Mpls-Area Home Sales Increase 12th Straight Month

Update on this CD post, from today's Star Tribune article "A Few Good Signs for Housing" (print edition headline):

Pending home sales in the Twin Cities metro area in June were up 33.7% from this time last year, to 5,183. That number was the highest for the month of June since 2005, and marked 12 consecutive months of year-to-year increases, the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors reported Friday.

In the Twin Cities, the housing market is showing slow improvement. Closed sales for June were up 20%, but more than 40% of those sales were the result of foreclosures or "short sales," where the lender agrees to a sale for less than the amount of the mortgage. Still, the percentage of home sales that were the result of foreclosures or short sales was down from 59.7% in January.

"The fact that short sales and foreclosures are coming down as a percent of total home sales is a good sign that could lead to at least a short-term bounce in housing values," said Scott Anderson, vice president and senior economist at Wells Fargo & Co. in Minneapolis.