some help in making sense of what it all means, how to interpret it and where to find the latest and greatest information.

On March 2nd, we're offering a class to MAAR members that will meet that need. It's the only class that I'm teaching this spring and will be an in-depth 3 hour CE course designed for realtors who want to understand how to use market information to help their clients make smart decisions.

The official course description:

""How's the market?" It's the question every REALTOR(R) is asked at cocktail parties. The key to answering it lies in providing proof to back up your intuitions and explaining it in a way that's easy to understand. Learn how to understand and talk about the market, as well as find the latest tools and learn how to use them. This will be the only course our popular instructor—Jeff Allen—will be teaching this spring."

The 411:

"The Market in Plain English"
Tuesday, March 2
1:00 PM to 4:00 PM
3 hours of Continuing Education credit
At the MAAR Office:
5750 Lincoln Drive
Edina, MN 55436
Click here to register or call our Education Department at 952-908-2602.

Hope to see you there.

The Twin Cities housing market in early 2010 looks pretty much like it did in early 2009. How similar? Over the last three months, there have been 7,189 signed purchase agreements; there were 7,186 a year ago during the same time period. Eerie, no? Robotic precision.
 
For the week ending February 13, there were 711 pending sales, down 2.7 percent from last year, and new listings posted 1,764 units, up 4.9 percent from a year ago. The only thing that's really changed much is the supply of available homes, which continues to dwindle relative to a year ago. The current stock of 22,271 available homes represents a 12.4 percent decline from a year ago.

Click here for the full Weekly Market Activity Report.

The Twin Cities housing market in early 2010 looks pretty much like it did in early 2009. How similar? Over the last three months, there have been 7,189 signed purchase agreements; there were 7,186 a year ago during the same time period. Eerie, no? Robotic precision.
 
For the week ending February 13, there were 711 pending sales, down 2.7 percent from last year, and new listings posted 1,764 units, up 4.9 percent from a year ago. The only thing that's really changed much is the supply of available homes, which continues to dwindle relative to a year ago. The current stock of 22,271 available homes represents a 12.4 percent decline from a year ago.

Click here for the full Weekly Market Activity Report.

The Twin Cities housing market at the beginning of 2010 continues to look similar to the Twin Cities housing market at the beginning of 2009. There were 1,848 new listings for the week ending February 6, a 3.8 percent increase from the same week last year. On a similar track, there were 780 pending sales for the same week, 4.7 percent above last year.
 
With supply dropping—now at 5.5 months of availability—it may be that potential buyers are all too familiar with the inventory they have to choose from, especially in the lower price ranges where sales have been through the roof in the last year and inventory has dropped quickly.

Click here for the full Weekly Market Activity Report.

No, that's not the name of an old bar band that plays Tuesday nights at a dive in Stillwater. It does sound like it though, I'll give you that. This morning I gave a presentation to Twin Cities area brokers on the current state of the local housing market and called it "The Big Picture and the Little Details."

The "Big Picture" is the general trend line. The "Little Details" are the stories within the stories—the micro-level trends that are pushing the general trends, behind the scenes.

Here's the slides. Feel free to share wherever you'd like:

The February Housing Supply Outlook is online now. We noticed some intriguing trends in the new construction segment and decided "hey, what the heck...let's do a whole Housing Supply Outlook analysis on new construction?"

So that's what we did. So here it is. Yeah.

The new construction market has made huge strides in cutting down on oversupply the last year. The inventory of newly built homes has dropped to 2,175, down 32.6 percent from the last year. Meanwhile—on the demand side—sales picked up during 2009 thanks to the federal tax credit for first time buyers. The combined effect is that the Months Supply of new construction inventory has fallen from 11.0 to 7.8 in the last year.

Does that mean its time for builders to start putting new projects in the ground, post haste? Not quite. The impending loss of the federal tax credit and a likely increase in mortgage rates down the road mean that downward pressure on home sales is on the horizon. Regardless, the new construction market is in a much better place than it was a year ago.

The biggest growth in new construction home sales can be found in the lower price ranges of single-family detached properties. Sales are up strongly in that segment over the last 12 months.

Click here for the full February Housing Supply Outlook.

We sent out a news release last week. Highlights are given below in top 10 format because a lot of fancy communications experts say that you're more likely to look at data when presented in a top ten list. David Letterman has built a career around this notion. | VIEW FULL NEWS RELEASE

1. After 41 consecutive months, the Twin Cities housing market finally posted a median sales price that was higher than the same month a year ago.
   
   
2. The January median sales price of $157,000 was a 1.3 percent increase from last January's mark of $155,000. That's the first year-over-year increase since July 2006.
   
   
3. The median sales price of traditional homes (excluding foreclosures and short sales) in January was $198,000, down 7.9 percent from a year ago.
   
   
4. Lender-mediated properties posted a January figure of $125,000, an increase of 3.3 percent from a year ago.
   
   
5. There were 2,736 signed purchase agreements in January, a dip of 3.2 percent from a year ago. That's the second consecutive month of year-over-year decline in pending sales, though the declines have been small to this point.
   
   
6. The Federal Home Buyer Tax Credit and extremely low mortgage rates have been the two main drivers of the market's recent momentum and, unfortunately, both of those market boosters may be near their eventual end.
   
   
7. The tax credit expires on April 30 and likely will not be extended.
   
   
8. The Federal Reserve intends to stop buying mortgage-backed securities in the near future, a move that will likely lead to an increase in mortgage rates.
   
   
9. Unless the end of the tax credit and actions by The Fed are effectively offset by other economic improvements, we can expect downward pressure on home sales in the months ahead.
   
   
10. A lot of progress has been made in the last year, but the recovery process isn't over.

It's finally done: The 2009 Residential Real Estate Activity Report (a.k.a., RREAR or "The Ruh-REAR").

We've received more calls and emails than usual this year asking when we'll be done with it, which hopefully means we're doing something right because it's now something that you crave.

The annual publication is again bursting with research and analysis for the Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan area housing market—clean charts, organized tables, quick analysis and easy-to-read maps.

This online version includes "Historical Average Sales Price by Area" along with the stronger metric "Historical Median Sales Price by Area." The "Average" tables won't be in the print edition.

Did we just say something about a print edition? Yes. We were told in our end-of-2009 member survey that this is one of the most important things we produce, so we're making it available to members as part of the Spring 2010 issue of The REALTOR®, our quarterly magazine. When data talks, we listen.

VIEW THE REPORT