Linden-hills.com

The Spring Market, 2016

Honestly, we are pretty bullish on Southwest Minneapolis and Edina real estate this year.

The economy is good, and city-wide, most indicators point to a year of price appreciation and fast sales.   We are finally coming to a time when young people who bought in 2005 can sell without a loss, though, according to Case Shiller (the premier home-pricing-and-data-crunching-analyzer), modern lending restrictions still make this “first-home-to-second-home” step a difficult one.

Interest rates, of course, are still very low.  We’ve been under 4.0% for 18 months, and under 4.5% for five years.   Rates have lately become almost a moot point.

And in our opinion, real estate values in our neighborhood are moving into a sustained period of modest to healthy appreciation, especially if one has a 20-year-cycle perspective.   It’s likely to be another good year for sellers.   

A few interesting statistics:

While March of 2015 showed the highest inventory of available houses in several years, we now have the lowest inventory since the housing recovery began back in 2013.  

This is one reason why prices are as high now as they were back 2008.  

And regarding tear-downs --- Yes, there is LOTS of new construction --  especially in the areas where Linden Hills/Fulton soil was soft and peaty, and where we often see homes built in the 1950s, as opposed to 1920s.  (I will write more about this in later posts)   The trend toward larger houses replacing smaller ones is not ending.

Questions?   Call us.   We know this market as well as anyone.