Unemployment Rate in Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI (MSA) (MINN427URN)

2012-03: 6.1 Percent   Last 5 Observations

2012-02:	6.2
2012-01:	5.9
2011-12:	5.5
2011-11:	5.2

Monthly, Not Seasonally Adjusted, Updated: 2012-05-02 11:35 AM CDT

Tax (Photo credit: 401K)

Just a reminder that your 1st Half Property Taxes are Due May 15th.   2nd Half is due October 15th.

If you are not escrowing your taxes you will need to pay the County directly.  If you are escrowing taxes with your mortgage payments, the lender will send in the tax payment.  If you have questions on whether or not your are escrowing your property taxes, look on your mortgage statement or call your lender.

Property Tax Payments for Hennepin County:  http://www.hennepin.us/PropertyTaxPayments

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• TurboTax – How to Estimate Property Taxes (turbotax.intuit.com)

In the Twin Cities region, for the week ending April 21:

• New Listings increased 13.9% to 1,677
• Pending Sales increased 41.2% to 1,281
• Inventory decreased 28.4% to 17,447

Read Full Report from MAAR

Simple Supply Demand formula economics should begin to take hold as the inventory gets lower.  We will continue to see price stabilization and then slight price increases, there are numerous multiple offers taking place which will begin to register in the statistics soon.  It will become more evident when this activity begins to take hold in the upper bracket market.

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• More signs of stability – not recovery – for Twin Cities housing(startribune.com)

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(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

The Building Permits for Minneapolis / St Paul, MN for March 2012 have been released by the Department of Commerce – US Census Bureau.

The chart below shows the total housing units authorized by Building Permits in red and then just the 1-unit structure building permits in blue.

March 2012 is up 55% over March 2011 for 1-unit structures.  The percentage jump is big, but in number of 1-unit building permits moved from 234 permits in March 2011 to 362 building permits in March 2012.  Compare that to March of 2003 at 1,435 1-unit building permits.

With the market activity taking place currently on existing homes, it is just a matter of time before builders need to be adding more inventory into the market.  I expect to see these figures climbing into the summer months.  April should show a bigger seasonal jump in permits pulled.

Related articles

• Housing Starts decline in March (calculatedriskblog.com)
• Housing Construction Pauses (eyeonhousing.wordpress.com)
• Housing Starts Drop, But Building Permits Are Up (npr.org)
• Building Permits and Starts, Midwest Region (craigkamman.com)
• Minneapolis / St Paul Building Permits, March 28 2012 (craigkamman.com)

Given the lag time here, this is not an accurate index for current market conditions but a great source for tracking historical trends.  Given the nature of the current marketplace with low inventory and multiple offer situations – we will begin to see the Case Shiller index numbers track upwards in the coming months for Minneapolis.

It is remarkable that we are not that far off from October 2000′s index for Minneapolis.

Read Full Report from S&P

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• Minneapolis Posts 5% Year over Year Decline in Home Prices – Case-Shiller Index Through November 2011 (johnmurphyreports.com)
• Comments on Housing and “Distressing Gap” Graph (calculatedriskblog.com)
• Case Shiller Index: Minneapolis / St Paul MN, March 27, 2012 release (craigkamman.com)
• Real House Prices and Price-to-Rent Ratio at late ’90s Levels (calculatedriskblog.com)

Continued fewer new listings combined with increased pending sales brings the inventory down to 17,384.  Keep in mind, out of the 17,384 homes for sale – a good percentage are actually under contract in short sales waiting for bank approval.  These are not marked pending until the banks approve the short sales.  So the real figure may easily be under 15,000 which would be back in line with 2004 inventory levels.

In the Twin Cities region, for the week ending April 14:

•  New Listings decreased 9.5% to 1,637
•  Pending Sales increased 25.5% to 1,170
•  Inventory decreased 27.8% to 17,384

Read Full Report from MAAR

Related articles

• Twin Cities Weekly Real Estate Market Update: April 16 2012 (craigkamman.com)

Title:               State Government Tax Collections, Property Taxes in Minnesota
Series ID:           MNPROPTAX
Source:              U.S. Department of Commerce: Census Bureau
Release:             State Government Tax Collections (Not a Press Release)
Seasonal Adjustment: Not Applicable
Frequency:           Annual
Units:               Thousands of Dollars
Date Range:          1992-01-01 to 2011-01-01
Last Updated:        2012-04-16 4:19 PM CDT
Notes:               For more information, see
                     http://www.census.gov/govs/www/statetax.html.

