Weekly Market Activity Report

Seed Savers Tomato Tasting
Decorah, Iowa

Even with temperatures cooling, the Twin Cities housing market remained in its summer swelter of a holding pattern for the week ending August 28. Signed purchase agreements topped off at 636, continuing a sub-700 trend that has gone on for 15 weeks in a row. Prior to that, we had 15 weeks in a row of 700 or more pending sales per week.

Think about that for a minute. There were more pending sales in the metro during the first full week of February than in the last full week of August. And last year at this time, we were consistently hitting 1,000 or more pendings throughout the summer.


All of this adjustment firmly points to the federal tax credit for first-time home buyers that was in full swing both at this time last year and during the winter and spring months of this year. We have returned to a world void of juicy government incentives.


The number of homes for sale has grown to 27,271, up 8.6 percent from the prior year. Increased supply plus declining demand has caused the Supply-Demand Ratio to grow 56 percent in one year's time. This boils down to greater opportunity for buyers and increased challenges for sellers. You're probably used to hearing that by now. We're certainly used to saying it.