Photo by Spacecrafting
Picture of houses
Fritz Kroll, a realtor with Edina Realty, doesn’t just focus on downtown Minneapolis real estate—he lives it. Kroll has lived in the North Loop for nearly 20 years and believes that the rebound is underway. “It’s feeling much better now than it was a year ago. The city’s starting to open up again,” says Kroll. “There are more people that still want to live downtown than people think. The market is stronger than people realize.”
The pandemic, social unrest, and personal safety issues have prompted speculation that many people are fleeing the core city for the safety of the suburbs. “I think that’s a fallacy; I think that’s been overblown,” says Doug Bredeson, a veteran realtor with Lakes Area Realty of properties in south Minneapolis. “It’s a seller’s market. Most listings are getting multiple offers.” Prices and home values keep climbing. “The appreciation has been phenomenal,” says Bredeson.
The overall market dynamics are largely the same across the metro. In February, the inventory of homes for sale across the Twin Cities hit a 20-year low. The competition for homes keeps pushing prices upward.
According to statistics from Minneapolis Area Realtors, the average sale price for southwest Minneapolis, based on a 12-month rolling average, hit $501,806 earlier this year. That’s 41 percent higher than the metro-wide average of $356,238.
The rolling 12-month median prices for select neighborhoods tell the story. Prices in Lynnhurst were up 9.5 percent to $590,000; the Fulton neighborhood was up 9.9 percent to a median sales price of $527,450. In East Harriet, prices leapt 15.7 percent to $420,500.
Rod Helm, a realtor with Coldwell Banker’s Minneapolis Lakes office, agrees that there is no mass exodus from the city of Minneapolis. He focuses on selling in the Linden Hills, Fulton, Lynnhurst, and East Harriet neighborhoods. “It’s as fired up as any of the other markets,” says Helm, a seasoned real estate veteran, of southwest Minneapolis. In late March, Helm said that there was just a thin, two-week inventory of homes for sale in southwest Minneapolis. He says that a supply of five to six months signals a balanced market.
MAR’s stats show a surprising drop of 8.3 percent in Linden Hills to a rolling 12-month median price of $528,900. Helm says that the number is only down because so few pricier properties in the neighborhood have been hitting the market.
The Cynthia Froid Group focuses exclusively on downtown Minneapolis properties. “We have definitely seen things come back in the last couple of months,” says Froid, a realtor and the firm’s principal, adding that the market started to pick up again in February.
What about people fleeing the city in droves? “I think that’s been really overinflated,” says Froid. “What’s been really energizing and very validating is that so many of our buyers that we’re seeing already live downtown.”