DATE         VALUE
1992-01-01    7961
1993-01-01    8155
1994-01-01    8200
1995-01-01    8632
1996-01-01    8288
1997-01-01    9748
1998-01-01    9772
1999-01-01    9281
2000-01-01    9411
2001-01-01    9509
2002-01-01  305573
2003-01-01  585416
2004-01-01  607863
2005-01-01  619122
2006-01-01  634697
2007-01-01  674559
2008-01-01  712463
2009-01-01  713019
2010-01-01  765742
2011-01-01  774891

Related articles

• 14 Reasons Why Property Taxes Vary (johnmurphyreports.com)
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• 2011 Certificate of Rent Paid (CRP) for MN (craigkamman.com)

In the Twin Cities region, for the week ending April 7:
• New Listings decreased 19.0% to 1,411
• Pending Sales increased 15.5% to 1,036
• Inventory decreased 27.3% to 17,289

Read Full Report from MAAR

I am expecting the market to slow down going into the summer and then election season, but I could be wrong.  This spring market is gaining momentum…  I had anticipated more new listings to be coming to the market, but we are seeing continued year over year declines.

Related articles

• Twin Cities Weekly Real Estate Market Update: 04/09/2012 (craigkamman.com)
• A thaw for Twin Cities home prices (startribune.com)

State seal of North Dakota (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you are wondering why you haven’t heard much from me last week, I was doing some market scouting in North Dakota.

I had heard the stories of the boom times there, but I had no idea that those stories are no exaggeration…  This boom is everything you have heard and more.

As I pulled into Fargo just crossing the State line, the first thing I noticed was construction taking place both residential and commercial.

The next thing I noticed that absolutely shocked me was Help Wanted signs on businesses.  I don’t think I have seen a Help Wanted or Hiring sign on a business in 4 years!

North Dakota actually has 2 industries doing extremely well.  The first is the Bakken Oil Fields, the oil drilling operations are expected to continue on for another 10 years.  (Assuming Hollywood’s new movie starring Matt Damon attacking Frac Drilling doesn’t shut down this boom..)  You may have seen the bumper stickers around town, “Rockin the Bakken”.  Many of our skilled trades have already moved into North Dakota for work…

The 2nd industry is the Agriculture business, they are experiencing boom times as well.

There is something else going on there, the population works hard and saves – a winning formula no matter what the market conditions are.  This may be the dynamic we in Minnesota had strayed from…

With both these industries doing well, this is feeding down to all industries including services and housing.  I am still pulling information together, but to sum things up housing is at emergency levels across the state.  Even in Fargo…

5,000 housing units in need…  ..in one community alone.

Homebuilders – might want to look into this.   I haven’t decided if I will publish my figures or not, I spent some effort there and I am not licensed in North Dakota so I shouldn’t be talking North Dakota real estate…

Related articles

• Black-Gold Rush Fuels Housing Demand in Oil-Rich States (builderonline.com)
• Scale and Energy Booms, Continued (krugman.blogs.nytimes.com)
• North Dakota’s Bakken Shale Boom Is Visible From Space (thinkprogress.org)
• Population Changes (economistsoutlook.blogs.realtor.org)
• 500,000 Barrels of Oil Per Day: News Headlines From The North Dakota Oil Boom (theconservativehillbilly.wordpress.com)

In the Twin Cities region, for the week ending March 31:

• New Listings decreased 12.1% to 1,532
• Pending Sales increased 25.2% to 1,113
• Inventory decreased 27.2% to 17,274

For the month of March:

• Median Sales Price increased 6.4% to $149,000
• Days on Market decreased 10.0% to 144
• Percent of Original List Price Received increased 3.7% to 92.1%
• Months Supply of Inventory decreased 39.2% to 4.6

Read Full Report from MAAR

For March 2012:

We have been monitoring the weekly stats and I mentioned we would begin to see Percentage of List Price Received by Sellers to increase which would then lead to prices stabilization.  This report shows us this is beginning to happen, while we are still not out of the woods – this is a great sign.

Much of this is to be expected seasonally, however with the low inventory levels approaching Seller’s Market territory – there is real supply/demand economics taking place.  4.6 month supply of homes for sale, my guess is that we may dip into the 3 month supply range which puts us squarely in a Seller’s Market.  The New Listings have not entered the market like I thought they would this spring.

What will the rest of the year look like?  My guess is that April and May will produce similar figures, then it is anyone’s guess.  I think we will see a slow down for the summer and fall as gas prices strain budgets and we head into the election cycle.  The “shadow inventory” doesn’t appear like it will hit us, at least not this year…

Related articles

• Twin Cities Weekly Real Estate Market Update, April 02 2012 (craigkamman.com)