Ranking the hottest housing markets in the Twin Cities
With sales down and housing listings up, the housing market in the Twin Cities during 2018 was less frothy than it was the year before. Unless, of course, you were a first-time buyer or a downsizing Baby Boomer. Entry-level buyers outpaced sellers, and construction costs soared, pushing sale prices across the metro to a record high.
To find out which parts of the Twin Cities metro were most feverish, the Star Tribune compiled its third annual Hot Housing Index. The index ranks communities based on where houses sold more quickly than the year before, prices posted the biggest gains and sellers got closest to their asking price.
The trends were clear: Markets that fared the best were inner-ring suburbs like Crystal, Richfield and St. Anthony where houses are modest and close to the central cities. A few once-sleepy exurbs also stood out, including Otsego and Dayton where land is cheap and housing construction was unusually robust.
The Hot Housing Index combines four key housing metrics from year-end data provided by the Minneapolis Area Realtors: change in the median price per square foot; median days on market; percent of list price received by seller and share of all sales that were foreclosures or short sales. We ranked each community on the four metrics, then added the rankings together to get an index score.
Use the search tool below to see rankings for the 108 cities included in the Hot Housing Index, plus historical real estate sales data for those cities and an additional 62 cities in the 13-county metro area that didn't have enough sales last year to be included in the index. Historical data is also available for Minneapolis and St. Paul neighborhoods.
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Otsego
Located in Wright County, Otsego ranked 1 on the Star Tribune's Hot Housing Index for 2018. Average price per square foot was up 20 percent compared to previous four-year average. Houses sold, on average, 2 days faster than the previous year. Sellers got, on average, 100 percent of their original list price. About 33 percent of the 537 sales were from new construction and less than 1 percent were short sales or foreclosures.
Historical real estate trends in Otsego
These key metrics provide a glimpse into how this real estate market has changed, particularly since the recession that lasted from December 2007 to June 2009.
How Otsego compares to the rest of the metro
The histogram charts below use U.S. Census data to show where this city (noted by the blue lines) falls in relation to other cities in the 13-county metro area on key measures regarding all of its housing and household incomes.