Roseville's Median Home Price Up and So Are Sales

As spring temperatures continue to heat up, so are signs that Roseville's housing market is gaining some fire.

The median sales price in February in Roseville was $145,000, up 19.8 percent compared to the same month a year ago, according to data this week from the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors (MAAR).

Meanwhile, Roseville logged 24 completed home sales in February, up from 11 the same period in 2011 or an 118.2 percent increase. The city's new home listings rose 5.4 percent over the same period, according to MAAR data.

The report was good news for real estate agents like Lisa Meyer, branch manager of Edina Realty's Roseville office. "I'm excited about that," she told Roseville Patch. "It's a lot of positive things."

Meyer said her office has seen an increase of workers relocating into the area, a positive for home sales activity. But she also attributed stabilizing home prices to a drop in housing inventory.

"MLS listings are down about 16 percent year over year," Meyer said. She added that banks have slowed down foreclosures entering the housing sales pipeline.

Even with February's gains, Roseville's median home price is $131,900 year-to-date, down 21 percent from $165,000 for the same period in 2011, according to MAAR statistics.

But closed sales in Roseville are up 68.2 percent year-to-date in 2012 compared with the same period in 2011.  

The metro-wide picture

Across the 13-county Twin Cities region, the median sales price of a home saw its smallest year-over-year decline in 16 months, falling only 1.4 percent from February 2011 to $138,000. Realtors said the relatively small decline, along with a host of other statistics, could indicate that the area’s long real estate slump is nearing an end.

For instance:

• Homes now require an average of 144 days to sell, compared to 159 last February; it was the fifth consecutive month of year-over-year decreases in the average amount of time required to complete a sale.
• Home buyers entered into 3,756 purchase agreements during February, a 34.2 percent increase over the same month last year, and more than any February since 2005.
• The number of homes for sale continued to drop, down 27.2 percent from last year to 16,689 active listings—the lowest such reading for any month since 2003.
• The “months supply of inventory,” meaning the amount of time it would take to sell every home on the market, was at a six-year low of 4.6 months.
• And sellers, on average, got 90.7 percent of their asking price, up from 88.3 percent in February of 2011.

Realtors said the improvement is due, at least in part, to the slowdown in foreclosure sales, which typically depress the market’s median value, sometimes dramatically.

In February, traditional residential real estate sales surged 36.2 percent, while foreclosure sales increased only 8.5 percent. Both segments had nearly identical market shares, comprising 42.7 and 42.3 percent of overall sales, respectively. Short sales—in which banks agree to accept less than the current value of the mortgage—were up 36.3 percent to make up the remaining 15 percent of sales.

 “The mix of homes selling is slowly starting to change, which has translated into the smallest price decline since October 2010,” said Cari Linn, MAAR president. “Subsiding price declines are a sign of market rebalance.”