Twin Cities housing market hits record high

MINNEAPOLIS (KMSP) - It’s been a record setting year for the Twin Cities housing market, as experts say we’ve officially recovered from the housing bubble bust.

According to the Shenehon Center for Real Estate at the University of St. Thomas, the median sale price hit a record high in June, surpassing the previous record set in 2006.

The 13-county Twin Cities region reached a median home sale price of $242,000 in June, surpassing the previous high of $238,000 set in June 2006.

“We’ve got a lot of people chasing few houses, so it’s really a seller’s market,” said Herb Tousley, director of real estate programs at the University of St. Thomas.

Tousley doesn’t believe this high is a bubble.

“[In 2006] everybody thought house prices were going to keep going up, what could go wrong? And now, it’s more the fundamentals that are causing it,” he said.

And although real estate agent Dayna Murray is enjoying the state of the market, she says the headlines are misleading.

“If we go back from the dump—where everything completely collapsed—and we add three to four percent,  yeah we’ve come back,” she said. “But if we go back and go up the three to four percent, we’re not where we should have been right now.”

Murray stands in a St. Louis Park listing that took only two days to sell. She said listings that are priced right are selling quickly.

“A lot of people right now are going, ‘oh the market is great, let’s just bump the price up a little bit,’ well that shoots you in the foot,” she said.

Murray says although the Twin Cities is being called a “seller’s market” right now, she says it’s still very much a buyer’s market because interest rates are so low.