ST. PAUL, Minnesota: Real estate experts say they haven’t seen properties sell this fast in the area since the 1990s, Minnesota Public Radio News reported. But while it’s a great time to be a seller, buyers are facing increasing pressure when making offers half of all properties are selling above asking prices.
Newlyweds Sammi Nachtigal and Keagan Ringling eventually found a home, but had trouble along the way. The couple said they put in an offer on a different house weekly for a month. But they say despite offering $15,000 above asking price with 30 percent down, they kept getting denied.
“Every time you kind of get your hopes up that this could be the one, and you keep looking at pictures and imagining what it’d be like to live there,” Nachtigal said. “And then you find out on Sunday night that you didn’t get it, and it’s like, alright, gotta pick myself back up, look at houses all over again.”
Nachtigal and Ringling were looking for a house around $250,000, which is within the area’s most competitive price range. Properties under $250,000 in the 16-county metro area are selling three weeks after going on the market on average.
“We didn’t know it’d be this hard,” Nachtigal said. “It’s not like we jumped in thinking it’d be easy but we didn’t think that it’d be hard in the sense that we’d be competing with people.”
Realtors don’t expect things to get easier for buyers as interest rates and inventory continue to stay low and demand remains high this year. AP
