Home sales in the Twin Cities

Posted on by Teresa Boardman

The chart uses data from the NorthstarMLS and represents previously owned single-family homes sold in the Twin Cities metro area during the last five years. We can see the jump in home sales in 2021 and 2022. I have seen this before, when many people moved and then home sales slumped for a few years because generally, people do not move all that often.

In this case, mortgage interest rates were much lower when the home buying was happening. People are staying put. Home sales remain low because people are not putting their homes on the market. With all of the chaos and uncertainty created by trade wars and tariffs, I believe home sales will remain low in 2025. When we go into a recession, interest rates may come down but I don’t think that is going to be enough of an incentive for people to want to buy or sell residential real estate.

 

home sales in the metro area
Home sales in the Twin Cities over the last five years

March 2025 home sales by St. Paul neighborhood

Posted on by Teresa Boardman

Sales activity picked up in March, but like last March, the average list price in St. Paul was slightly higher than the average sale price. The number of days it takes to sell a house went down. Median home sale prices went down slightly from last month. Downtown St. Paul had the most homes on the market, while Highland Park had the highest number of pending sales. To get a feel for which neighborhoods are the hottest right now, compare the number in the homes for sale column with the number in the pended column. If the numbers are close or the pended number is higher than the number of homes for sale, houses are selling quickly.

With 30-year mortgage rates at about 6.6%, pending tariffs on imports, and general political chaos, I am going to go out on a limb and predict slower and fewer home sales this spring.

March Home sales
March 2025 home sales, St. Paul, Minnesota

Real estate is local. The chart was made from data extracted from the NortstarMLS. It is deemed reliable but isn’t guaranteed. The data captures a high number of houses that are bought and sold in St. Paul, but not all of them.

Hands off!

Posted on by Teresa Boardman
Protest sign
Protest signs

I couldn’t attend the protests over the weekend, but I want to acknowledge that they happened and are important. I am a bit disillusioned because I went to many protests, including the Women’s March in 2017 and several black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

On the one hand they make me realize that I am not alone and that many others are not happy with our president. On the other hand, he was re-elected. How much good did those protests do?

No, these weren’t paid protesters. That is a narrative invented by people who can not cope with the idea that someone may have an opinion different from their own.

I have my own theory about the tariffs that our president illegally imposed. I think he wants foreign leaders to grovel at his feet and beg for mercy and perhaps to give him money and gifts. The tariffs are part of his revenge tour. They won’t bring manufacturing back to the US any time soon, and if they do it is robots who will get the jobs.

As for the rest of us, we need to figure out how to elect people who are young enough to do the job. I don’t think wealthy people really understand the rest of us. We need to elect people who know what groceries are and who have gotten paychecks rather than large inheritances and trust funds.

I don’t think now is a good time to buy anything. I believe that if we all did our best to stop spending money, we could make a difference. As I have mentioned before on the site, I decided to make 2025 a “buy nothing new” year. So far so good.

It is going to be expensive

Posted on by Teresa Boardman

cup of coffeeIt is Friday, and Fridays are for fun.  We don’t grow coffee in the US. Most of the coffee we drink comes from Vietnam and Columbia. We have to import coffee and chocolate too.  That orange-faced baboon in the White House just imposed pretty hefty tariffs on imports. I am guessing, but coffee prices should increase by about 50%. Think of it as a new tax, along with all of the other new taxes.

Consider the fact that the gap between the rich and the poor is going to get even larger.

I can’t think of anything fun about tariffs. More than 3 trillion dollars of wealth in America was wiped out yesterday when the stock market tanked on the news of Trump’s tariffs.  Some of that money was mine, and some of it was yours.

I’ll drown my sorrows in an extra cup of coffee today.

 

 

 

The Median age of St. Paul houses is 103 years

Posted on by Teresa Boardman

The wonderful thing about houses is that they can be retrofitted. I live in a house built in the 1850s. It didn’t have Wi-Fi back then, and there was an outhouse in the backyard. Central heating and a water heater were added at some point, and we added air conditioning.

Today, it has “smart home” technology, which is usually super easy to install and use. In some cases, old houses are in better shape than newer ones with newer mechanicals and many improvements.

Understanding old houses is an important part of my job. I have rarely met an old house that I don’t like. Sometimes, people ruin them when they remodel so that the house has some character from the turn of the century and some from the 1980s.

The oldest houses in St. Paul are those that are the closest to downtown. The newest houses are in the Eastern and Western edge of the city. There are newer houses here and there and even some new construction.  Half of all the houses in St. Paul were built before 1920. The chart is a screen print from a city of St. Paul planning report.

age of houses
Age of housing stock

The house I grew up in was a beautiful craftsman-style house in the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood. It was built in 1926 and is the newest house I have ever lived in. It had an ancient boiler that burned oil.  I remember the great oil shortage and taking turns with my dad, hauling containers of diesel fuel from the local gas station and using it as fuel for the boiler. That same boiler was later converted to natural gas.

 

Homebuyers and sellers by Generation

Posted on by Teresa Boardman

This is from a 2025 report from the National Association of Realtors.

Graph
Real estate sales and purchases by generation

No surprise that baby boomers are the largest group of home buyers and sellers. The great boomer sell-off isn’t going to happen, and no boomers won’t all die at once and leave houses and money to younger generations. If there is any money, it will pay for medical expenses and long-term care.

In the report, younger baby boomers are 60-69 years old, and older boomers are 70-79 years old. Younger baby boomers are the single largest group of home buyers and sellers which kind of makes sense when you think about it.

One thing I have learned over the years is to avoid assuming that because a client is a certain age, that they will want or won’t want a certain type of housing. Some baby boomers are downsizing while others are buying larger homes to accommodate multiple generations.  Some Baby Boomers move to warmer climates; others come to Minnesota to be near family and friends.

Where we live and how we live is a matter of personal choice and how much money we have or can earn.

There are Baby Boomers who are aging in place. People are more likely to move because of a change in their life, like a new job, a marriage, divorce, the birth of a child, or the death of a spouse than because of their age.