John Murphy’s MEDINA REAL ESTATE REPORT

The Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors is really stepping up their statistical reporting. As I’ve mentioned before, their new report called, “The 100″ is fantastic.

The association just sent out an e-mail to all Realtors this afternoon to really push the new research. You can check out “The 100″ here.

Trillium senior housing development is proposed for Plymouth on a 46 acre site near County Road 47 and Cheshire.  According to this article in The Weekly News, “the current sketch includeds nearly 240 independent apartments, 60 villa-style apartments, 10 townhomes, 20 assisted living apartments and 20 assisted living apartments with memorty care and 60 beds for skilled nursing.”

Construction is expected to begin in 2009.

Some are proposing that the City of Plymouth and the State of Minnesota take advantage of federal dollars and pursue a toll road to solve the problem of the four lane road called 494 from Plymouth to Maple Grove.  Fortunately, it seems that most of the Plymouth City Council is against the idea of a toll road for this stretch of highway.  Thankfully the council members have some common sense.

As is the case with most of the roads in Minnesota, there is not a lot of good news on the horizon to eliminate the congestion.

While the housing market remains in relatively good shape here in the Twin Cities, the softening in home prices is starting to be seen with the latest data reported by the local boards of Realtors.  The Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors has just reported the following according to a recent Star Tribune article published April 11, 2007.

March 2007 vs. March 2006 

• Closed transactions were down 23%
• Pending sales were down 19%
• Median home price dropped to $221,450 down 1.6%

Year to date compared to last year, pending sales decreased by 15% and the number of homes for sale as of March 31st stood 12% higher than the same time last year.

The Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors published the latest home sales statistics.  The average price of a home sold in Medina is up 16.9% to $1,133,167.

The Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors has really stepped up their reporting of real estate statistics.  Every week they send out the latest statistics to the thousands of agents who belong to this association.  However, I had never seen this easy to use format mentioned below.

They have produced this fabulous report called “The 100.”  It has listing and sales statistics for the top 100 communities in the metro.  While they don’t have median sales prices, they do have averages.  (Note, to calculate the median sales price takes a lot more time so I can see why they only publish averages. It’s been my experience that average prices run a little higher than the median prices).

For example, you can see that the City of Plymouth appears to still have a very healthy real estate market….

Friday, April 13, 2007, the Star Tribune published this story on the oversupply of luxury homes in the Twin Cities.  The story is focusses on the U.S.’s number one luxury home builder, Toll Brothers who has moved in to Eagan and Maple Grove recently.

Here’s the April housing supply outlook from the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors.

Here’s a site produced by Land America that does a good job of explaining the closing process and why you should buy title insurance when purchasing property.

CNN Money just published this excellent article and corresponding table.  You can sort it several different ways.

They are reporting that the worst period in the history of tracking real estate in the Twin Cities was during the 1982-1983 period where home prices fell 1.6%.   They are currently forecasting that we will grow by a meager .7% between April ‘07 and April ‘08.  (It sure beats Las Vegas where they are expecting an 8.9% drop in prices).

The New York Times published this helpful table that has the average property tax rates for each state.

Wisconsin has an extremely high property tax rate.  While this might be good for the government bureaucrats, it’s terrible if you’re a home owner.  Home price appreciation is affected in part by what a home costs each month.  The tax man takes a much bigger bite of the pie in Wisconsin than he does in Minnesota.  These leaves much less equity apprecition for those in Wisconsin.